polymathwannabe treats law as being important. The question isn’t “What does the law say” but does anybody currently in a position of power in North Korea benefits from bringing him back and would be therefore motivated to bring him back.
That is true. But maybe the law itself doesn’t have to command respect to be a predictor of compliance. For example, given that the law stipulates Kim’s eternal presidency, we can infer that a Kim is in power. From this we can infer that the DPRK government would want to preserve Kim.
For example, given that the law stipulates Kim’s eternal presidency, we can infer that a Kim is in power.
No. “In power” is a pretty relative term. By North Korea own admission there were times when secret services of the nation did whatever they wanted without input from their leader.
From what we know about the current Kim, he was an introvert ten years ago when he went to school in Switzerland. Current power structures in North Korea are very opaque.
I think that without a functioning rule of law, you cannot say that the law about Kim being eternal ruler will have any particular effect and so wouldn’t necessarily lead to his being thawed and reinstated. Not being bound in any way by the law refutes the part of polymathwannabe’s conclusion about what would happen “if they want to follow the spirit of the law.”
Yes, I see what you are saying. But if we interpret /u/polymathwannabe a little more charitably, we might steelman the claim thus:
The Kim dynasty’s dogma is that Grandpa Kim is the eternal ruler of the country. That corpse is beyond recovery now, but given the continuation of the Kim dynasty, they might want to store the present Kim in order to safeguard the once and future Kim.
This interpretation focuses less on the law, but it still gets /u/polymathwannabe’s point across.
North Korea doesn’t have a functioning rule of law. Treating it that way produces bad intuitions about how North Korea works.
This does not contradict /u/polymathwannabe’s claim. Was it intended to?
polymathwannabe treats law as being important. The question isn’t “What does the law say” but does anybody currently in a position of power in North Korea benefits from bringing him back and would be therefore motivated to bring him back.
That is true. But maybe the law itself doesn’t have to command respect to be a predictor of compliance. For example, given that the law stipulates Kim’s eternal presidency, we can infer that a Kim is in power. From this we can infer that the DPRK government would want to preserve Kim.
No. “In power” is a pretty relative term. By North Korea own admission there were times when secret services of the nation did whatever they wanted without input from their leader.
From what we know about the current Kim, he was an introvert ten years ago when he went to school in Switzerland. Current power structures in North Korea are very opaque.
I think that without a functioning rule of law, you cannot say that the law about Kim being eternal ruler will have any particular effect and so wouldn’t necessarily lead to his being thawed and reinstated. Not being bound in any way by the law refutes the part of polymathwannabe’s conclusion about what would happen “if they want to follow the spirit of the law.”
Yes, I see what you are saying. But if we interpret /u/polymathwannabe a little more charitably, we might steelman the claim thus:
This interpretation focuses less on the law, but it still gets /u/polymathwannabe’s point across.