For the truth about socialist utopia dreams, ask a North Korean

Bizarrely, 62% of young Americans hold a “favorable view” of socialism.How can they be so ignorant?Socialism has been tried by lots of countries.It’s failed.

It always fails.China prospered somewhat only after it legalized some private enterprise.Perhaps today’s kids are ignorant because they’re too young to remember the fall of the Soviet Union.They should look at North Korea — the ultimate “socialist utopia.”I recently interviewed Charles Ryu, who escaped North Korea and made it to China.“It felt like getting into a time machine and fast forwarding 50 years ..

.24-hour running electricity .

..

All the food that I can eat ..

.It was life-changing.”“We Americans think of China as a surveillance state,” I point out, “They’ll punish you if you say the wrong thing.

But for you, it was freedom?”“[The] Chinese government does watch your every move ..

.But in North Korea, it’s 100 times worse.”He says North Koreans are so isolated that they believe even absurd propaganda.Ryu was taught that “[Dictator] Kim Jong Il .

..

got mad when he learned what Japan had done to North Korea.He grabbed a calligraphy pen .

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and painted over Japan.As soon as he did, Japan started getting hurricanes and storms .

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[We believed he was] some sort of God.” Ryu’s time in China was short-lived.Someone told the Chinese officials that he was North Korean.China sent him back. North Korea then punished him for escaping.

“I was beaten ..

.fed only 150 kernels of corn.

One morning I was marching ..

.I saw dry vomit on the road and was so hungry that I got on my hands and knees and began picking the rice out of the dry vomit.”“I didn’t stop .

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until the beating from the guards was too unbearable.”Nine months later, he was freed from prison labor because “I lost so much weight that I was a worthless worker.” Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update.Please provide a valid email address.

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