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The nature of freedom and Platos 'allegory of the cave"

Shin Dong Hyok, a North Korean defector, is pictured at his residence in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday.

So you defy the government and you get thrown in a gulag. You know that there is another world and therefore you struggle to survive and to get out. You know the gulag as punishment as something to be avoided, but what if you were born in a Gulag? what if thats the only life you've even known? What if its your only frame of reference?

"...Shin, now 24, was a political prisoner by birth. From the day he was born in 1982 in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon until he escaped in 2005, Shin had known no other life. Guards beat children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin's, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed everyone lived this way."

end snip.

Read the full story here.

Imagine all of North Korea as a real life version of Plato's "Allegory of the cave". The very idea of it makes me gasp in horror.

Posted @ July 13, 2007 12:55 PM | Current Affairs