I guess I’m an orientalist now

I have family in adjacent, politically similar countries

I got my answer, thank you very much.

Naturally? God forbid a country considers the welfare of its workers.

The rule of law isn’t an exclusively Western concept. But since you’re speaking so confidently you must be an expert in the Chinese legal system.

Unfortunately when people criticize socialist countries for the lack of “free speech,” even if with good intentions, they are usually parroting the talking points of Western, bourgeois media and only serves as to justify imperialist intervention against them.

These criticisms however derive from an ignorance of the way politics work in such countries whose only perception comes from behind the iron curtain and only through the lens of fascist and capitalist media.

In historically socialist countries, democracy had always been principally practiced on the local and communal stages, where individuals had the most capacity to take decisions regarding their daily lives and the situation of their neighbourhood, locality or commune. I highly recommend reading on this topic:

Local Communities, a Yugoslav Take on Direct Democracy.

Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan.

Communism has always been the ideal. However, we have to take into account that we do not live in a bubble insulated from everyone else. We are facing the real, global and continuous threat of imperialist invasion by the capitalist forces. See Cuba and Venezuela, for instance.

It’s really hard to not be an ultra-militaristic society when the CIA and the enemies of the proletariat are always lurking in the shadows and looking for any miniscule gap to breach socialist countries from within. Regardless, we need to diffuse a proletarian, anti-bourgeois culture among the masses in order to inhibit the possibilities of foreign intervention.

Decades of sanctioning and warmongering by the US and its allies has kept a small country like the DPRK on the defensive, which isn’t ideal if you want a thriving nation, regardless of its ideology.