Choudhry 1
Assad Choudhry
Mrs.Cline
Ap English 4
5 September 2013
An Orwellian Present George Orwell, in his novel 1984, portrays a society in which the government controls everything its people, their thoughts, and even their past. A government were even thinking about rebellion or holding hatred against the government is a crime which is subjected to capital punishment. This type of society is almost unimaginable in the United States of America, but just over the ocean there is a country were 1984 truly does come to life through pain, betrayal, and the constant eye of the government, this country being North Korea. North Korea has fulfilled all the prophecies which Orwell had predicted in his novel 1984. Though many do not wish to admit it, North Korea is the spitting image of Oceania, and its government may even be slightly more worse and disgusting than Oceania's government. North Korea, just as Oceania, has been able to keep control over its people for so many years by instilling constant fear and pain within them. If a citizen was to ever go against the government of North Korea, he/she alongside their entire family and relatives would be killed, brutally tortures, and/or thrown into internment camps. In the novel 1984 Winston Smith went against the government of Oceania and had sexual intercourse with a fellow co worker from his office, committing adultery. Smith Was then taken to a building in which he was tortured with shock therapy and pitted
Choudhry 2 against his worst fear, rats. Though the way Smith was tortured sounds like something out of a disgusting horror movie North Korea has taken it a step further. Instead of torturing its citizens quickly and brainwashing them into loving their country then setting them free amongst the rest of the citizens, North Korea takes its citizens puts them into internment camps where they are all made examples of, by slowly starving them and working them to death. In 1984 someone could wait about a week to be tortured and killed, maybe a month at most, but they would surely die. In North Korea however they kill you so slowly that you may have to wait 1 day or even 1 decade for the peace of your own death. Betrayal by those who one calls their own is when a society truly begins to crumble. In 1984 while Winston Smith was in the building being tortured he found out a couple, Mr and Mrs.Parsons, who had lived in the same building as him were being tortured also because they had been turned into the government by their own children for thought crimes, thinking thoughts that go against the government. In a country like the United States, no one could ever imagine that someones own blood, would go against them and snitch to the government for such a small reward as being favored by the government. recently on Yahoo News a North Korean escapee gave an interview in which he said," When i was young and living within an internment camp i remember a child maybe 5 or 7 years old tell the guards that his mother and brother had broken a rule and snuck in food to their beds, by telling this to the guards his mother and brother had been killed, and the child received a loaf of bread as a