this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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I don't think North vs South Korea is a real comparison at all. First of all, it's not what the post is talking about. Secondly, the North Korean government is not materially Communist in nature. Thirdly, there are some additional factors in play that are depressing North Korea's economic and medical ability, such as sanctions from the West. Not that i think North Korea would beat South Korea without the sanctions or anything, i doubt it would be particularly close.
China is catching up to the US, thanks to the US's insane and dysfunctional health care system. They're not going to beat Europe any time soon, but that's a tough ask. Europe is doing quite well, and has been for a long time.
It's not like China's revolution was smooth sailing, either. I think that's partly why those two are a reasonable comparison, despite being so different in so many ways. They were both doing about as poorly as each other on life expectancy up to their respective revolutions--in fairness, India was doing a little worse by the life expectancy metric but not by much.
Isn't North and South Korea the best comparison for life expectancy versus communism/capitalism? One's communist, the other is capitalist, and both received incredible funding and infrastructure from both superpowers. I mean look! Doesn't this add to the fact that everyone's life expectancy increased, not just one country soaring past the others?
Regardless tho~ The main point is the whole genocide-denying part.
No, specifically because North Korea is not communist in any meaningful sense of the word. There's no reason to believe it is representative of a generic communist state, and it does not compare well to the majority (to any?) of the communist states out there. Even if you do consider it communist, it is an outlier among those states. It simply does not make sense.
That chart does show North and South Korean life expectancies increasing at a similar rate (until the mid 90s, of course) but that does not mean there's no difference in other states. Yes, life expectancy has been increasing globally but it is not uniformly distributed. China went from "average" to "above average" since the Communist Revolution. India went from "below average" to "below average".
We could also look at Cuba or Vietnam as examples (looking at 2020). They're much smaller and i don't have the same kind of data on hand for them, but compared to the global numbers they're closer to the "more developed countries" than they are to the global average. Again, India, is down in the "less developed countries". If you care, North Korea is at 75 in 2020, above the global average despite... everything going on there. And yes, for the record, South Korea is doing better. They're doing better than most, even better than (for example) Germany.
(I do not know how trustworthy those numbers are for North Korea tbh. I know China's 2020 and beyond numbers have also been criticized but I'm working with what I have.)
And yes, life expectancy is not the be-all, end-all measurement of all value. It does matter, though.