The Infinitely Mysterious

There are many, many things on this planet that have baffled me, and continue to baffle me. Most of what baffles me regards human behavior. Beyond the obvious things such as the concept of god(s), the lack of an understanding of the absolute necessity for differentiation, and the seemingly universal innate desire to make others miserable, the one thing that has perplexed me the most since I was about ten, when I first read Shirer's The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, is, why do people follow strong personalities blindly?

We are living in the most advanced, most enlightened, most educated time in the history of civilized mankind - every single person alive on this planet right now, with small exceptions, has it better now than any of their ancestors ever had (there are people who do not believe his, but they are idiots, easily and readily ignored) .

The small exceptions mentioned in the previous paragraph is the topic of tonight's rant, and the specific small exception is: North Korea.

Almost 25 million people live in North Korea, and all of them blindly follow Kim Jung Un. He is the current Supreme Leader of Korea, a position he inherited from his father Kim Jong iL, who in turn inherited his position from his father, Kim ll Sung. All of these men have been despotic dictators, and their control of Korea in the 21st century begs the question - Why? 

I have watched a number of documentaries about North Korea on the 'net (check out this one on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtuFaEy4jzE) and all of them have left me wondering why. Why has not one person in that country had the brass to rise up and rebel against the tyranny? Why in almost seventy years has not one person in that country been able to free themselves from the cult of personality that surrounds the Kim family and incite a revolution?

North Korea is a country bereft of basic human rights. Every aspect of an ordinary North Korean citizen's daily life is controlled by the North Korean government. How is this possible in the 21st century?

I suppose we could blame it on the Russian communists.

The Kim family was basically given North Korea by Soviet Russia, that long-since dead totalitarian dictatorship. But that was in 1945. How is it possible that the Kim family still wields absolute power nearly 25 years after the Soviet Union fell? 

And more succinctly, how is it that the rest of the civilized world has allowed it to happen? Why has nothing been done by the global leaders to ameliorate the situation? Do the people of North Korea just not matter? Are their lives insignificant?

Of course their lives matter, of course their lives are significant. Unfortunately, removing the people who are holding the reins in North Korea would involve a direct action against the leader of a government, and while it is perfectly okay to arrest a bank robber, apprehending a man who is killing tens of thousands of his countrymen every year...well, that's just not done.