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Sangbin Park
Professor Gillespie
Honors 231 A: Animals, Environment, Food & Justice
10 January 2015
Week #1 Reflective Journal: 1984
George Owells novel, 1984, drew me into a whole new world. It is a world that can be
best described as a dystopia. While reading the book, I could not help myself but draw
connections between Oceania and North Korea. For a while, I have been curious of how North
Korea is able to continue to retain its current state. I wanted to know what was going inside that
country that kept the government so powerful. It seemed to me that 1984 illustrated a world in
which how such a world could be run.
Firstly, the rigid class system of both countries is somewhat similar. In Oceania, there are
three social classes: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. In North Korea, there are
also three social classes: the Core, the Wavering, and the Hostile (Park). In both places,
depending on which class you belonged to, your political risk is different. For example, in
Oceania, the Party only watches over the Inner and Outer Party members for any thoughtcrime.
The Proles were simply ignored. In North Korea, the classes are separated by political risk as
determined by ancestors socioeconomic background [and] their activities during the Korean
Warand whether you had relatives in South Korea or China (Park). Therefore, if you are
deemed politically safe, then you were classified in the Core class enjoying privileges such as
being designated to a good occupation, opportunities for higher education, and access to food.
Everyone other than the Core class is irrelevant much like how the Proles are treated.

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Another similarity is the control of the accessible knowledge. In Oceania, the Party
controls everything including what its citizens are allowed to know. The Partys slogans reflect
its aims to control knowledge: Ignorance is strength and Who controls the past controls the
future; who controls the present controls the past." The Ministry of Truth (MiniTrue)
continuously changes the past to fit the present. As a result, Big Brother is never wrong.
Furthermore, with the plan of Newspeak replacing Oldspeak by 2050, the Party is attempting to
limit the number of words to reduce the number of thoughts. When Newspeak completely
replaces Oldspeak, there will be no thought that deviates from the Partys because there will no
concept or word to describe anything different from that of the Partys. Similarly, in North Korea,
the government censorship is very pervasive. The government controls the media and class
materials. North Koreans have very limited way of learning anything else not given by their
government. However, they do have some access to the outside world. It is commonly known in
South Korea that some North Koreans secretly watch South Korean television shows--some
North Korean defectors have confessed to this. It is believed that such an act can result in
punishments like being sent to a labor-camp. In conclusion, both Oceania and North Korea are
limiting any chance of their citizens having thoughts different from their leaders--Big Brother
and Kim Jong-un. Although I have a hard time believing that sustaining such a state for a long
time is not possible, I am not entirely sure on how a change could come about.

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Work Cited
Park, Sokeel J. "SONGBUN | Social Class in a Socialist Paradise - Liberty in North Korea."
Liberty in North Korea. Liberty in North Korea, 25 June 2012. Web. 10 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/songbun/>.