Lesson video

Hello and welcome to today's citizenship lesson.

We're looking at a series of lessons on how do others govern, and I'll be taking you through today's lesson, which is lesson three.

How does government work in a non-democratic nation? And we're looking at a case study of North Korea to do that.

So my name's Mrs. Barry, and I'll be going through that lesson with you today.

Make sure that you have turned off any apps or notifications and that you're in a good place to study today, and that you're free from any distractions, and you must also make sure you've got something to write on or something to write with, such as some paper and a pen.

And when you've got all that ready and you're ready to begin, we can make a start on today's lesson.

So we're looking at how does government work in a non-democratic nation.

And we're going to do that through a series of different ways.

So what are the key features of a democratic and non-democratic government will be our starting point.

We're looking at separating those out.

We are also going to look at how North Korea is governed, and that's our case study when looking at a non-democratic government or a country.

And we are going to look at what it's like to live in North Korea and just have a look at how the non-democratic methods of ruling might impact someone's life.

And we can compare that to our understanding of life in the United Kingdom, which is a democratic system of ruling.

And then we'll check your understanding, and I've got a range of activities that I'd like you to do throughout the lesson to make sure that you've understood everything we have learned.

So let's make a start.

So for our first activity, I want you to have a look at these three images and think about words that you would use to connect them up.

And that will give us a good start to our lesson.

Have a think beyond what you can see.

So not only state what these pictures are, but also how are they connected? What does it mean? What are we talking about? And you might use the title of today's lesson to give you some help and a starting point.

So when you're ready, you can pause the video to complete your task.

What words can be used to help link these pictures together? And don't think just about the obvious points.

When you're ready to continue, then press play.

Well done for giving that task a go.

And hopefully, you jotted a few different notes down.

There are some key things in the pictures, such as the Korean flag, nuclear weapons, and statues, that you might have noted down.

They were the slightly more obvious options that you might've written about.

But essentially, they're all connected to North Korea, and that was the clue that I was speaking about in the title.

And North Korea is our case study country for this lesson.

But some of the other words you might have associated thinking outside the box could have been things like dictatorship, which is where a country is governed by a single person, or authoritarian, which is where you're favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.

So you might have known that from your own understanding or knowledge previously, but they're words we're going to look at during today's lesson.

You might have connected the nuclear weapon to the military, and North Korea is well known for the value it places on its military forces.

In essence, they are all connected under the North Korean flag, because North Korea is an authoritarian dictatorship with an emphasis on nuclear power and weapons.

And we'll look into that in more detail as we go through today's lesson.

North Korea is a fascinating country.

It is ruled in a very different way to the United Kingdom, using a non-democratic method of government.

And that's why it's a perfect case study for this lesson for us to compare a democratic and non-democratic way of ruling.

So for your next task, task two, I want you to think about democratic and non-democratic systems. And I've given you a little bit of information about North Korea so far and told you that the UK is different.

So the UK is our democratic system, and North Korea is our non-democratic system.

And what I'd like you to do is think back to lesson one of this series of lessons, if you've completed it, which looks at the difference between democratic and non-democratic governments.

And then you'll be able to recall some of that information.

If you haven't done that lesson, I highly recommend it because it really would help you out with this particular set of information.

So pause the video, and try to come up with three features of a democratic and non-democratic government, and see what you come up with.

Spend about five or six minutes on that.

And when you're ready to have a think about different points for this, press play.

Well done for giving that task a go, and you could have done that in a few different ways.

You might have done a couple of mind maps or jotted a few notes down.

It doesn't matter which way you've done it, but we're going to have a look at some of the possible features that you might've written down of a democratic and non-democratic system.

So these are these different features.

Democracy is a really important key term here because democracy means a system of government where the citizens are able to vote in regular and fair elections for representatives who will make laws and decisions on their behalf.

And as a result, you can see here these lists of features of democratic government.

So allow citizens to have the right to vote in open and fair elections.

Citizens have the right to speak freely, and this can be about the government and their honest opinions on what the government's doing.

There is also free media where viewpoints can be put across to large numbers of people.

But on the other side here, the non-democratic side, you've got this comparative set of features.

So a non-democratic government is somewhere which is governed by officials who are not elected freely by the citizens.

And therefore are not accountable to the citizens, meaning they're not answerable.

In a non democratic government, there is often only one party or a small number of parties to represent its people.

And the government controls the media, limiting what the country's citizens are told and limiting freedom of information.

Voters might be intimidated to vote in a certain way.

And elections are therefore not open and fair.

Citizens cannot speak out about the government, and they do not have freedom of speech.

So with this, you can see a direct correlation between the democratic and non-democratic governments and their implementation of human rights, which is a real key issue.

Democracy provides an environment where human rights can be upheld and respected more successfully than in a non-democratic government.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that the will of the people should be the basis of the authority of government, which suggests that citizens need to be able to vote openly and freely.

Freedom of speech is also a human right often restricted in non-democratic governments.

And as a result, a key difference between democratic governments and non-democratic governments is the ability for their citizens to enjoy their human rights.

Now make sure, where you've written your notes for this, you add anything you might've missed.

Because this will help you later on in this lesson.

Let's have a look further at North Korea and how it's governed.

One of the biggest features of North Korean government is that it's a dictatorship, where one person or a small group possess absolute power over all that happens in the country.

North Korea has what is called a dynastic dictatorship.

So the person running the country succeeds as a result of their heritage.

Kim Jong-un is the current leader, who is the head of the Workers' Party of Korea.

So essentially here, the dictatorship is where a small group led by one single person is running the country.

In terms of who has power, it's a bit like how the monarchy works, in the sense that Queen Elizabeth's son, Prince Charles, is next in line to the throne.

So it being a dynastic dictatorship is that it's a heritage thing.

So Kim Jong-un' son, for example, should he have one, would be the next to run North Korea, or be whoever is in line next.

But don't forget.

I've compared it to United Kingdom monarchy, but we have a constitutional monarchy in the UK, and they don't run the country.

And we have a democratically elected government.

So don't confuse my analogy there to how our country is run.

It's just so you understand how the dictatorship runs within North Korea with that family line in mind.

So the family are idolised by its people.

And anyone who speaks out against the leaders often lose their life.

Meaning those who do wish to speak out do not feel as they can, for fear of their life.

And the Kim family lead North Korea and are called the Kim dynasty.

The family have controlled the nation for decades and are worshipped as idols within the country.

And one of the ways in which North Korea keeps control within the country is to reduce the exposure it has with other countries.

Few internationals are allowed to enter.

A lot of what we know is actually as a result of people who have escaped to neighbouring countries, such as South Korea, where they are shared their stories.

There are range of key features to note about the non-democratic government in North Korea.

So firstly, there Is restricted access to the media, particularly social media.

Special authorization has to be granted for people to access internet sites connecting them to places outside from North Korea.

Although with advancements in technology, internet is slowly becoming more accessible.

As a result, North Korea has begun to block social media platforms as people can access the internet a little bit more freely.

In North Korea, they do have an intranet, which is an internal version of internet.

So instead of being worldwide, it's just within North Korea, but this is heavily monitored.

And the information available on there is limited.

You're not allowed to speak out against those in power.

So political dissidents, which is speaking out against the political system, in this case, North Korea, is just one of the listed offences in North Korea that can actually lead to the death penalty.

The state decide what you see on TV.

And TV in North Korea is monitored by the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee and controlled by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party of North Korea.

Basically, propaganda is designed to influence someone's views on the issue.

So essentially, being monitored by those means that North Korea can ensure that the political regime in North Korea seems to be the best available to the people who are watching it.

And there are no free elections.

This means that people do not have the freedom to choose who they wish to run the country.

Everyone over 17 is expected to go and vote on voting day, which happens every four or five years.

The ballot paper is given to the person with one name on it.

You don't tick next to the name like you would in the United Kingdom, where you have a lot of options.

But you simply take the ballot paper and put it straight into the voting box.

So there's no choice in that at all.

Education is limited.

You aren't given different perspectives.

In the UK, you are taught citizenship, like in our lesson today, for example, and you might be taught about different political parties, such as Conservative or Labour, but in North Korea, you would just be taught about the Kim dynasty and the Worker's Party of Korea.

There are no McDonald's, you might be surprised to hear, or other forms of globalisation.

So that's businesses that run across the world.

Every aspect of the economy is kept within North Korea.

There is no competition with other businesses.

And this follows a communist philosophy, which we'll talk a little bit more about later in the lesson.

So you can see here, there's a range of things that would impact your life were you to live in North Korea.

We're going to have a look at some other information.

We're doing an information task, so it's information finding really.

And we've got this extract from Amnesty International.

Now if you head over to the worksheet for this lesson, you could print this information and underline or highlight key points as you go through it.

There's also a link to the full article should you want to know some more information about North Korea.

So I've got some questions for you based on this at the end.

But what I'm going to do is I'm going to read through it for you.

You could highlight or underline as we go through, or you could listen to me and then pause the video to have a look yourself.

So this information is based off of the Amnesty International North Korea profile of 2019.

The authorities continue to impose severe restrictions on freedom of movement and access to information.

Widespread and systematic controls over the daily lives of people and frequent pressing of the public into labour mobilisation severely affected the enjoyment of human rights.

Foreign media reported several public executions.

People in detention experienced torture and other ill treatment and harsh conditions.

In his New Year's address, Kim Jong-un, President of North Korea, reiterated the importance of self-reliance and socialism, but also discussed denuclearization and the peace process.

Nuclear negotiations continued, including summits with China, the USA, and South Korea, but little progress was made.

Human rights received scant attention during the negotiations.

From May to December, tensions rose as North Korea fired over 20 missiles in at least 13 different tests.

Economic sanctions by the UN and individual states remained in place.

According to foreign media, they negatively impacted the nation's economy and the standard of living for the large numbers of people.

North Korean workers returned from abroad as a result of sanctions.

The economy experienced negative growth.

In July, authorities rejected 50,000 tonnes of rice offered by South Korea, despite the significant decline in agricultural productivity and the livestock industry.

So this is the task that I'd like you to complete.

But again, you can go back through that information.

You can use the information from the worksheet to help you remember some answers to this.

So you're going to explore the information from Amnesty International and answer these questions.

Number one, what type of restrictions are in place in North Korea? Number two, who is the leader of North Korea? Number three, what is self-reliance and why would North Korea put this idea across? Number four, why do you think human rights were not focused on during negotiations? And five, why did the UN place economic sanctions on North Korea, and what might the impact of that be? So pause the video, spend about 10 minutes going through that, picking out the correct information.

And when you're ready, press play.

And we can have a think about what you could have written.

Well done for giving that a go and doing that information finding task.

So I've got some key points that you might've written down, and just to check through what you've done, get some feedback on your work.

So question one was, what type of restrictions are in place in North Korea? And the information told you that there were restrictions of freedom of movement and access to information.

That means that people cannot move around freely from one place to another.

And they can't look up information that hasn't been filtered through or processed in some way and given to them.

Number two, who was the leader of North Korea? That was a simple one, Kim Jong-un.

You might have used some of the knowledge from earlier on in the lesson about the Kim dynasty, and that'd be absolutely fine.

But that is who the current leader of North Korea is.

Number three, what is self-reliance, and why would North Korea put this idea across? We're going to talk just a bit more about self-reliance later in the lesson.

It's a really key piece of information to have when talking about North Korea and its non-democratic government.

But depending, it means to depend on your own powers and resources, and North Korea wants to appear as though they don't need anyone or anything else.

That's self-reliance; only relying on yourself.

Number four, why do you think human rights were not focused on during negotiations? We've already mentioned human rights and the importance or significance of human rights in a democratic government.

But human rights allow people freedoms. And that's not a core ideal of a dictatorship.

So restricting freedom of movement and access to information is actually a violation of human rights.

And it doesn't allow people freedom to do the things or find out the things they want to.

Number five, why did the UN place economic sanctions on North Korea, and what might the impact be? Well, they disagreed with nuclear testing that North Korea were doing.

So they placed economic sanctions on North Korea, and that would impact their economy.

So it would reduce what they're able to do in terms of raising money.

And one of the important things that North Korea likes to do is to spend money on military spending.

So that would have impacted them, and perhaps made them consider what they were doing.

So there's some other key features of North Korea that I want to just raise with you.

Propaganda is a big part of how North Korea functions with its non-democratic government.

And they're designed to influence how North Koreans view their country, ensuring they idolise the way the country is run.

There's a lot of money that goes into the military.

The military is something that the government focuses on.

And as a result, there's less money on infrastructure.

So things like street lighting.

The streets in North Korea are said to be very dark.

And if you look at a bird's eye view of the world, then you can see that there is less lighting in North Korea than there is in South Korea at nighttime, for example.

There's a communist philosophy.

And everyone is expected to work for the community or the country.

And the country has moved to promote their own political philosophy since the Kim dynasty began in 1948 following the idea of self-reliance.

But this communist philosophy still remains, so that everyone is working towards this sort of collective good.

The last thing to note, which was mentioned in the Amnesty International piece, is this idea of food shortages.

And North Korea is one of the world's poorest nations.

Elite families hold much of the wealth in the country.

And as they are self-reliant, they show little interaction with organisations or countries outside of North Korea.

And they've refused help previously as a result.

So they had a bad harvest.

In 2019, there were some issues with swine flu in pigs.

And so food was limited, and they actually declined any help because of this philosophy of self reliance.

So some thinking points there.

How do these points reflect a lack of human rights? And what does this show about how government works in a non-democratic nation? So I'm just going to give you a few moments to have a think about that one.

So in terms of human rights, it shows a lack of freedom for thought and of freedom for speech.

You can't speak out, you can't join up with other people to express your opinions, and you can't move around either.

So you can't escape this if you wanted to.

And in a non-democratic nation, what we can learn here is that it's not the needs of the people that are necessarily being put at the heart of the political regime, but the ideologies and beliefs of the few.

So those in charge get to decide everything without any input from citizens.

Democracy is generalised as rule by the people.

But in a non-democratic society, it's led or ruled by a smaller group without input from the majority.

So we're going to pull this all together now, and we're going to complete task four.

And within task four, what I'd like you to do is to write up a comparison.

A day in the life of a person living in a democracy versus a person living in a dictatorship.

You can display this however you wish as long as you compare key characteristics and put yourself in a citizen's shoes.

And you could write it perhaps as two comparative diary entries, a leaflet.

So you could do one side in one view, one side in the other.

Or a revision mind map.

So you could do two different colours, potentially.

One for the person in a democracy, one for the person in a dictatorship.

So you can pause your video and give that task a go.

And just to help you out, I've put six key words to help you out that you might want to consider using.

And once you've completed that task, before you press play, just check through have you talked about those key words, those key issues.

And if you haven't, then add them on before you press play.

It should take you about 5, 10 minutes to do that.

So give that a really good go.

So press pause now.

Well done for giving that a go, and we've got some points on the screen to help you just have a quick assessment of what you've written down and check through.

You could have used our original points outlining democratic and non-democratic systems, and just spend some time going through your work and making sure you've included things like the right to vote in a democratic country, it's open and fair for elections, right to free speech, free media.

And remember to include some of those key points from the non-democratic countries.

There's often a single or small number of political parties.

The government is in control of the media.

You might be intimidated to cast your vote in a certain way.

And citizens don't get the right to free speech.

Now there were six key terms as well that I included and I asked you to check, you tried to put in your piece when you put this task together.

So quality of life.

What quality of life would someone have in a democratic or non-democratic country as a result of the government regime? You could have used specific examples from our case study to show what issues might arise, such as a focus on the military rather than infrastructure that might improve North Koreans' qualities of life.

The government, you should have written about the UK government and the North Korean government.

So it was definitely a key word there.

Right, so you could have used the information from Amnesty International in terms of violation of human rights.

The fact that in a democratic country, your right to vote, your right to speak freely is upheld, whereas in an non-democratic country, they're often repressed or kept so that you can't use those rights.

Dictatorship is a key word that you would have needed to talk about North Korea as a case study as a non-democratic country.

And authoritarian is where you favour enforced strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.

So you're limiting those human rights to ensure people follow a particular way that want them to follow.

And lastly, their freedoms. You might have considered what freedoms are available to people in democratic and non-democratic countries, and the value of these freedoms and how that might impact life within a democratic versus a non-democratic country.

So I'm sure you gave that task a really good go, and hopefully, it really helped you to solidify your understanding of the differences between these two approaches.

Well done for completing today's lesson on how does government work in a non-democratic nation.

We started the lesson by considering the key features of a democratic and non-democratic government, looking at a range of issues, including human rights when thinking about the ways those systems work.

We then moved on to how North Korea is governed, thinking about the issues faced within a dictatorship.

And we also looked at what life is like to live in a North Korean government.

We finished off by checking our understanding.

You did a really good comparison task, bringing together all the information that we've gathered this lesson.

So well done, not an easy task, not an easy topic, but fantastically done, well done.

And last thing I need you to do in today's lesson is to complete the exit quiz now.

So well done for all your efforts.

And I look forward to teaching you in another citizenship lesson soon.