“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” This quote is often misattributed to Socrates, while it is actually paraphrased from Aristophanes. At any rate, such sentiments are more than 2,000 years old, but when you talk to older North Koreans, you hear complaints that are remarkably similar.

Indeed, young North Koreans, whose teenage years coincided with the economic calamity of the Arduous March, are very different from their parents and grandparents. They indeed love luxury and are far less respectful to established authority. But what of their elders?