So I heard someone mention not too long ago that whole thingy about apparently needing government approval to go to another city as a North Korean, and how this is supposed to be this really terrible thing meant to Control the Population or whatever… and like, I didn’t argue against what that person said because truth be told I don’t know much about it and learning more about it is Kinda Difficult, but I just thought… aren’t things in practice already pretty similar where I live?

Like, if I am employed, then I need to clock in every day, and notify and get the approval of my employer in order to be absent from my workplace. So if I randomly decide to spend the night in the next town over and miss or am late to work or perform worse at work because of it, then I could be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including getting fired and all that entails. And if I move to a new city, then the government expects me to notify them of my new address, because that could have implications for welfare and taxation and voting and census statistics and so forth. If I don’t notify the government when I move to a new city, then that is Illegal and Bad and I’ll get fined for it.

To me it then makes sense that if the state is my employer, that there would be a similar system in place, and that a centrally-planned economy would have a greater need for statistics as well (companies do well keep track of who’s in which department, too, don’t they!). And so to me it follows that inter-city travel would be expected to be documented and approved. Because “needing approval” does not equal “99% of applications are denied”, right? That much should be obvious.

But all of this is really just me making assumptions about a country I’ve never actually been to and honestly know way too little about, based on what I feel makes more sense than “it’s a literal 1984 hellscape where they eat babies”.

If anybody actually knows anything about this topic or similar domestic travel restrictions in other AES states, then I’d love to hear about it.