I watched a documentary on life in North Korea in one of my classes and the similarities to Oceania were frightening, to say the least. Both had enormous images of the leader everywhere, societies based on fear, and in both the people had no freedoms.
The most shocking part of the documentary for me was when the reporter asked a North Korean family if the "Supreme Leader" could do anything wrong. The family stared in confusion and asked her to repeat the question because they didn't understand it so again she asked if the Supreme Leader ever made mistakes. Again, the family had blank stares and told the reporter they didn't understand. The reporter said that she didn't think that the people she was interviewing were playing stupid, she believed that they simply didn't understand what she was saying. Like they didn't have words to criticize the government. This was essentially the goal of the creators of Newspeak in 1984.
Another similarity was the love the people hold for their leader. In the documentary, the reporter was traveling with a doctor who was removing cataracts from peoples eyes and some of these people had been blind for decades. When the bandages were removed from the patients eyes all of them expressed extreme gratitude towards the Supreme Leader, not the doctor. Many of them broke into tears praising their leader for allowing them to see again. The reporter raised the question of whether they truly loved the Supreme Leader or if they were just pretending out of fear. I think that, like in 1984, it was both. They really loved their ruler because of the power he held.
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