[quink]

"guest workers" as a term completely excludes serfs. Serfs are attached to the land, guest workers on the other hand come from a completely different place. North Korea is not a monarchy, and what's happening there is forced labour, or slavery.

The original point I was refuting was that "serfdom is a relatively common feature under monarchy". People are so completely unable to provide evidence for that claim of it being common these days (500 years in the past being quite irrelevant here given numerous monarchies exist these days) that the closest you can get is by pointing to one single case, on the other side of the world from the monarchies we're talking about, that isn't serfdom and isn't a monarchy. Hardly a "relatively common feature".

[cyberax]

Serfs were forced to work for little to no wages, and often can't leave the country because their employers confiscate their passports. That's about as close to modern serfdom as you can get.

> The original point I was refuting was that "serfdom is a relatively common feature under monarchy".

It is. Some kind of serfdom was common throughout Europe until around 19-th century. Russia abolished it in 1861, in Austria in 1848, hardly "500 years". As usual, Wikipedia has a nice overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

[quink]

OK, let's consult the article, starting right at the beginning:

> Serfdom was

Huh.