Consider this. We only ever watch american movies, american tv shows, and listen to american music. Why? Are other cultures not as good? Are we really the best? I can assure you that's not the case. Other countries make incredible movies, no worse than hollywood. The only time foreign movies make it here, they're always subtitled. Why? No one wants to watch subtitles. It's really not a lot of work to dub a movie. For comparison, other countries even translate soap operas. If you don't know, those come out every weekday and they're perfectly dubbed over. That's how easily and quickly it can be done.
Those poor "North Koreans" who don't have freedom of speech, the government controls what they can see on the internet, what they can watch on tv, no outside medicine, no outside clothes designers, no outside music, they're taught false world history where they're the victors of everything, etc..... Wait a minute.....
Muh freedoms
An added note: my parents didn't grow up here and yet understand more about how this country is set up, including the federal reserve, because they learned it in school. I was an all A student in school here and have no idea.
Most people who watch foreign movies prefer subtitles so I believe there might be a market force for that. It’s because dubbing was seen as destructve (wipes out original actor’s performance) and silly (associated with Kung fu movies). Dubbing is also very expensive, so most distribution companies are fine to just subtitle, since that seems to be what the audience prefers anyway. Compare it to colorizing old black and white movies. The audience for those movies get pissed that the original was changed and the younger audience isn’t really interested in it anyway, so who is the market?
I can see the point of it wiping out the actors original performance, but at the same time if I'm reading subtitles the whole time, then I can't really see what's going on on the screen, can't catch facial expressions and other nuances. I think the audience base would be much wider for foreign movies if they dubbed more.