They don’t’t have to have any technology at all. NONE. All that is needed is sufficient economic freedom to utilize the assets they have. That means a stable government that doesn’t interfere with commerce beyond social/environmental constraints that are specifically codified and consistently enforced.
South Korea would be the closest example of that.
What they need is a leader who is deeply experienced in the humane and enlightened application of capitalistic economic science! Someone, say, who has graduated from a front rank business school, and a proven history of a genius for negotiation!
Where might we find such a man, to offer to North Korea to lead it from the wilderness?
Well that or just give them another nuclear power plant and maybe a couple hundred million so they can buy a plane to fly their leader around.
Is it ‘outsourcing’ or is it more ‘here, let’s try to help you make real money and maybe teach you how things work so you won’t be as tempted to sink our ships and fire your cannon at us’?
China has managed to ride that tiger admirably well over most of the last 4 decades. China’s deal has always been “we will allow you to get rich as long as you don’t question our right to rule.”
Short answer: Ha ha ha, No.
Longer answer.
They’re a nation of 25 million people with a severely retarded economy, education system and health care system. They’ll be crawling out of those ashes for generations, even if Kim decided to open the place up as a liberal democracy or with Chinese style capitalist communism starting tomorrow. And that’s about as likely as me suddenly becoming a god.
The country lacks physical resources other than coal. It struggles (and largely fails) to feed its existing population. The power grid, outside of Pyongyang, is unreliable at best, archaic and missing large chunks on average. The really stupid thing is that they have all that coal, but they’ve never bothered to build large numbers of coal fired power plants to bring the entire nation up to speed. Why? Because they don’t have the capability to build those power plants domestically and the whole Songbun system means that the government doesn’t WANT to do so for much of the population, because they’re criminal or undesirable castes who aren’t considered loyal to the regime.
If their entire army and leadership was beamed out of the nation by benevolent aliens who then provided them with an army of teachers to get them up to modern education standards, doctors to get them reasonable health care and all of the equipment that it would take to do those two things, it would still take a decade or more to educate and de-program the population and get them up to speed with the outside world.
Under the Kim regime, they’re stalled, permanently, with the exception of the small loyal cadre of higher status people who get the education and are able to work with modern tools and computers. Who are mostly working on their missile and nuclear weapons programs because that’s what the regime wants for its own survival.
This one seems pretty simple, if you focus on potential and of North Korea the country or area not the DPRK under some variation of its current government and economic system.
In order to argue they don’t have the potential to be at the same level as South Korea, which is fairly close to ‘unlimited’ compared to where North Korea is now*, you have to argue that 60+ yrs of the regime has fundamentally changed the culture. And has been alluded to, the ROK only overtook the DPRK in GDP per capita in early-mid 1970’s, the huge disparity has arisen over 40+ yrs. It’s not clear a whole culture changes a lot that fast, basically it’s Koreans in both countries.
So it gets back to ‘potential’, near term under the Kims, no; and even under the most favorable govt there would surely be a significant cultural hangover if not fundamental change. But you can’t say IMO that there is no potential to overcome this and match South Korea.
Although OTOH how socio-politically acceptable would it be to say any very poor country has ‘no potential’ to someday be like the best off rich countries? Especially when considering some rich countries have quite limited natural resources or are landlocked, etc. So it’s actually hard to say geography precludes economic success, and anyway NK’s geography is not unfavorable (especially being located in an otherwise economically dynamic area). If you say any country lacks the potential, it’s a statement about the people and their culture.
Potential and actually doing it are quite different, obviously. There are countries with govt’s a lot less economically repressive/incompetent than NK which are poor.
*even the real NK economy, without the exaggerated ‘everyone eating grass’ type depictions.
I’m no expert on China, but it seems that in order for the Deng Xiaoping and the communist party to make economic reforms happen, they pretty much had to get fat boy Mao out of the picture first. I suspect that’s what will ultimately have to happen in North Korea. I also know nothing about the inner-workings of power and succession within the North Korea regime.
I get the impression - and it might be a totally wrong one - that Kim’s authority isn’t as absolute as we make it out to be. I would think that the North Korean military commanders and party leaders are like packs of wolves that require feeding, and that Kim’s success is attributable to the fact that he probably feeds them well. Kim Jong Il probably lived long enough to pass on the political know-how to his son, the current Kim, so that he could deftly manage what is probably a far more complex and delicate balance of power than we might assume on the outside.
In an authoritarian government, the threat of assassination is ever-present - Kim knows that, even with all of his power. There’s a reason why he’s had his brother and uncle killed. You make yourself difficult to read, difficult to predict. And you let your rivals know that there are no boundaries at all, nothing you won’t do if crossed. That’s why Hitler had people salute in his presence. It’s the human equivalent of a pheromone signal, touching of the antennae.
I don’t know about unlimited. Even if they had south koreas per capita wealth that would make their economy about 750 billion.
I’ve heard the Kim regime doesn’t want any kind of market liberalization for fear it will empower the working class to overthrow the brutal oligarchs in control. Darkly ironic for a communist nation but there you go.
Also the people in North Korea have a lot of health problems. Malnutrition, state sponsored terrorism and lack of health care mean physical and mental health issues are rampant. There is also no sense of trust or community, since everyone is terrified of everyone else turning them into the government all the time. The society may not be able to build 10% gdp growth per year seeing how sick and deranged the people are from living there. North Koreans who escape to South Korea are a permanent underclass because they cannot function well.
Best case scenario is China helps stage a coup and pushed North Korea to follow Chinas reforms. But I don’t think North Korea will grow anywhere near as rapidly as South Korea or China did. At least not at first. Maybe the next generation who are well fed and free of the paranoia and terrorism of the regime would grow faster though.
North Korea must have vast potential - it hasn’t used any of it yet.
Well, the ‘limitless’ bit is nonsense, of course. But there’s potential there, certainly.
This I do want to speak up about. I was in Cuba in October and man, is that a country on the hustle. I saw a lot of small businesses, restaurants, shops, small industry all working hard. But I also saw a lot of government stuff. One of the tour guides I hired, for instance, was working off her schooling by guiding tourists. She got four years of higher ed and she had to work for the government for four years to pay that off.
I was thinking it was a bit of Potemkin-village style show and tell but on reflection realized that once I got there I had free rein to go wherever I wanted. I could take public or private transportation wherever I wanted without registration.
It was an interesting trip and I met a ton of interesting people. It was a bit like visiting another western country but was also like, just out of focus for an American. Not a lot, but different enough to catch my attention.
In some ways they have. If you look at what they’ve accomplished.
They built an internet and cell phone infrastructure that is cut off from the rest of the world.
They can counterfeit us dollars and euros so well that not even experts can distinguish them.
They built nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons and ICBMs.
They managed to figure out how to pose enough threat to prevent richer, more advanced nations from invading them by targeting population rich areas overseas.
They commit international insurance fraud.
They make and sell high purity drugs on the international black marketplace.
It’s a nation with potential. To my knowledge no other rogue regime is capable of doing these things competently. It’s just a shame North Korea wastes its human capital the way it does.
Also:
They’ve duped an American President into heaping praise on their ruler.
Anyone with bribe money and an understanding of narcissistic personality disorder can manipulate Trump into doing their bidding.
You don’t even need bribe money. Trump responds well to flattery and countries all over the world are well aware of that.
“OMG, look at how HUGE your hands are! And what normal colored skin and hair you have!”
To be fair, that’s a pretty significant increase from the previous 350.
I’m looking over the sanctions and can’t really see how food is restricted. According to the article you linked too, they are planning to import like a quarter of their total food this year. The only thing I can think of is they are saying the sanctions have limited their hard capital to buy food, but as far as I know, they get a lot of stuff at reduced rates or even for free (except the price to repackage it all so it doesn’t say South Korea, the UN or whatever on it, and instead says from North Korea).
China only has restrictions on purchasing coal and textiles (as well as NK workers) wrt their own import sanctions and I think some petroleum products wrt what they export back to NK (and of course they are buying and selling all that and more under the table, regardless), and they actually have a glut of food stuffs already which they could simply give or sell the NK if they wanted and if NK would take it. From what I understand, they have food rotting in their silos (this was from when they talked to Trump about importing something like $30 billion more in agricultural products and folks where like huh?).
I think the end part of your article is the key…it was a negotiating ploy on their part. Not that I don’t doubt they are having issues and need food, but they can get it if they really want too.