So, what would it take for North Korea to finally join the civilized world, for its citizens to be able to have three decent meals a day with adequate access to clean water, and so on and so forth?
If the leader of North Korea (whether it be Kim Jong-un or somebody else) were to wake up one day and say, “Damn it, the country is in shambles. I don’t care if it costs me everything I own. I need to find some way to fix this,” how does that person fix this?
Were Kim Jong-Un to propose any serious moves in this direction, I have a sneaking suspicion that he would join his revered ancestors in short order. My impression is that the coterie around the [insert adjective here ] Leader is pretty similar to the Praetorian Guard, and that any policy which threatens their power & privilege will die of whiplash before it sees the light of day.
see 38north.org for Un’s track record re military
who is pulling whose strings is an interesting Q - the kid’s father encircled him to prevent a palace coup - a whole bunch of those protectors are gone, many at the supposed order of Un.
There is a whole bunch of good reading about DPRK - see both Koreas and China news outlets. Japan can be of interest as well.
China isn’t going to turn it’s back, but it is pissed by the latest nuke test - the Chinese opposed it and has been trying to steer between Un’s “talk to us as a real power (see, we have nukes!)” and the US “drop your guns and we’ll talk” positions.
I don’t envy the Chinese.
And now the South (ROK) has yet another of the Park dynasty in power, who went to the bit of nothing island the North shelled a few years ago and told the ROK artillery to “return 10 times as many shells as they fire”. And has started to VERY broadly hint that she thinks the ROK would “look good with a few dozen mid-range missiles - you know, those that could be equipped with nuke warheads”.
I do hope the US and China can keep their respective idiot clients at bay.
I knew we couldn’t trust Alaska and Puerto Rico. They’ve obviously made a deal with the North Koreans.
By whose hand, the US? There’s no oil in North Korea. Move along.
But it is in the shortest transshipment corridor from Afghanistan.
By pretty much anybody’s hand in the region if they start something. Or even by their own hand, in effect. This is a society that’s barely managing to function at all, even when it’s not fighting a war; the stress of fighting a war would cause an outright socioeconomic collapse I suspect.
If they do start a war, while they’d kill lots of people I don’t see them surviving.
I read in the Economist that this is happening already. Both India and China are farming out work to Bangladesh and Tanzania.
People say that, but it isn’t as though China is obliged to redevelop NK overnight.
China has a lot of experience in managing large swathes of country where millions are poor, would like to move to the cities if they could and would be extremely expensive to provide a full social safety net for.
What would make NK different from such provinces?
I also stand by the prediction I have made previously on the dope that if NK could peacefully transition (or combat hostilities are over quickly), the country would experience some of the fastest economic growth ever seen. Simply by virtue of its location.
The night-time darkness and water supply problems could be solved simply with more fuel. Well, OK, the electrical grid would need repair as much of it was looted for copper to sell for food during the 1990’s famine. Aside from that, though, prior to the collapse of the USSR North Korea was able to get sufficient fuel to run a contemporary power grid and power water delivery systems.
Food is a slightly different issue. For one thing, post-1990’s famine there are fewer mouths to feed, which helps with that issue (mostly that was due to die-off. There are still relatively few defectors as a percentage of the population). The 1990’s famine wasn’t manufactured, it really was primarily caused by natural conditions, but unlike virtually every other country on the planet North Korea doesn’t really have access to world markets where they could conceivably purchase sufficient food to make up the shortfall (humanitarian aid was delivered, how much actually reached the civilian population is debatable. Some certainly did, but what portion of the whole is unknown) North Korea does not have access to modern fertilizers and pesticides which impairs their agricultural productivity. It also does not have mechanized farm equipment, nor the fuel to run it if it did. They essentially are operating with 19th Century agriculture and thus get 19th Century yields and problems.
In other words, this is what severe sanctions do. Prior to sanctions, in the 1980’s and earlier, North Korea did supply an adequate diet to all its citizens, the lights were on at night, and so forth. The ruling elite don’t starve the populace and keep in the dark for their own amusement, they are apparently sincere in wanting to provide the basics to the people and a little more on top of that. They do want to provide education for all (North Korea has a 99% literacy rate and even the kids in the hellhole political prisoner camps receiving schooling), they do want to provide medical care.
When you see a picture of North Korea at night and it’s dark that’s NOT the doing of the North Korean government, WE did that, WE denied them sufficient fuel to keep the lights on for all so the government made choices. That’s what years of sanctions do. North Korea is short of resources so choices are made as to who gets what. Those choices are not always the ones we’d make, but they’re being made in part because the rest of the world has refused them access. They’ve always been isolationist but prior to the 1980’s they did engage in international commerce and provided a much better standard of living than at present.
Of course, this has all devolved into a vicious cycle. The UN sanctions them, resources become scarce then rationed, the DPRK does another thing the rest of the world doesn’t like, the UN tightens the thumbscrews, North Korea gets more extreme, there’s more sanctions… North Koreans blame those outside their country for the nightly darkness and you know what? They’re right. Of course, the entire point of sanctions is to squeeze them until they cry “uncle” but what if they refuse to do so?
So the situation is kind of analogous to Cuba.
The cold war isn’t over?
The US is still hellbent on destroying everyone that doesn’t want to play the free-market capitalist game (US rules edition)?
Unless they have oil, and then the US prefers to pick who runs that country.
The parallels with Cuba only go so far.
Technically, the US is still at war with North Korea as there was never a peace treaty, just a 60 year old cease-fire. The current situation in Cuba does not arise out of shooting war
The reason both Cuba and North Korea are targeted are not just that they are socialist states, to reduce it to merely that one issue is an oversimplification of the situation. Yes, the socialism is part of it, but not the only factor.
The rest of the world has not gotten on board with Cuban sanctions, that really is largely the US not wanting play with someone they don’t like. Pretty much everyone else deals with Cuba whenever they want to. However, just about everyone is on board with the North Korean sanctions which is why they have been so much more devastating.
Cuba is not as isolated/isolationist as North Korea. Cuba’s main conflict is with the US and it enjoys good relations with other countries, including countries outside the socialist sphere (they do a pretty good tourist business with capitalists, for example). North Korea hates everyone around it. They tolerate China, but they are threatening war not just against the US but also South Korea and Japan. This is why so many more people have joined the US in sanctions against the DPRK.
If the US was hellbent on destroying North Korea, what is taking it so long? What, they are going to wait 70 years first???
If the US wanted to destroy North Korea, it would have done so by now. The fact that it hasn’t done so in the last 60 years is telling.
True enough, so why no invasion of Cuba?
That was actually tried. See “Bay of Pigs”. Not successful.
Granted, that wasn’t on the scale of the Invasion of Normandy.
[QUOTE=Broomstick]
When you see a picture of North Korea at night and it’s dark that’s NOT the doing of the North Korean government, WE did that, WE denied them sufficient fuel to keep the lights on for all so the government made choices.
[/QUOTE]
Interesting. So, reading these two lines, you are willing to give the NK government a pass…I mean, ‘(t)he ruling elite don’t starve the populace and keep in the dark for their own amusement’ and ‘they are apparently sincere in wanting to provide the basics to the people and a little more on top of that’, but in our case it’s ‘NOT the doing of the North Korean government, WE did that, WE denied them sufficient fuel to keep the lights on for all so the government made choices’, full stop. Blame buck stops here and all that.
What you left out (and I can only assume you DID deliberately leave it out, since it’s clear from the rest of your posts in this thread that you do have somewhat of an idea of what’s going on in NK) was WHY those sanctions were imposed in the first place, and how this cycle has repeated many times…and how many of those imposing those sanctions have still attempted to provide humanitarian aid (not all of which has gotten to the people who need it most). Nor how China has provided an end around many of the sanctions, yet much of it never gets to the people (but they certainly have sufficient food and fuel for the military).
See, it IS the NK governments fault that the sanctions were originally imposed and have periodically been re-imposed, hardened and expanded, and it IS their direct fault that conditions in NK are what they are. The various famines were their direct fault as well, since they had options and chose not to deal with the problem directly, and instead decided to become more belligerent in what looks remarkably like they were playing international extortion games.
It’s not some cold war pay back vengeance game by the US, nor were the sanctions, either the current or former ones imposed on a whim. Saying that the NK government really doesn’t want those sanctions and really wants to provide all the good food and clean water to the people but it’s the US/UN that’s preventing it is like saying a mass murderer really wants to just be free and doesn’t like the prison he’s in. Sure, that’s true enough, but it’s a bit disingenuous, especially when you know why he was put in jail in the first place.
[QUOTE=Latro]
So the situation is kind of analogous to Cuba.
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No…it’s not. The situations are completely different.
Long over. Did you have a point?
Oh, certainly. 
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the belligerence NK has shown, nor the rocket tests that just happen to go over Japan, nor their nuclear weapons programs, nor their overly huge military and the fact that they were unwilling to sign a peace treaty or even bother to end the last war, and have periodically even set aside the armistice (which they have done yet again recently), nor the periodic and seemingly senseless attacks NK has launched against the South, against the Japanese, hell, against Chinese fishermen, nor all the other humanitarian horrors they have inflicted on their population. Naw, it’s because they don’t want to play our ‘free-market capitalist game’…that’s it!
You guys accusing the United States of starting this situation are overlooking the obvious. It was North Korea that attacked the South not vice versa. And it’s not like they’ve ever repudiated the attack - as the OP indicated they’re still willing to attack South Korea all these decades later.
North Korea has no cause to complain about the consequences of the hostile situation they’ve created and maintained. If anything, they should be thankful that American response has been so restrained.
And did “WE” also force the Kims to spend millions of dollars on sports cars, Hennessy and Johnnie Walker, and private audiences with basketball players?
Because it seems to me that if the Kims were that deeply concerned about the welfare of the people, they might forgo one or two of those things.