NK doesn’t have to invade. I’m not sure many folks realize just how close Seoul is to the border, and just how much artillery is trained on the city. And that doesn’t even get to discussions of nuclear weapons.
If we attached NK we’d see most if not all of Seoul reduced to smoking ruin very quickly. Perhaps radioactive smoking ruin.
They have all the tools they need to FEED THEMSELVES…yet they can’t do it and people are starving. Even the army seems to be going hungry these days, which really puts into perspective how truly fucked up they are. And you seriously posit that they could go from being one of the poorest and most backward countries on earth, a country that can’t even feed their own people to being one of the richest countries in the world in less than two decades?? And you are SERIOUS?? :smack:
Even if they found unobtainium in massive quantities AND Ewa puts in an appearance to give them a hand with the food problem they aren’t going to go from being that poor to being one of the richest countries on earth in that time frame. Not even if Kimmy and his monsters gets tossed out tomorrow and South Korea takes pity on them and allows them to reunite tomorrow.
-XT
A capitation strike? You mean we’d strike them to put a head on??
The quickest and least painful way to ‘fix’ this problem is to let the NK’s alone. They are teetering on the edge right now and it’s only a matter of time before they fall. What we and the SK’s and Japanese need to be doing is preparing for when they do fall, because it’s going to be ugly.
I don’t know how much China could realistically do at this point. Feed them and keep them going for a while longer, I suppose, but that’s about it. The NK’s aren’t a Chinese puppet that does whatever China says…far from it.
-XT
According to Wikipedia, the North has a population of almost 25,000,000. I’m not sure why you think that is insufficient for rapid economic growth. It’s not exactly the size of Vatican City; they have more than enough workers to become an industrial powerhouse.
See, your disbelief would be more compelling had mankind not already proven that this is quite possible under a proper socialist system. Take my own nation, the USSR. Our glorious revolutionaries inherited a backward, underdeveloped, feudal swamp that had been decimated by centuries of corrupt czarist rule. Then things got even worse, as the resulting civil war destroyed pretty much everything that had managed to outlast the monarchy. Yes, we were poor, we were hungry, and we were uneducated. All we had was the power of socialism; that was enough. Two decades later, we single-handedly saved the world from the most powerful and sadistic military force that it had ever known. In twenty years, we went from rural hicks to global saviors. Not bad, eh?
I see no reason to believe that the North Koreans are somehow incapable of replicating our achievements.
To paraphrase Doctor Evil, I haven’t laughed this hard since I was a little girl…oh, wait. You were serious?? :eek:
Your rose colored selective understanding of history aside, have you noticed how well the Soviet Union is doing these day? No? Possibly because THERE IS NO USSR ANYMORE?? 
Well, Kimmy and his merry men have a lot fewer potential people they can kill, to be sure…though they have given it the old college try in brutality, repression, labor camps and starving their own people to death. Still, folks like Stalin or Mao are hard acts to follow, and Kimmy et al have a lot less to work with. Checking the date stamp on North Korea I think it will be a stretch if they can last as long as the USSR did before it finally went completely tits up and was tossed on the ash heap of history (snerk), but perhaps they can eek things out for another few decades to replicate the fine longevity achievements of the great Soviet Empire. :dubious:
-XT
Guys, you’re being too hard on Commissar. Let’s look at the numbers. From 1972 to 2010, China’s GDP per capita grew at an average rate of 9.3%. In order for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka Best Korea) to be as rich as the United States by 2030, they have to grow at a mere 26.2% per year. Now, given that Communism is the bestest, most super awesome economic system in the whole wide world, they should have no trouble growing almost three times as fast as China has. If, of course, they can find a wise, courageous leader and protector of the people. Like Stalin.
Aww, I was just writing the same sort of calculations. Ignoring population growth, and supposing the South Korean economy instantly stagnated, North Korea would need a growth rate of 16%/yr to catch up. If South Korea kept its current growth rate (which, being entirely fair, it won’t), the necessary growth rate would go up to 16%/yr.
For reference: North Korea’s GDPPC(PPP) of $1800, with a real growth rate of -.9%. South Korea has a GDP of GDPPC(PPP) of $30,000, with a real growth rate of 6.1%. So obviously, none of the above stuff is going to happen.
A sidenote I wrote to Commissar: What he missed is that neither the Soviet Union/Russia nor China has managed to become especially wealthy. But the USSR and China didn’t/don’t need very much wealth to be superpowers, because they’re big.
As a start, they’re shutting down the universities for ten months, so the students can go work in factories.
How about…both.
The whole damn country is brainwashed by indoctrination from the cradle on.
The General Officers do not have to know or believe in the genuine state of affairs. They are chosed by loyalty, obedience & ideological purity.
So, if Kim II or Kim III refuse to attack the “rebel South” & the "“Yankee Imperialists”, a general may launch a coup, & then attack south, trusting in “the inevitable victory of World Socialism & the purest people”.
Why didn’t I think of that?!? Clearly, the current non-existence of a past practitioner conclusively disproves the ideology. Brilliant!
Let’s see if we can apply your logic further… Hmmm, let’s see… What doesn’t exist any more? I know! The British Empire! And, since the now non-existent British Empire was decidedly capitalist, that means that we have just disproven capitalism in thirty seconds! Yay, logic! :rolleyes:
Nice work, but it misses the forest for the trees. First of all, there is no need for North Korea to surpass the Empire in order to qualify as a rich country. That’s a false threshold.
More importantly, I object to the Western capitalist notion of comparing nations on the basis of GDP (both gross and per-capita). That is a meaningless and self-serving criteria that artificially inflates the apparent worth of capitalist nations. Something like the US, which sacrifices the working poor to the false gods of efficiency and productivity, will tend to hide widespread suffering behind the veil of GDP coefficients. Screw that.
I would prefer that we focus on real factors that make an actual difference as far as normal people are concerned. Education, access to medical care, proper housing, that type of thing. Think about it this way… In a potential reunification, would you rather have a high-GDP partner on the verge of total social collapse or a low-GDP yet highly stable, fully employed, very well-educated one?
Well, one must of course consider the manner of said demise. How exactly did the Soviet Union fall apart? Were they attacked and conquered by an outside foe? No? Or did they fall apart like a rotten melon?
While the fall of the most powerful and influential member of a certain ideology doesn’t disprove an ideology, I’d have to say that subsequent events have strongly indicated that communism was a dead end. And, since you were talking about the Soviet Union in the post I responded too, you attempting to divert the conversation to a more general topic is fairly obvious…you are trying to wave your hands and muddy the waters. The Soviet Union didn’t rise in 20 years, and they completely fell apart, so attempting to use them as some ideal is pretty silly…which is the point of you trying to deflect the debate, of course.
The British Empire fell apart (after a fairly long run), but capitalism continued on and got stronger, not weaker when it fell. So, your analogy sort of fails epically…but then, the real point of it was your attempt to deflect the conversation away from what you said and what I was responding too. Sadly, your counter argument is rather silly in light of history. Even your vaunted Chinese have only been as successful as they have been and only been able to make things work by incorporating capitalism into their system.
-XT
I’m kind of curious by what criterion, if any, North Korea could beat out the U.S.
And a positive criterion, not “starvation per capita” or some such.
In 1960 before the economic miracles under Park Chung Hee South Korea was more rural and poorerer than the North. Yet under brilliant economic policies, we have boomed. By applying the same principles the North (assuming a collapse date of say 2020) can be reintegrated into the Korean people by the end of the century.
As long as you are paying for it and I’m not, more power to you, dude.
The CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia don’t have this statistic (in all probability, nobody knows), but North Korea probably has a lower gini coefficient than the US. Most communist countries do —largely because the government owns everything, but c’est la vie. Of course, that statistic isn’t especially meaningful, when you take into account that a lower class American would be extremely wealthy by North Korean standards, but it’s a legitimate criterion.
Hmm. Maybe they should try some kind of Zen/Dada/surrealist approach, like leaflets that say “This is not a propaganda leaflet,” and nothing else. Or, “Good for 20% off at Lee’s Barbecue.” Or, “The invasion has been postponed indefinitely. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Or, “Please disregard previous message; there has been no coup d’etat in the PDRK.” (Dropped after no such previous message, of course.)
There is more than one way to chip away at the people’s morale. One way is to confuse them. (See the Discordian concept of Operation Mindfuck.)
Bit of both, actually. The costs of the Cold War bankrupted them and the people could take only so much of guns-over-butter. That’s not conquest, but neither is it something that can happen without a powerful foreign enemy.
Or messages with numbers on them. “1. South Korea welcomes your friendship”, “2. Military action will be counter-productive”, and “4. Prosperity awaits anyone who follows message 3.”
Message 3, of course, does not exist.
I’m certainly for dropping all U.S. embargoes on Cuba for similar reasons (“reunification” being only with the wider modern world, of course). But, Cuba’s no threat to anybody. The South Koreans always have to worry Kim will go crazy enough to commit suicide-by-army. I can understand their wanting to keep NK weak.
Even with that level of equality, however, I wonder if there has not by now emerged some visible physical difference between the elite who get enough to eat and the malnourished majority.
