I was on a business trip to S.Korea for a meeting with a government official, he was telling me how I could ‘not waste an opportunity in building a factory near the border’ I was skeptical, I said to him ‘why build a factory near the border of one of the most dangerous states in the world?’ He then told me of the unbearable suffering of the people in the country such as famine and disease is rampant.
He then went on saying that there was no electricity in Pyongyang at all and most farms have no machinery and share just one tractor. With the people trying to get across the border, people wanted jobs and security, I said to him that I would have to sort this out with the business at home.
Why all this suffering? How can they stay in power in the North knowing that there country is dying? If they ever wanted to ‘tip the balance’ they have to start spending that money they have all kept on people they ‘working for’ anyway.
I sick and tired of the sheer hypocrisy the ‘Peoples governments’ why do they claim they are in the first place? It just tells the world that ‘hey I’m one of the most brutal and undemocratic movements on Earth, but I do this for the people’ It make me angry!:mad:
One should no longer think of North Korea as a nation - it’s much more like a cult. Most of the populace is by and large either completely brainwashed by generations of Stalinist propaganda, or far too terrified to say peep about their many grievances. We are starting to see some defections and this is a positive development but one which has undoubtedly provoked a domestic crackdown and a restriction on foreign travel.
Every imaginable resource (food gas medicine etc.) their military gets first dibs on. Without a properly maintained military the government is put in jeopardy, from within as much as without. Which is all bad enough as it is, but if you have a few bleak harvests in a row then the non-military sector starves in a hurry. Their fixation on their military has turned it into just about the only industry they have going, i.e. they only thing they know how to do anymore; hence the irksome exports of artillery and ballistic missile technologies, which is not so much motivated by evil as a basic need for cash.
How can he stay in power knowing his country is dying, you ask? Well, you only live once, right? Might as well enjoy yourself. Kim Jong Il is a notorious hedonist of the sleaziest order, and no other govt. system than the one his father left him would allow him to continue in the princely manner to which he has been lifelong accustomed. His generals have a lot to do with this as well; they and their families enjoy a lot of perks etc. and without the system as it stands now they would be out of a job.
I wonder how this World Cup is being presented in the N. Korean media.
My info …
the N Korean media never has mentioned that S Korea is co-hosting the world cup. They are showing (pirated) shots of some games on N Korea TV 1-2 days after they take place. Only the elite have a TV, anyway.
I’ve hard that Pyongyang is actually OK right now. Electricity, etc, and food. But only the elite live there. Apparently, in the countryside, much aid is now getting to where it’s needed and the famine of 2 years ago is largely over. But all the industry and infrastructure is dead.
I know some people who’ve been up there. I think RTA has a really good point - it’s a cult. This is a govt that prints counterfeit US$ and expects its envoys to carry illegal drugs in diplomatic bags to help make ends meet. At the same time, I’d take S Korean govt officials’ views with a pinch of salt - they’ve got their own agenda.
But why is all the industry effectively dead? I think the ‘Great leader’ would know that it was inefficient and crappy. So why continue the obsolete and incompetent infrastructure?
Well, it’s now the “Dear Leader” (the Great One was his dad).
Bizarre as it may seem - and I can’t get my head around it - the nation means nothing to him. The structures that keep him in power are all secure - internal controls, the proceeds from blackmailing other countries through aid programs, weapons programs that make the regime a menace/friend internationally. The well-being of the people is a complete irrelevance. Imagine Saddam Hussein without oil, proximity to Israel, or anything else that the rest of the world cares about. Or Burma with snow and no tourism industry.
China’s position is interesting. They could pull the plug if they had the confidence. But they fear a united Korea. Russia is involved, too. Again, the status quo suits them.
What would be the cost in monetary terms to rebuild the infrastructure, the industry (consumer and agricutural) to S korea if they, N korea, wanted a united peninsula?
The cost would be like W Germany absorbing E Germany times 10 or more, on a per capita basis. A nightmare. There’s no way they could convert the currency on generous terms, like the W Germans did. And it’s impossible to imagine them opening the borders overnight. At least the E Germans were watching western TV and knew what they were missing.
There is a theoretical upside - S Korea would have a very low cost manufacturing base within their territory, so they could invest there instead of China. But it’s still a horrendous thing to think about.
I guess it will happen. It would make more sense for a reformist regime to take over in the North first. Turn the place into a cheap export manufacturing base like China. After 10 years or so, they could re-unify.
It would have an interesting effect - S Koreans are nationalistic enough as it is. The northerners are brainwashed into hating the rest of the world. I don’t think China or Japan would be relaxed about it.
The social cost would be extremely high as well. One statistic that any professor talking about North Korea feels the need to mention is that in the last few years every batch of new recruits is an inch shorter than the one before because of poor nutrition. They are equivalent to Europe during the 11th or 12th century AD.
They couldn’t help but feel resentment and I imagine they might receive some discrimination from the Southern Koreans. Not trying to bash anyone here, just seems to match human nature.
I’ve heard that, in North Korea, owning a shortwave radio carries the death penalty.
I don’t see re-unification happening soon. South Korea in general doesn’t seem to be pushing for it. I agree that it would be an economic nightmare and would take a very long time to accomplish without bankrupting the country.
I couldn’t find anything in Google about the shortwave radio, but here’s an account of a visit written by a Merchant Marine who was aboard a ship delivering corn in 1997. The part that struck me was when the North Korean gov’t official explaining why the bags of corn say “USA” on them. He told the Korean dock workers that this corn was intended to go from N. Korea to America as aid for starving Americans. Oh my god.
George Orwell was a prophet and I am so lucky to be an American.
I’ve never visited North Korea, unless you count going around to the north side of the table in a meeting room built directly on the dividing line. This was during a USO trip to the DMZ a few years back. Mostly what I saw was a lot of soldiers staring each other down through binoculars from their posts on their respective sides of the border. At one point, however, we went to a little lookout point to see a giant North Korean flag. (We were told that it was the largest flag in the world, if I recall correctly.)
Near the flag was a loudspeaker pointed toward the south, extolling the virtues of the north, inviting defectors from the south. It must be the best place on earth, because they couldn’t broadcast it if it weren’t true, right? Nevertheless, there weren’t a lot of South Koreans interested in the offer.
When I first came to Korea in 1994, there was a lot of talk about reunification. Most university students seemed to think that it must happen soon, at any cost. Now the fervor seems to have died down. If reunification is mentioned, it’s answered with uncomfortable mumbling about “someday, when the time is right.” I think the south has some idea of what it would cost, and isn’t eager to make the sacrifices. I hear that the defectors here from the north do indeed face some discrimination, and have a notoriously hard time adjusting, in spite of financial help from South Korea’s government.