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Seems to me that the main issue with NK having nukes isn't that they're suddenly just going to start launching them at SK, Japan and the US but now they can start pressing their interests with more conventional means, backed up by an implied threat that they could use nuclear weapons if there's anything other than a very limited response by the US.
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Jul 7, 2017 02:10
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Burt Sexual posted:So he killed his fathers brother. Bad rear end. Brother-in-law. It was his aunt's husband. Also his older half-brother.
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Jul 7, 2017 02:16
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OhFunny posted:Brother-in-law. It was his aunt's husband. I'm not as good at nepotism as djt.
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Jul 7, 2017 02:29
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maskenfreiheit posted:What are the chances one day some rando just walks out onto a balcony and accounces kim is dead, the military is in charge now? Fantastically unlikely. Any coup leader would have to decapitate the entire family. And that's even harder than it sounds, because no one actually knows how many of them there are, let alone where to find them. It's the North Korean version of designated survivor, and it's why there's so little public information about the Kims' personal lives. The only people who know what the line of succession is are the ones who can be trusted one hundred percent to adhere to it. That's why the Kims execute people instead of just firing them- it's to keep them from trying to start a revolution in their spare time. It's also why fantasies about ending the stand-off by assassinating Kim Jeong-eun are stupid Clancy-esque bullshit. Imagine North Korea trying to solve the stand-off by assassinating Trump. That wouldn't end any better than pulling off the reverse. Ragingsheep posted:Seems to me that the main issue with NK having nukes isn't that they're suddenly just going to start launching them at SK, Japan and the US but now they can start pressing their interests with more conventional means, backed up by an implied threat that they could use nuclear weapons if there's anything other than a very limited response by the US. If by "conventional means" you mean normal diplomacy, sure. Like, the main thing people tend to miss in the North Korea standoff is that their demands are actually pretty mild. They want official diplomatic recognition by the United States and a peace treaty. That's it. Russia gave that to South Korea without even asking once the Cold War was over. For a sense of perspective, this is also why they do the kidnapping stuff. They're intentionally creating problems that could very easily be solved if there was an American ambassador in Pyongyang, but are unnecessarily difficult without one.
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Jul 7, 2017 02:42
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Some Guy TT posted:They want official diplomatic recognition by the United States and a peace treaty. That's it. Uh, don't they also want total control of all Korea, though?
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Jul 7, 2017 02:54
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WampaLord posted:Uh, don't they also want total control of all Korea, though? They're communist so I think you mean THE WHOLE WORLD
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Jul 7, 2017 03:02
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WampaLord posted:Uh, don't they also want total control of all Korea, though? The official policy of the North Korean government since the eighties has been the creation of a confederation that would slowly merge both governments. It would start with just the combining of sports teams and then move on to more substantial changes. Some movement was made on this in the early nineties with the united ping-pong team, and more recently the rival Taekwondo federations in the North and the South have been making overtures to eventually merging their rulesets. Moon Jae-in has talked about Korea fielding a united Olympic team in 2018 for these same reasons. "Total control of all Korea" is actually the South Korean conservative plan for reunification. Bear in mind that, as is usual for their North Korea policy, South Korean conservatives expect the United States to do all the actual work in regards to that. I guess technically it's the American plan too, although we don't really like to talk about it since North Korea supposedly having this policy is one of the reasons why they're supposed to be unreasonable. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jul 7, 2017 |
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Jul 7, 2017 03:10
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Kraftwerk posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Anderson You're missing: 1. Trump is no JFK 2. North Korea could maybe at best toss one nuke against some of the most unpopulated bits of America. Alternately they might be able to set off as much as 2 or 3 nukes against South Korea, Japan, or even themselves (as a form of area denial for inevitable invasions, or simply because their delivery methods failed). However there's also a lot of likelihood that they simply couldn't use any of the nukes they have at all. In contrast, JFK had an IQ above 30, and the US and USSR could certainly have wiped out vast swathes of each other's population, and much of the rest of the world while they were at it, even in 1963. The stakes were simply completely different. Ragingsheep posted:Seems to me that the main issue with NK having nukes isn't that they're suddenly just going to start launching them at SK, Japan and the US but now they can start pressing their interests with more conventional means, backed up by an implied threat that they could use nuclear weapons if there's anything other than a very limited response by the US. This hasn't been successful for them the last 8 years of having confirmed nuclear weapons, why expect it to be successful for them now? And as always, them actually using their nukes = massive nuclear retaliation against them that wipes them out. Because they don't have the capability to go toe-to-toe with anyone as far as that goes, it's just a suicide button. To actually be able to trust nuclear weapons to get you what you want, it's not enough to just have some. You need to have a lot, especially when your enemies are led by some real nitwits.
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Jul 7, 2017 03:39
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JFK had sex parties in the White House with teenagers. I don't see what possible standard you could have that says Trump is an impulsive childish idiot but JFK wasn't.
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Jul 7, 2017 03:45
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Some Guy TT posted:The official policy of the North Korean government since the eighties has been the creation of a confederation that would slowly merge both governments. It would start with just the combining of sports teams and then move on to more substantial changes. Some movement was made on this in the early nineties with the united ping-pong team, and more recently the rival Taekwondo federations in the North and the South have been making overtures to eventually merging their rulesets. Moon Jae-in has talked about Korea fielding a united Olympic team in 2018 for these same reasons. The North's plan may officially call for a loose confederation and merging of public but non-governmental things like sports teams, but at some point when those "substantial changes" need to be made, they're going to come to the question of "do the people have the power to vote Kim Jong-un out of power" or "should we abolish the South Korean legislature and replace it with an appointed committee of non-elected party leaders?" and if you think there is reasonable compromise that could bring those two sides together to a common solution, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
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Jul 7, 2017 03:46
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Some Guy TT posted:JFK had sex parties in the White House with teenagers. I don't see what possible standard you could have that says Trump is an impulsive childish idiot but JFK wasn't. Literally everything Donald Trump has done in public since starting to run in 2015.
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Jul 7, 2017 03:46
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Some Guy TT posted:JFK had sex parties in the White House with teenagers. I don't see what possible standard you could have that says Trump is an impulsive childish idiot but JFK wasn't.
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Jul 7, 2017 03:51
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Ragingsheep posted:Seems to me that the main issue with NK having nukes isn't that they're suddenly just going to start launching them at SK, Japan and the US but now they can start pressing their interests with more conventional means, backed up by an implied threat that they could use nuclear weapons if there's anything other than a very limited response by the US. That's how Nukes work. Having one make all your enemies think twice about attacking, but actually using one is suicidal. That's why as soon as you got one, you tell EVERYBODY about it, hence the name nuclear deterrence. Based on the attitudes of some of the posters here, I think if we did end with war over this, it would be the yankee cowboys who made the first attack.
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Jul 7, 2017 05:41
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maskenfreiheit posted:imagine how hosed they'd be if they tried to nuke SF and failed?) The utter loss of face would be hernia-inducingly hilarious once the terror died down.
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Jul 7, 2017 06:12
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Freedom is kim-possible!
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Jul 7, 2017 07:18
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Azathoth posted:The two political systems are diametrically opposed to each other, and at some point either the North would have to accept democracy and capitalism or the South would have to renounce both since any transitional period would necessarily either be for taking the North to a liberal democracy or the South to a totalitarian Stalinist-but-without-the-Communism Juche state. The idea is that after maybe a decade of regular interaction between the North and the South mutual decisions could be made about which system works better. South Korea's better economic situation coupled with its larger population means that any such process would almost certainly be tilted in the favor of the South Korean system, which is why it's weird that North Korea is the one more interested in pushing it. Azathoth posted:Oh, you're either crazy or trolling, got it. Look, I hate Trump as much as the next guy but throwing up JFK of all people as the ultimate example of the sensible adult in the room is such a nonsensical idea I couldn't let it go without commentary.
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Jul 7, 2017 08:45
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Some Guy TT posted:JFK had sex parties in the White House with teenagers. I don't see what possible standard you could have that says Trump is an impulsive childish idiot but JFK wasn't. Yeah and Bill stuck a cigar up Monica's hoo-hah in the oval office but I'm pretty sure he's not as impulsive as Trump either. I would venture to say that irrational sex impulses are much more common and less existentially threatening than a completely irrational and impulsive personality.
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Jul 7, 2017 13:45
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Some Guy TT posted:The idea is that after maybe a decade of regular interaction between the North and the South mutual decisions could be made about which system works better. South Korea's better economic situation coupled with its larger population means that any such process would almost certainly be tilted in the favor of the South Korean system, which is why it's weird that North Korea is the one more interested in pushing it. North Korea supports it because it was Kim Il Sung's desire to do it like that. And he always believed that North Korea was so attractive to all Korean people that they'd willingly join up if allowed. To be honest they might have as late as 1975 or so.
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Jul 7, 2017 14:58
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Some Guy TT posted:The idea is that after maybe a decade of regular interaction between the North and the South mutual decisions could be made about which system works better. South Korea's better economic situation coupled with its larger population means that any such process would almost certainly be tilted in the favor of the South Korean system, which is why it's weird that North Korea is the one more interested in pushing it.
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Jul 7, 2017 16:20
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Shibawanko posted:That's pretty frightening then. The only thing we know about their nuclear stockpile and strategy is the approximate yield of their nuclear tests. In this era where practically every world leader has a swarm of reporters constantly stalking them and every one of their major aides and confidants, North Korea is a rare example of a country where we really don't know a whole lot about what's going on. In general, we know (or can guess with a fair level of certainty) that their nuclear arsenal likely won't be used as a first strike, and will either be deployed defensively in various ways or used as a hail-mary punishment strike in retaliation against an invasion. But everyone lining up exactly how Korean War 2 will play out is largely either guessing or making it up. Burt Sexual posted:So does anyone think they can steer one of these to a specific target? Seems like fire and forget/wish technology. A better question would be "how many lives are you willing to bet on the chance that you're wrong about this?" Plenty of technologically advanced countries have faced military disasters built on the assumption that the enemy couldn't possibly be competent enough to handle modern weapons and tactics well. WampaLord posted:Uh, don't they also want total control of all Korea, though? So they say, but that's pretty obviously not happening at this point. It's more likely that they're willing to settle for less, but they can't change their rhetoric or openly tone down their demands because they're concerned it'll make them look weak and threaten their political position back home.
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Jul 7, 2017 17:28
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fishmech posted:North Korea supports it because it was Kim Il Sung's desire to do it like that. And he always believed that North Korea was so attractive to all Korean people that they'd willingly join up if allowed. To be honest they might have as late as 1975 or so. Yeah, it's easy to forget with South Korea being the tech powerhouse that it is, but for decades after the war, life in the North was better than, or at least on par with life in the South. It really wasn't until the 80s that the contrast started to become particularly stark. Main Paineframe posted:So they say, but that's pretty obviously not happening at this point. It's more likely that they're willing to settle for less, but they can't change their rhetoric or openly tone down their demands because they're concerned it'll make them look weak and threaten their political position back home. This is something that gets lost a lot when talking about statements, actions, and official policy from North Korea. Very little of it is intended for external consumption, so to speak. Whenever the North undertakes some new provocation, it is vitally important to run any analysis through the internal audience lens. Much of what the North does that is baffling and/or self-defeating, makes a lot more sense when asking "how would a hard-line anti-US general view this?", particularly now that Kim Jong-un is in charge.
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Jul 7, 2017 20:48
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Halloween Jack posted:In the past, "Let the Korean people solve their own problems without outside interference" has always been a pretext to militarily dominate the South as soon as the U.S. withdrew its troops. It's always been a really weird and tenuous prospect since the DPRK avoids recognizing the ROK as a legitimate state. That's literally happened exactly once, a long time before anyone in this thread was even born. Times have changed. The reason Kim Il-sung changed the policy in the first place was because he realized a military solution wasn't possible anymore. I don't see how anyone could look at the South Korea's current military strength and conclude that the North could take it over even on their best day.
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Jul 8, 2017 02:18
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I'unno, a human wave tactic of 2 million schmucks and an artillery barrage (Even if 75% of it shits itself to death) on your capital would probably be somewhat inconvenient. And if ten years down the track something pops the ROK's military capabilities like an enormous economic crunch (Which, y'know, with China's economy on borrowed time as-is...) or sommat, it might be just enough to sue for peace. Also Some Guy TT posted:Times have changed. Look at this fool. This is D&D, it's still 1960 to these people - both stripes.
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Jul 8, 2017 05:50
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Oh yeah, that reminds me. South Korean news media coverage has been taking a different track lately because of the G20 summit. The short of it is, there's a lot of imagery of Moon Jae-in and the people he brought with him and the stuff they're saying. They're not really saying anything different than the Trump policy we're already familiar with. All options are on the table, and if North Korea keeps being mean, we and our allies will respond with more vaguely defined "bad stuff". What's interesting is that Moon Jae-in is now taking the point as PR guy instead of Trump himself, both for the press and with other foreign powers, be they Chinese or European. The immediate obvious reason for this is of course just a matter of reputation. Everyone likes Trump, and for the moment at least, everyone has a positive opinion of Moon Jae-in. In Korea anyway. His approval ratings are still sky high. The subtler motive I think might be at play here is that both Trump and Moon Jae-in may be trying to transition to having South Korea be the spokesnation on North Korea instead of the United States. It's consistent with both of their stated positions of how South Korea should be taking the lead, even if, as already mentioned, their opinions on the proper response to North Korea's nuclear tests are virtually identical. Has there been much coverage of the G20 summit in the American press, or anywhere else for that matter? South Korea as a country tends to obsess about the opinion of the global community, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this is a local quirk. I seem to remember that way back when George Bush didn't even know what the G20 was. Somehow I doubt times have changed in that regard.
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Jul 8, 2017 08:52
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Some Guy TT posted:That's literally happened exactly once, a long time before anyone in this thread was even born. Times have changed. The reason Kim Il-sung changed the policy in the first place was because he realized a military solution wasn't possible anymore. I don't see how anyone could look at the South Korea's current military strength and conclude that the North could take it over even on their best day.
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Jul 8, 2017 18:32
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/politics/north-korea-possible-missile-test/index.html So some indications that North Korea is preparing another ICBM or intermediate range missile test. But in more concerning news: https://twitter.com/vicenews/status/887647836787150849 It appears North Korea has kidnapped defector Lim Ji-hyun who fled the North in 2014 and had become a talk show/reality star in the South. South Korea officials are investigating whether she did return to the North on her own or if she had been grabbed in China after being lured their under the false impression that she could smuggle her family out of North. I know some North Korea defector experience massive culture shock after arriving in the South, but there doesn't seem to any reason for her to return to the North of her own free will.
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Jul 20, 2017 02:55
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Given her very visible profession, chances are she'll be weighed heavily towards the 'Woe to the traitors of Kimjongilia-KimSungilia' rather than 'Behold, the South really is as bad as we say'. So if she was abducted, we probably ain't seeing her again.
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Jul 20, 2017 03:27
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WarpedNaba posted:Given her very visible profession, chances are she'll be weighed heavily towards the 'Woe to the traitors of Kimjongilia-KimSungilia' rather than 'Behold, the South really is as bad as we say'. No point in kidnapping her if they don't do the scripted confession/condemnation/glory to NK thing. Getting a person North Koreans may have seen on smuggled shows to make the good old "well actually the South is much worse than my glorious home country, nobody should flee there!" statements shows they can still get you, even if you make it and are successful on the outside and especially if you criticise the North. They can grab a person who seemed safe and make them say whatever they want them to say. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jul 20, 2017 |
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Jul 20, 2017 04:35
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I feel compelled to point out that the South Korean entertainment industry, much like the entertainment industry in most countries, is absolutely massively abusive. Likewise life for most defectors sucks, less because they're defectors and more because South Korea in general sucks right now for low level workers who can't luck into a good job. If Lim's story about leaving North Korea and eventually getting involved with South Korean variety shows is a lie, it's an exceptionally detailed and plausible one. I guess you kind of have to take my word for it on that since the video doesn't have English subtitles, but she's not spending thirty minutes saying "Death to America" again and again. Hell, she doesn't even really talk about politics at all. It's mainly just her life story with specific examples of her TV appearances explaining how the story she told on TV was different from what actually happened and why she made the changes. Ironically this is a much more complete version of Lim's story than has ever appeared in South Korean media, for exactly those reasons. These kinds of variety shows are soft propaganda and make a special effort to avoid discussing anything that happened to the personalities outside of North Korea. Propagandistic nature notwtihstanding these variety shows are by far the best source of firsthand testimony about what life in North Korea is like, so it's really weird how foreign reporters, even ones who are specifically supposed to specialize in North Korea, are barely even aware that they exist. For the sake of completion, I also read the Korean article linked at the bottom of the Vice piece that was offered as a rebuttal. The only real relevant information the Canadian defector offers that I hadn't thought of is that Lim is probably still under investigation for proof she's not a spy, going by her apologetic tone and staging. Everything else is just the usual speculation. I find it rather telling that no one in English language media is going after the actual content in the video, of which there is a lot, instead honing in on a few lines that sound vaguely brainwashy out of the context.
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Jul 20, 2017 09:27
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I have a question about NK defectors that maybe some guys here who are knowledgeable about this can answer. I remember reading somewhere before that the biggest problem with the defectors is how to integrate them back into life in South Korea, how true is that? Some of the stories I've read is that they face a lot of racism at home and many of them having trouble holding on to stable jobs. Many of them ended up in show business or speaking tours where they travel around telling stories about their hardship in NK. There's a girl named Yeonmi Park who was doing some kind of international tours. I thought about going to her speech when she was in Hong Kong not too long ago. But decided against after a quick search on the internet showed a number of reporters have called her stories to be heavily embellished, with details that keeps on changing with every telling and basically selling a story that people wanted to hear.
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Jul 20, 2017 10:07
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symphoniccacophony posted:I have a question about NK defectors that maybe some guys here who are knowledgeable about this can answer. Short answer: very hard. It's important to remember it isn't integrating them back into South Korea, it's integrating them into South Korea. The cultural norms, social structure and to an extent, the languages, are worlds apart. North Korea is stuck decades in the past in many ways. South Korea might as well be another planet in some regards. This journal article goes into good detail about some of the difficulties, but the short answer is that the main difficulties are disillusionment with South Korea once they arrive, difficulties adapting to the different society, and bias from North Koreans. The article doesn't really touch on it, but North Koreans can also fall victim to scammers pretty easily. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick goes into good detail about the difficulties of integration in the final chapter. Although it's not the most recent source on the matter, many of the challenges still apply. Other defectors have reported struggling with things like believing Kim Jong-il was psychic and reading their thoughts, even after leaving North Korea. When you're actively trying to suppress your thoughts because you believe Kim Jong-il has a direct hotline to your brain, that also complicates integration. It seems like Kim Jong-un doesn't inspire this same terror, at least not to the same degree, but many defectors report years of trying to suppress critical thoughts of the regime. With regard to stories being embellished, it's important to note a few things. Firstly, it's difficult to say with any real certainty which aspects of stories from defectors did or did not happen. Memory is fallible at the best of times, let alone in high-pressure situations. Claims of embellishment can also come from pro-North Korean sources, deliberately trying to discredit defectors. Shin Dong-hyuk came under similar fire in 2015 when he recanted parts of his book, Escape from Camp 14. A bunch of reasons for the omissions and lies have been given by him and others, including the lasting psychological effects of torture, guilt over his role in his mother and brother's deaths, and a desire to protect others still in North Korea. Many of these reasons for lying or embellishing stories exist for other defectors, especially fear for friends and family still in North Korea. It's also important to note some of the general personality traits of defectors - many are resourceful, wary, and willing to put themselves first. That isn't a judgement, it's a reflection of the fact that they were able to get out, and what they had to be to be able to do so. While those traits are great for escaping a totalitarian regime, they tend to be actively detrimental to integration in a new country.
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Jul 20, 2017 14:07
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North Korean defectors who travel to South Korea typically find themselves with no money, no possessions, minimal education, and no family or friends to rely on. They get some money and basic education about the country when they enter South Korea, but once they're released into society they're pretty much on their own, and South Korea's social safety nets are pretty barebones (although North Korean defectors get some special support, it's typically not enough to live on). Aside from their occasional TV appearances, they often find it difficult to find and keep jobs, and their prospects are typically limited to low-wage manual labor and customer service work at most, with no real chance of attaining the comfortable middle-class lifestyle they see on TV (there are exceptions to this, of course). On top of that, there's the psychological adjustment. Defectors tend to suffer from issues like paranoia and anxiety, as well as extreme guilt about fleeing without their families, which makes it difficult for them to make connections or hold down a job in South Korea. Also, they have difficulty making friends or building relationships due to the cultural divide, and loneliness is one of their most common complaints. Research has shown that they don't even eat much; even though food is plentiful in South Korea, they're so used to the limited food availability of the North that they tend to eat very small portions even when more is available. Of course, they're also easy to identify as North Korean, and South Korea doesn't really have any anti-discrimination laws. Or, to quote one study of defectors that sums it up rather neatly: quote:Beginning with high expectations and joy, the defectors would soon confront all the financial problems and other difficulties associated with adaptation previously described in this study.
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Jul 20, 2017 15:16
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Bradley Martin covers a number of interviews with defectors in his book, most of which took place in the 90s. Several of those interviewees seemed to be very well off, but those were usually people who had been relatively well off in North Korea. They were either students and professionals who were trusted to study abroad, or workers who had successfully bribed and lobbied their way into the guest worker jobs that are menial by our standards but include lavish pay by North Korean standards. They had defected by traveling to a South Korean embassy abroad. So, a very different group of people from those who crossed the border into China, working low-wage undocumented jobs, until they could make their way to South Korea. And yes, a running theme is that many simply had to be willing to live with the strong possibility that not only would they never see their families again, their families and friends might be punished. Some fled because their families had already been harshly punished by the regime, or because they knew they were about to be punished, usually for minor infractions or simply for being friends with another exposed dissident.
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Jul 20, 2017 15:32
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thanks for the input. I can sort of understand why some South Korean aren't fans of unification.It's not just income inequality, decades of separation have changed how people thinks on both sides of the DMZ. Even if unification happened some how, it seems like it will just lead to wide spread social unrest. If the people that were actively trying to defect ended up becoming disillusioned with life in the South, god knows what the people that wasn't looking to defect will feel if they were forced to reunite.
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Jul 21, 2017 06:02
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the talk about defectors led me to check asian boss for new videos and they have a pretty rad one up about north korean views of america. the whole thing is good but this part especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsJjP3He4h8&t=785s where a defector talks about how much thought kim jong-un puts into emulating his grandfather in as many ways as he can
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Jul 21, 2017 06:46
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https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/888422155553263616 This news isn't surprising. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/888322686220251136 This however does, especially since I was just reading the below about the worsening drought in the country. https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/888054571322486785
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Jul 21, 2017 17:04
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NKeconwatch has written a few times about the conflicting reports of food shortages in North Korea (every year there are reports of drought and famine - and every year the economy seems to grow and the markets remain stable) - Ten million live in food insecurity in North Korea, UN says. But what does that really mean? http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2017/05/16/ten-million-live-in-food-insecurity-in-north-korea-un-says-but-what-does-that-really-mean/ quote:the World Food Program’s methodology for estimating these figures is rather unclear and problematic. For example, in the above-mentioned assessment of North Korean needs and priorities for 2017, released earlier this year, the WFP classifies all those depending on the Public Distribution System (PDS) as “suffering from food insecurity and undernutrition, as well as a lack of access to basic services.” Is North Korea's food situation really getting worse? The markets don't think so. http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2016/07/22/is-north-koreas-food-situation-really-getting-worse-the-markets-dont-think-so/ quote:Since early 2016, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has been sounding the alarm bells on North Korea’s food situation. In an interview a few weeks ago with Voice of America’s Korean-language edition, FAO-official Christina Cosiet said that this years’ harvest would be the worst one in four years. One question, dealt with before by this blog, is how bad this really is. After all, the past few years seem to have been abnormally good in a long-run perspective.
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Jul 21, 2017 18:27
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A couple of in depth looks at North Korea's (relative) construction boom: Pyongyang’s Construction Boom: Is North Korea Beating Sanctions? http://www.38north.org/2017/07/hferon071817/ North Korea’s Nuclear Push Is Just One Piece of a Nationwide Building Boom https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/05/world/asia/north-korea-building-boom-construction-nuclear-weapons.html A few takeaways - this isn't just a handful of propaganda buildings, but sustained (if not sustainable) development. Whilst the flashiest stuff is happening in Pyongyang, there is ongoing construction of new markets and infrastructure throughout the country. And it isn't all all clear how it is getting paid for.
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Jul 21, 2017 18:46
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It's almost certainly all from trade with china, isn't it? And North Koreas massive mafia-like programs abroad in insurance fraud, arms smuggling and the sale of itinerant labor. But most of the growth has to be from their market economy and trade with china, right? Heer98 fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 21, 2017 |
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Jul 21, 2017 18:48
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One must simply remember that growth being at a 17 year high doesn't mean it's particularly high growth - 2000 after all was around the few years after the famine had mostly ended and the economy was finally crawling out of rock bottom. There was relatively high growth then, as there is now, but it would pale in comparison to, say, the economic growth in 1985, let alone in 1975.
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Jul 21, 2017 19:55
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