Why North Korea is hopeless

Here are the reasons why North Korea is a state with no hope under their current regime:

1) The average North Korean citizen only cares about protecting his behind (if this occurred in Europe, people would be up in arms by now).
2) Which leads to not speaking about the wrongs of the Stalinist government.
3) Which means that the average citizen in that country doesn't care about what is right or wrong, but only about how much he or she can benefit from the government (even if this means ratting their family and friends out--pretty sad indeed).
4) Thus, it is not only the regime's fault that North Korea is in a socio-economic wasteland, but because the people are just weak-willed or morally apathetic to do anything.

Any thoughts?

Have you ever been to North Korea?

mad pierrot said:

Have you ever been to North Korea?

Click to expand...

I've known some people who have been there. Also, I based this on reports found in web-sites by people who have been there.

How do you feel about unification of the South and North if the Communists should ever lose power?

Or should the North remain a separate but democratic independent state?

What if i say North Korea is the country where used to be richer than South Korea economically untill mid of 1970's and the second Asian country where their GNP per capita reached to 1,000 USD in 1960's ?

I do not like North Korea especially Kim's kingdom,its not the communist country but old monarchy rulling country.
But there is a reason that North economy has been going on to the dumps-its because of their uneasy relationship with US where is holding one fourth of global economy and the collpase of North's former allies in East europe.

North has been going down economically from 1980's constantly.

By the way,I have been to North Korean city -Wonsan-to visit Keumkang Mt.

stupidumboy said:

What if i say North Korea is the country where used to be richer than South Korea economically untill mid of 1970's and the second Asian country where their GNP per capita reached to 1,000 USD in 1960's ?

I do not like North Korea especially Kim's kingdom,its not the communist country but old monarchy rulling country.
But there is a reason that North economy has been going on to the dumps-its because of their uneasy relationship with US where is holding one fourth of global economy and the collpase of North's former allies in East europe.

North has been going down economically from 1980's constantly.

By the way,I have been to North Korean city -Wonsan-to visit Keumkang Mt.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I was surprised when I first heard about this. There is a common notion among many Koreans that North Korea was always a socio-economic dump-house since the post-war period. But to our surprise, they outran the south during the 60s and 70s (thank goodness that we had Park Chung Hee to restructure the South's economy before his assassination). Of course, this was all due to the aid received from former Communist countries (USSR, Eastern Europe, China, etc.).

I agree. North Korea is definitely not a worker's paradise predicted by Marx, Lenin, etc. It's basically a monarchy under a communist banner. There are also reports that Kim's government is starting to slowly implement market reforms to boost productivity. I hardly doubt that this will drastically improve things.

Golgo_13 said:

How do you feel about unification of the South and North if the Communists should ever lose power?

Or should the North remain a separate but democratic independent state?

Click to expand...

This is a tricky question to answer because of so many factors. Overall, I would like to see the two Koreas united one day. However, the socio-economic conditions of both countries are so vastly different that even if a collapse of the North should occur there should be a time-period for the North to recoup and develop its economy and infrastructure. Look what happened to Germany? Unification brought problems because both sides were not on the same playing field when unitification took place. Fortunately, for them, the differences were not so dramatic and they were both able to mesh together well in a short period of time. Just say a coup does happen, and some more democratic and open-minded leader takes the place of Kim Jung Il. And just say this new leader wanted to be reunited with the South in a peaceful and democratic manner. I would still want both sides to wait at least five years so that the North can do some catchup. Also, it would be unhelpful if the South got all these refugees from the North in a short period of time. North Koreans should stay in North Korea to develop their half of the country. And South Koreans (businessmen, investors, etc.) can slowly creep into the North to aid reconstruction and development. However, this must be done in a conservative manner, not with a frontier attitude.

stupidumboy said:

What if i say North Korea is the country where used to be richer than South Korea economically untill mid of 1970's and the second Asian country where their GNP per capita reached to 1,000 USD in 1960's ?

I do not like North Korea especially Kim's kingdom,its not the communist country but old monarchy rulling country.
But there is a reason that North economy has been going on to the dumps-its because of their uneasy relationship with US where is holding one fourth of global economy and the collpase of North's former allies in East europe.

North has been going down economically from 1980's constantly.

By the way,I have been to North Korean city -Wonsan-to visit Keumkang Mt.

Click to expand...

So if North Korea's economy is doing poorly because of an "uneasy relationship with [the] US" as you claim, what specific changes in US policy towards North Korea happend in the 1980's to cause this? Or in other words, when was the US ever on friendly terms on North Korea in such a way to benefit their economy?

m477 said:

So if North Korea's economy is doing poorly because of an "uneasy relationship with [the] US" as you claim, what specific changes in US policy towards North Korea happend in the 1980's to cause this? Or in other words, when was the US ever on friendly terms on North Korea in such a way to benefit their economy?

Click to expand...

Not only their bad relationship with the US but there are many reasons such like collapse of communist countries economy allied with NK and old systems and their closed policy and so on.

Listen-if south Korea where has no natural recouses and self supply rate of food is just about 40 %- had been on bad relationship with US-we must have been starving too. 40% is the number of today even when the food cultivating science much improved than before. plus densely populated.

Thats why many Koreans had been starving for long time in history.
South Korea has been much benefiting from global trading system.
We produce goods and sell them abroad for making foreign currencies.
We can buy natural recourses like oil and gas and the rest 60% of shorted food from abroad with our foreign currencies.
Thats why we just seems like living fine.

One accident that made US changed its policy true harsh sign against NK was "pueblo ship accident" .After that accident-the US encouraged global countries not get involved into trading with NK and that was one big smash against them.It was just like semi economical sanction not 100% complete sanction though.now they have nothing really. Just some oil and food supply from China,they cannot run any factories or plant right now.
Ever seen the satelite pic of east asian region at night?
North Korea is completely dark except Pyongyang at night.
So without any fuels that enables them to run to produce or insifficient food to enables to feed them,how they can operate their economy?

look at Lybia or Iraq.
even oil rich countries get on difficulty to feed their own people under economical sanction.
If Iraq had not been smashed by economic sanction from international community,they could operate their economy better because they are oil rich and have many of good touristic places.Look at UAE.


<img src="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/images/dprk-dmsp-dark.jpg">

Not Really An Accident!!

One accident that made US changed its policy true harsh sign against NK was "pueblo ship accident" .After that accident-the US encouraged global countries not get involved into trading with NK and that was one big smash against them.It was just like semi economical sanction not 100% complete sanction though.now they have nothing really.

I was in the Navy around the time our "spy" ship was captured. This is a great example of "military intelligence"!! Because the policy had been to burn everything classified secret on the back of the ship in a 55 gal. drum while under attack(with 1 drum and 10 drums of paper to burn) didn't work too well! Some bright guy got the idea to put all the classified material in
big notebooks with lead weights in the binding AND paper that desolved in water! Great idea, just drop them over board and the secrets are safely desolved!! Well, they forgot you "NEVER" see a navyman without a cup of coffee or a soda next to him(you need caffene to stay awake!). So, you're out at sea with your (necessary for the mission) secret documents next to you.You reach for your drink(now this happens A LOT!!) and knock it over,
either into you electronic gear(causing a lot of smoke & requiring a repair man) or spill it on your important paperwork! Now before the big change, you cursed and wiped up the spill & went back to work, BUT NOW, you
no longer have your needed Secret paperwork, it just desolved!! It only took the Navy about a month to figure out this was NOT a great idea!! So a trillion dollars later we were back to regular paper without lead weights. You
don't want to know what their next idea was!!

Frank

thank you for your informative description by the way can i ask You were one of the 80 captured servicemen?

South koreans are taught that it was a good example of North Korea's violation against international law about territory but after reading some document about that accident,i came to know that it was wrong.

May I Start Out By Saying.....

your name does not fit you! Your English is very good and
your posts are quite intelligent, so far. I hope you find a fitting avatar to go with your user name.
As to your question, I was very lucky to have 4 years of land duty in the Navy. I did direction finding on radio
signals to locate interesting targets.It required a large antenna to work, so I had to be at land based stations.
My fellow Navy spys went out on submarines,planes, and
many types of ships to spy electronically on our enemies
and even our own military and friendly countries.We had electronis spys in all branches of the service and also civilian.Today the same thing is done using satellites as much as possible.The same type incident happened with another spy ship called the USS Liberty.It was shot up by our friends(?) in Israel and many men killed or injured.
We also had some spy planes shot down that you hear little about with several lives lost.In the Navy we were called Communications Technitions as a rateing. Then it was divided down into "R", "I",& "T" branchs, depending on what you did. Many of our bases had buildings & roads named after the Navy men killed. I was lucky I worked in
a project that was "ultra" Top Secret so I was never allowed into danger areas for fear of capture, a very safe 4 years for me!

Frank

well thank you for your lively informations !

its not very easy to hear about such hidden things that most general people are not very familiar with.

about Pueblo accident,most south korean people still do not know about the background.
it was nearly close to the war between US and NK while SK did not know the real background what happend between two countries.


again, thank you evry much.

Frank, I actually have studied a lot into intelligence gathering. Have you ever read James' Bamford's book Body of Secrets? Its about the only book that goes into the depths of the National Security Agency and the US SIGNIT during and after the cold war. I find the history and current capabilities of SIGNIT facinating, and the stuff that was done to keep signals intelligence going was fantasic. Like the undersea tapping of a cable in the Sea Of Japan, the EB-47 raids into the Soviet Union, the voyage of the Halfbeak, ect. If you were in Japan and involved in SIGNIT I guess you must have worked in Kamiseya, which was the Navy's prime listening station.Its really interesting and is an area that few people know about.