It isn't over until the fat lady sings as they say. Anything can still happen with North Korea. Personally I imagine a revolution of some sort to be rather much more likely than North Korea somehow being the first eternally stable state in the world.
Does North Korea have a future? Is it possible that someday that the current rule is overthrown and the rights and lives of people are restored? Can anyone with knowledge about this comment?
A lot of people in the world know that the Kim family is strangling North Korea, but you don't see people rising up to overthrow them. Imagine a world where Kim Il-sung was effectively immortal. Imagine a world where the monarchies of the middle ages could last a thousand years or more. Without something to shake up the status quo every once in awhile the situation tends to stagnate, even if it is a bad situation.
It is possible that human mentality would change if we had to start thinking about longer timescales like this, but that seems optimistic.
I want to agree, but a big counterpoint right now is North-Korea, which has been under a totalitarian government for over 50 years now; the majority of the population is completely isolated and (if it's the right term) brainwashed. Sure, there's an underground where technology and media are passed around, but as far as I'm aware, there's no signs of collapse.
I mean I don't believe it's particularly stable, in that if the great leader is deposed there will be a power vacuum. I was kinda expecting that when Kim Jong-il died though.
I wonder how many more decades of suffering it will take for the NK People to finally rid themselves of their government. Or perhaps it's at a point were the indoctrination is so complete and the control of the government so absolute that it is essentially stable forever.
Korean unification seems even more inevitable, and I've been waiting for North Korea to collapse since the 1980s, but here we are close to 80 years since the split and the status quo remains as intractable as ever.
North Korea is very much a totalitarian regime in every sense of the word. Everything flows from the state. Food. News. Entertainment. Education. Jobs. Everything. And it has been totalitarian for around 2/3rds of a century. It's very difficult to fight against something so ingrained and omni-present.
From without it's also difficult to imagine toppling the North Korean regime. To do so would almost inevitably result in quite literally hundreds of thousands of dead South Korean civilians in a matter of hours (through artillery). And perhaps just as many dead South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, or American civilians dead through a nuclear attack. That sort of cold calculus makes it very hard to make the decision to end the DPRK regime.
There is no good north korea timeline. The entire revolution that created it was for the express purpose of putting an idiot dictator in charge, one who immediately went to work on forcing the population to consider him a god king and putting his equally selfish, stupid, paranoid, and vile progeny in charge.
Unless you believe a unified korea without US intervention but still with USSR support would suddenly overthrow that repressive regime, that was never going to produce a free society.
North Korea is the nation most like Oceania in 1984 than any other on Earth. People are hungry and brainwashed from birth to love their leader and the state. That's basically why no one is trying to overthrow their government. US military intervention is sort of out of the question as well due to the immense lose of life involved (mostly in South Korea).
It will be fascinating to watch the modernization of North Korea if we end up heading in that direction. I'm particularity interested to see if it is possible for a leader/party with a brutal a reputation as that of Kim Jong Un to retain power as the country opens up (although to be fair we are a _long_ way from any real change).
Is the regime doomed? The people are screwed, sure, but once a government turns into a self-serving dictatorship, it can stay that way for a long time.
Usually the first thing dictators do is disarm civilians and beef up the military, so the only way out is via a military coup (which usually just trades one regime for an equivalent one). In just 2 decades, North Korea will have had a dictatorship for a century.
i wish this means the end to that regime, or at the very least some sort of Khrushchev type loosing of control will occur.
I dont think there is any other group of people on the planet that have been suffering for such a continuous period of time as the North Koreans. It's the greatest tragedy of our age
While both sides express that premise, I don't see the North Korean Regime just giving up its power. Perhaps Kim, like Deng Xiaoping, might introduce the economic reforms that his country really needs.
This is a small sample of what's to come should North Korea collapse.
I can see that south korea can experience a huge boost in their labor force that's currently filled by foreigners.
On the other hand, feeding, educating, housing, employing North Koreans to integrate into South Korea is going to be pretty hard.
China is also unlikely to allow US bases so close to the Yalu river.
When I factor in all these things, I believe that Korea will go through a transitionary state where two systems in one country emerge.
All in all, it could be that the unification collapses due to the structural pressure it places on South Korea and it's citizens to oppose it-Nobody in a capitalistic society is willing to trade away their good life.
Whatever happens, I only wish North Koreans live a free life, whether it's under South Korea's control or not.
Because North Korean collapse could mean a significant economic burden as East Germany's collapse was to West....but they've only had couple decades apart, North Korea is like dealing with Chosun dynasty.
The problem is, if you topple the Kim regime, a unification with South Korea is imminent and bringing North Korea up to the development level of South Korea is would cost trillions of dollars. It might even trigger a worldwide economic recession as the capital markets completely dry up as all investment floods to Korea.
That's true if you believe the DPRK can survive over the long term. But the conventional wisdom is that it cannot; that it will inevitably disintegrate, especially if it can be prevented the use of allegiances and commercial relationships with other countries.
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