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.

Do you not think there are many people in North Korea willing to work 16 hour days to have enough money to buy food? Do you not think there are people willing to employ people to work 16 hour days for enough to buy food?

I'm not saying this is an ideal situation, however it is a vastly better situation than that which currently exists. North Korea survives on a shoe string, it would not be difficult to match this with foreign aid, let alone the capital investment that would pour into a free North Korea. China was in a similar situation 30 years ago.

Waiting longer to solve this problem will not make it easier, everyday North Korea falls further behind the rest of the world.

There are plenty of opportunities for economic integration. But how exactly do you plan to reunify when significant parts of the North Korean government are actively against it i.e. they are doing well under the current regime. Or when the narrative has always been reunification under the DPRK banner ?

The only way any of this is happening is if China stops supporting North Korea and the UN Security Council/Agencies puts much of the government in jail for crimes against humanity. Then South Korea would effectively just take over and Pyongyang would be turned into a tourist attraction.

If we're lucky, that comes along with some reforms. These would be reforms geared towards making those second-tier elites better off, of course. Perhaps just a change to how resources are spent and distributed. Perhaps some de-collectivization and private property. Perhaps secretly negotiated reduction in sanctions in exchange for some liberalization. But that could still be a move in the right direction.

South Korea is one of the great places on earth right now, and North Korea is just the polar opposite. Very strange.

The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was. This is just how the country was for over 2 millennia. The north, especially due to its easily defensible mountainous terrain, has always played a pivotal role in keeping larger more powerful threats from absorbing the whole. Considering its history it sheds some light into understanding their extreme xenophobia.

Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? This is a culture steeped in confucianism, the patriarch is supreme and group cohesion and harmony is of higher importance than the needs of an individual. Even linguistically, social order is embedded into the language with many different levels of honorifics for different rank and class.

A little off-topic but just my 2 cents.

The Caste System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Korean_caste_system

The vast bulk of civilization runs on business. Unless you’re content with North Korean living standards you need to make it possible for people to start, run and grow businesses. A society that fails on this point is just as fucked as one that can’t keep clean drinking water flowing or achieve basic literacy.

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.

We Americans don't speak nearly enough about the suffering of North Korean people. As someone who grew up in the second worst communist dictatorship in the world I can say that the worst part about living in such a country is not lack of food or shoes or clothes and not even lack of freedom. The worst part is lack of future. Their system is totally frozen. Nothing moves. Most of the work that is done is just for the sake of appearing like people are working. Every intelligent person looks around and sees that something needs to be done to change the situation but nobody knows what to do, let alone find the courage to actually do something. It has been 23 years since I lived in a similar situation and I still feel out of breath thinking about it.

If the North Korean regime falls today we are likely to witness one of the worst humanitarian crisis we have ever seen. We can just hope that the current North Korean leaders find both the desire and the ability to do a transformation like China did in the 70's. U.S. played a large part in that transformation and it could play a large part in helping North Korea too.

Once you accept that you're owned by "society", and that everyone is "responsible for the greater good" this is inevitably what you end up with.

You ask if they lack critical thinking or a critical mass. Both of these are true, they've been indoctrinated to believe in this system, except maybe the ones like the writer of this story who were born in a camp and got less indoctrination.

The sad thing is, you can see this very same thing play out repeatedly in history. The way the germans let the nazis take over, even after it was clear they were up to no good. The way there was no revolution to overthrow the soviet state in the USSR.

You see these same mechanisms happening here in america today-- people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit.

And there's the error- they think "the rich" or "everyone else" is going to be forced to pay for their wellbeing, never realizing that they are calling for their own enslavement.

Pair the idea that you have a "right" to make others pay for healthcare (and other things) with the claim by these same people that you don't have a right to self defense (eg: own guns.) The latter is even in the constituttion.

You'd think this would cause a dissonance in their head, but the party ideology is so strong they never connect the two.

And when americans are being herded into camps, long disarmed, and forced to work "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs".... they will wish they still had guns.

Schools teach people to be compliant little sheep and have done so for over a century, there's a distinct connection between government control over schools and lack of critical thinking in the populace.

Unless things turn around soon, the US will end up in some sort of terrible state. Not likely like North Korea or Nazi germany or the USSR, but we already are suffering from the economic destruction of these kinds of policies (and like NK citizens told to blame the US for their poverty, we're told to blame wall street, germans were told to blame jews, russians were told to blame "hoarders", etc. etc. etc.)

Not sure if your background is Korean or not, but Koreans don't need to look very far to see how amazing things have gotten in South Korea. People used to literally starve to death in South Korea in less than a couple of decades ago. There was a time, when North Korea was the wealthier part of Korea and North Korea was always doing terribly. I pray that Koreans never become amnesiac to his history and never give into temptations of UBI.