[quote=KIBU]
I would support a model like this if it is at all doable. But comparing NK to VN is like comparing orange and apple. VN was actively looking for improving relations with the US as much or more as the US was. NK has been doing the opposite, pretending to get US cooperation by threatening and open more conflicts. NK also won’t be allowed by China to move closer to the US even if it is a geniune move.
[/quote]
Yes indeed … Americans love to equate Korea and Vietnam … something that’s driven me bonkers all my life.
Let’s take a look at the results of economic liberalization in North Korea:
Contract laborers sent to work in Siberia, mostly for Russian logging firms. Working conditions are horrible, suicide is rampant, and most of their pay is confiscated for the “party loyalty fund,” i.e. nuclear centrifuges, Hennessy cognac, and Swedish hookers.
The aforementioned Mount Kumgang resort, built on a foundation of corruption. Generates a steady flow of hard currency for nuclear centrifuges, Hennessy cognac, and Swedish hookers. When the “cash for summit” scandal interrupts the flow of bribe money to corrupt officials (or is that a redundancy) NK first restricts operations and then shoots an old lady for wandering into a “restricted area,” something that even Disneyland wouldn’t do.
Kaesong economic zone, Korea’s maquiladoras. Workers have the bulk of their paychecks skimmed for … nuclear centrifuges, Hennessy cognac, etc. At least they don’t have to go to Siberia for the privilege of being ripped off.
Private enterprise in North Korea. Small-scale enterprise tolerated briefly, but marketplaces and private gardens shut down once again in 2009 as part of a disastrous “currency reform” that wiped out virtually all private savings and capital. NK economic czar Pak Nam Gi executed for “treason” in the wake of the botched “reform.” Presumed motivation: to wipe out the economic power of the nascent merchant class and pacify party loyalists, already disgruntled by the short supply of Hennessy cognac and Swedish hookers.
To their credit the Vietnamese communists turned out to be more pragmatic than ideological … recognizing, as Pham Van Dong himself said, that fighting a war is easy but running a country is difficult. The same can’t be said of the corrupt, murderous princes of the Kim Dynasty and their syncophants.
