ARTICLE: In North Korea, the military now issues economic orders, By Blaine Harden, Washington Post, November 3, 2009
Important story on NorKo: if it does indeed contain almost $6T in mineral wealth, then I guess I would expect China to allow Kim's kleptocracy to continue concentrating itself on that flow, meaning no hope that China will do much about the regime until the place is bled dry of resources.
The only good news here is the death of party identification, the exact opposite of press reports on Wen's recent visit there, when party symbols were everywhere.
"The army is the people, the state and the party," the government has declared. All references to the word "communism" were removed this year from the North Korean constitution. They were replaced with the word "songun," which means "military first."Defectors and outside experts agree that "military first" is a literal description of how the economy works, how citizens are forced to organize their lives and how Kim remains powerful -- and wealthy.
To me, this is one mafia bleeding another dry before being willing to toss them on the ash heap of history.
Start the clock on the $6T.
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Comments (2)
There is another, grimmer interpretation: A collapse of the NK government could create a race between China and SK to absorb the choicest bits. This could create some warfare if they and their allies aren't careful.
Posted by Michael | November 7, 2009 10:23 PM
There's zero chance that China will absorb any part of NK. Give China more credit than that. If Beijing really, really wanted to f*ck South Korea for the next 30 years, handing them NK on a silver platter would do it. You Americans can afford to ignore the nation building reconstruction aspects of "liberating" NK but Seoul certainly can't. Ideally from an SK perspective, it is more helpful for NK to undertake economic reforms and get their house in order. If NK could reach Chinese levels of development than reunifying the 2 Koreas would be much easier.
Posted by Guest469 | November 8, 2009 2:11 PM