In other words, war. It has China and, to a lesser degree, Russia , both of which oppose unilateral American military strikes on sovereign countries. The two countries believe that any US move would destabilize the region and harm their own interests. North Korea borders China and Russia, and any crisis on the peninsula would add extra strain to those borders.
Fun fact: Did you know that if you want to drive from Finland to North Korea, you could drive only through one country? Yeah, Russia is that large. On its own, Russia also helps North Korea with its economic woes. Russian Railways is in discussion with the government in Pyongyang to expand the rail connections between the two countries.
There are also around 10, North Koreans in Russia as part of a guest worker program providing cheap labor to Russia. It understandably has a bad relationship with South Korea.
Boynton in the New Yorker. The period of Japanese colonialism understandably left many Koreans with a deep animosity toward Japan, and the Kim family has continued to perpetuate this hostility in its official propaganda. Essentially, North Korea is alone in the world, with very few exceptions. Sure thing, especially since you made it this far. Catchy, right? This country continues to roll out new messages and slogans, including to mark the 70th anniversary of its founding in But as you can see, a lot of these slogans are about the Kim family, the improvement of mundane things like school uniforms, and the desire for scientific improvement.
They are meant to cover nearly every aspect of North Korean life. But …. But North Korean defectors estimate that only about 20 to 50 percent of North Koreans today buy what the regime is selling. This steady loss of support has been going on since the Great Famine of the s that starved around 23 million North Koreans and killed around 10 percent of the population. The country was and remains an agricultural society. Plus, the Soviet Union collapsed in , and with it the help it provided North Korean farmers.
New technologies have also begun to play a role. As NK News reported in A combination of foreign DVDs, USB drives and defector-run radio stations are all slowly chipping away at the propaganda that Pyongyang monopolized for so long. North Korea appears capable, based on tests it has carried out, of firing a long-range missile that could hit all of the United States. Experts are more confident that if North Korea wanted to strike South Korea and Japan with a nuclear weapon, it could very likely do so.
It also happens to be within direct firing range of thousands of pieces of North Korean artillery already lined up along the border, also known as the demilitarized zone. Simulations of a large-scale artillery fight between the North and South produce pretty bleak results. One war game convened by the Atlantic back in predicted that a North Korean attack would kill , people in Seoul in the first few days alone.
Others put the estimate even higher. It would be much, much worse. That, for sure, is a promising sign. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Or it could be a huge disaster. Yeah, it is. A look at some of the clues: Experts divided over pandemic Du-Hyeogn Cha, an analyst at Seoul's Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the North could be dealing with a huge COVID outbreak that has spread beyond border towns and rural areas and is now reaching urban centers, possibly including capital Pyongyang.
While North Korea has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single coronavirus infection after testing more than 30, people, experts widely doubt its claim considering its poor health infrastructure.
Cha said North Korea has no other way to deal with outbreaks than quarantining people and locking down entire areas until transmissions subside. Other experts, including Park Won Gon, a professor of North Korea studies at Seoul's Ewha Womans University, said the large Politburo meeting attended by party officials from across the country would have been planned in advance and may have not taken place if the virus was circulating aggressively.
In case of large outbreaks, the North would deploy extreme measures to seal off affected regions, something outside monitoring groups haven't detected, said Ahn Kyung-su, the head of the Seoul-based Research Center of DPRK Health and Welfare. Power shakeup? Most analysts agree that Kim's remarks indicate a development that's significant enough to warrant a shakeup of Pyongyang's leadership.
The North's state media said Kim berated senior party and government officials for neglecting "important decisions of the party on taking organizational, institutional, material, scientific and technological measures as required by the prolonged state emergency epidemic prevention campaign.
It's possible that Kim could be sacking his Cabinet Premier Kim Tok Hun, his top economic official, or Jo Yong Won, a secretary of the party's Central Committee who had been seen as a fast riser in Pyongyang's power circle.
Call for outside help? Even if it was dealing with an alarming rise in infections, it's highly unlikely that the North would admit it.
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