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How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

mydiplomaticlife.com

31–40 of 94 posts

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#32
post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

North Korea is geopolitically useful as a buffer state between the United States' sphere of influence in South Korea, and China. China has defended it pretty determinedly, historically.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#34
post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

NK is so heavily militarised and culturally isolated that an extraordinary rendition is likely to backfire even more so than they typically do.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#36
post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

Uhh, because Seoul is a big city and right next door? Is this not abundantly obvious? Also, China has influence here which is a secondary reason

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#37
post #7

"North Korea’s border with South Korea is a disputed border as both countries claim the entirety of the Korean Peninsula." - I did not know South Korea felt this way!

That does sound a bit agressive. To be clear, South Korea doesn't so much 'claim the entirety of the Korean Peninsula' as much as it aims to unify the entire peninsula into a single country through peaceful means (at least, since the military government left power in the late '80s).

This article is also from 2021 and things have changed a bit in the North. North Korea changed their constitution a couple of years ago and removed any mention of unification with the South, and defined their territory as basically the existing North/South split (aka 38th parallel). South Korea has been redefined from 'partner in national unity' to 'enemy to be destroyed, by nuclear weapons if need be'.

There's a lot of pretty interesting analysis of North Korea at the 38 North blog (https://www.38north.org/), among other good sources.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was fascinated to learn while visiting they consider themselves ‘at war’ and generations from a unified time still strongly believe in the cause. In tech specifically this leads to some surprising results such as transit planning being very ineffective or broken in google maps due to onshore data storage requirements. Subway alignments are regarded as sensitive info

>I was fascinated to learn while visiting they consider themselves ‘at war’ fun fact, Japan and Russia are technically in a state of war too. The World War II hasn't ended. They have never signed a treaty over the Kuril Islands, and they both claim them.

According to wikipedia "Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 but did not sign a peace treaty."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_Joint_...

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#39
post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

North Korean has won, once they had nukes and ICBMs they became untouchable.

tbf, they already had artillery pointed at 10 million people, enough to commit an atrocity. The nukes were just the frosting on the cake.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#40
> Could you go out on your own for a walk?

> Surprisingly yes.

> Did you get many opportunities to travel within the country?

> Surprisingly yes.

And surprisingly title is: "How To Survive 3 Years in NK"

These people are so biased, they show that bias even when they don't have anything bad to say. Poor people in that country might say how to survive, but not a member of diplomatic corpus

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