RE: North Korea executed 5 security officials, South Korea says
March 1, 2017 at 6:16 am
(This post was last modified: March 1, 2017 at 6:22 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
It can be worse. The northern government controls the food distribution network. Without a functioning government to disburse food, and with the population already teetering on the edge of starvation, I have no doubts that when the regime falls there will be one hell of a famine -- and if it falls in the winter, we'll no doubt see hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The DPRK government will fall eventually, I think. I don't think it's very predictable, either. It could happen next week, or next decade. Those poor people, though, are already well and truly fucked; they've been conditioned for four generations to accept that that sort of governance is normal. Their only hope would be to unify with the south, but as Abs notes, that will be tremendously expensive, and will probably sandbag the world's seventh-largest(?) economy for decades.
ETA: I should add that China will strongly oppose any unification, as that will place an American ally with Americans already deployed on its border. That will precipitate quite the diplomatic tussle.
The DPRK government will fall eventually, I think. I don't think it's very predictable, either. It could happen next week, or next decade. Those poor people, though, are already well and truly fucked; they've been conditioned for four generations to accept that that sort of governance is normal. Their only hope would be to unify with the south, but as Abs notes, that will be tremendously expensive, and will probably sandbag the world's seventh-largest(?) economy for decades.
ETA: I should add that China will strongly oppose any unification, as that will place an American ally with Americans already deployed on its border. That will precipitate quite the diplomatic tussle.
