Pyongyang is likely to end up with fewer friends than before the pandemic.
Despite having launched a terrible war and turned an entire nation into a totalitarian prison, during the 1960s the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea made a major push for international recognition. At the time the DPRK appeared to some as the more successful of the Koreas. Moreover, the world seemed filled with ideological friends, especially from the growing number of emerging nations experimenting with economic collectivism and political authoritarianism.
Since then, however, the disastrous failure of socialist and communist regimes in their many iterations shrunk Pyongyang’s friendship network. The North’s economic hardship, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities reduced its attractiveness as a partner to other governments. And now North Korea has spent more than a year isolating itself from the world in response to the global coronavirus pandemic.
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U.S. officials long have treated diplomatic relations as a reward. It is not. It is the best means of dealing with other governments, friend and foe alike.
Antiwar.com Original
Of course, the world would be a better place if the North did not possess nuclear weapons. But after roughly three decades and six U.S. presidents insisting that North Korea
cannot, must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, it has them. Probably a lot of them – 60 is one common estimate. And a recent Rand Corporation/Asan Institute study figures that Pyongyang could end up with 200 weapons by the end of the decade, which would make it a significant secondary nuclear power. [The G-7 nevertheless expressed its commitment to the goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization and dismantlement, commonly known as CVID, which few policy analysts believe is realistic.]
South Korea Should Embrace Liberty in Confronting Pyongyang
The government of one of the world’s most important and successful nations has exhibited a shocking fear of exposing its people to information freely available throughout most of the world.
The Republic of Korea barely survived the Korean War, which ended 68 years ago. The ROK also barely survived the ensuing peace.
The country was ravaged by war. Seoul changed hands four times. South Korean civilian casualties were in the hundreds of thousands. Destruction was widespread with massive numbers of people driven from their homes. An estimated 650,000 North Koreans fled south and had to be integrated into a society badly malformed by war. For years the South remained materially poor and poorly governed.