Ađź”»atar of đź”»engeanceNorth Korea Just Overtook the U.S. in Destroyer Construction Rates as Plans For Far Seas Navy Begin to Materialise
NiberiusSay what you will about the NK government, but it’s genuinely impressive how - despite pretty much all the odds being against them - they managed to develop nukes and ICBMs, effectively safeguarding them against all foreign military intervention, and are now able to reorganize production into, yes, other military spending, but also seemingly finally increasing the quality of life for their citizens.
Like, sure, MAYBE all those new housing units in Pyongyang are empty shells to make the city look better to foreign eyes. But even if that were true, that’s still a foundation to build upon, and thanks to them having nukes and delivery systems, no one will risk nuclear war to fuck with them.
Yeah, so far the missiles aren’t very reliable. I doubt the nuclear warheads are much more reliable than that.
And the housing is almost certainly empty shells. (See also that giant hotel that was only built a third of the way so they finished the front of the exterior instead to make it look good.) But I don’t think housing is their problem, it’s food. The land in North Korea isn’t great for farming, prior to the Korean war, the south was agricultural and the north was industrial.
And much like the hotel, this ship looks nice from the front, but if you look closely, or at the sides and the back, it has a lot of blank faces, where the Arleigh Burkes have equipment. I’d be positively gobsmacked if those radomes on the NK ship actually had anything in them, or if the visible antennas were actually attached to a full set of functioning electronic warfare systems.
How did these assumptions work out versus Iran? Even if you were fighting just the DPRK in the Pacific, chances are slimming down. You think it will be easier than Yemen?
setsubyouYes and no… you’re basically saying that with support from China and Russia, they got to a point where they can build WW2 tech invented more than 80 years ago using pen and paper. There’s definitely newer tech that they can’t build (e.g. computers are imported).
Higher semiconductor industry is the most preciously guarded monopoly of the west. It involves the most precise motors, nuclear industry-grade X-ray mirrors, perfect optics, impeccable hygiene with expensive materials to create a cutting chamber flooded by hydrogen gas, and a great deal of expertise that requires a strong education system + industrial controls and cannot by any means be boiled down to blueprints, making it vulnerable to any financial faltering that sheds the labor force with the knowledge it retains. DPRK will be more prepared to get into semiconductors than Ohio or Arizona in a historically short time. The fact that even Vietnam is getting into it now shows the fundamentals are slipping away from them. Your message will be yet another time capsule of western Asia-watching. In other words “added to my cringe compilation”.
You would be shocked how easy it is to put people into empty houses. It’s even easier than putting them into occupied ones. The technology exists, if western asset-holders would consider it.
On a serious note, the transition from Soviet-style autarky to the present is almost impossible. DPRK shows resilience and flexibility under sanctions that contradicts notions of a rigid top-down political system. IMHO they could get away with opening up more to foreign investment considering their iron grip on industrial management, which is the key, but that comes with downsides they may be unwilling to deal with. It’s their choice in the face of the completion of an attempted aerial genocide by the States. Their stalling tactics brought them into a present where what they consider safe and developed trade partners exist.
I wish that people would go on Rednote and see tourist videos from the DPRK. Just see for yourself rather than listening to journalists who don’t even speak Korean, or live in political systems that cage people en masse and tolerate open fascism, WWII history revisionism absolving Japan, you name it. Hopefully this article is a wake-up call to some people but I doubt it.
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