Say 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.