The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (2013)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/richard-lloydparry/advantage-pyongyang

by ollieglass • 12 years ago

28 10 12 years ago

lrb.co.uk

handpanda• 12 years ago

North Korea is where the Chinese outsource to for cheap labor and lax environmental policies. Wow.

curiously• 12 years ago

yes...imagine if samsung or hyundai gain unprecedented access to this ultra ultra cheap labor force.

overall the article is bang on, the only people that benefit is north koreans and maybe south koreans but give the reunification a few decades or more, the end result is a shift of the status quo of regional power for neighboring countries.

aikah• 12 years ago

yes...imagine if samsung or hyundai gain unprecedented access to this ultra ultra cheap labor force.

s/cheap/free

and what makes you think they dont already?

Someone• 12 years ago

Read the paper more closely. I do not know if they use it, but they do have access through the Kaesong industrial region.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region), Hyundai built it, so they know of its existence.

Actually, unification might make this less attractive, as wages likely would rise in the North, changing the economics of doing this kind of stuff (I guess a bit in the way the abolition of slavery changed economies)

BorisMelnik• 12 years ago

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who ran a Twitter botnet of sorts and was telling me he outsourced a lot of his menial tasks to Indian workers, but found out that a lot of those workers would outsource work to China. Realizing now that some of those Chinese workers may be outsourcing the same work to North Korea.

nl• 12 years ago

I think this is a really good piece, particularly because of the explanations of the nuances of China's policy on North Korea. Too often people claim China is North Korea's allie, but the truth is much more complex and multi layered than that.

digi_owl2• 12 years ago

One thing i find myself wondering is, where is Russia in all this?!

mey• 12 years ago

Geography

Most of Russia's population is in the west http://www.mapsofworld.com/russia/thematic-maps/population-d...

Korea isn't directly connected to Russia, Edit: correction it shares a border for roughly 9 Miles on the NE coast of NK https://www.google.com/maps/@50.544202,110.7707214,4z

This is why Russia is more involved with eastern europe and China rather than Korea and most activities in the Pacific. Unless it's stationing battle ships off the Australian coast during a visit by Putin [1]

[1] http://www.inquisitr.com/1606377/russia-warships-near-austra...

basedlord• 12 years ago

Most of Russia's population is in the west http://www.mapsofworld.com/russia/thematic-maps/population-d....

Most people live in russia proper. Siberia and the russian far east is not real russian land.

Korea isn't directly connected to Russia https://www.google.com/maps/@50.544202,110.7707214,4z

North Korea is directly connected to russia. They share a border...

This is why Russia is more involved with eastern europe and China rather than Korea and most activities in the Pacific.

Russia is involved in the denuclearization talks. Also, they are involved in the pacific. They hold countless war games to ward off threats from china, japan and north korea. Their main naval port is in the pacific.

digi_owl2• 12 years ago

I notice that there is a blob of color right on the border to NK. So even if most are over towards Europe, its not just bears and reindeer over on the pacific side...

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (2013)

Related Stories