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The North is a xenophobic military dictatorship, plain and simple. Seriously. Most South Koreans want to reunify (families are split in half by the border after all, just like Germany in the Cold War), but when reunification comes, the Korean economy will be in serious trouble; the South will simply not be able to carry the weight of the woefully undeveloped North.
It's not about communism vs capitalism, it's so much more complicated than that, the history behind NK's political system goes back thousands of years. Hell, if you're really into gross generalisations and vague political comparisons then NK is more akin to the feudal kingdoms of Ancient Greece that were ruled by militaristic God-Kings than to anything Marx and Engels wrote about. As you've seen in the pictures, many places in the North operate at medieval levels of technology and organisation, but what is even worse is the cultural impact that the division of North and South has brought to Korean families (family is pretty much everything in the Korean Confucian mindset).
And have you guys heard that Pyongyang is testing out ICBM technology? It's all over the news here. Maybe it's all just rooster-crowing bluster, but it's still cause for concern. To hell with Iran, Bush needs to get his priorities straight.
[ 06-23-2006, 12:19 AM: Message edited by: Luther ]
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