I think they’ve done well for themselves given they’re one of the most-sanctioned countries in the world, and I can understand their military-first system given that the US and ROK have semi-annual training exercises to invade their country

If you want to see relatively unbiased explorations of the country, I recommend checking out Douyin videos from Chinese tourists

Are they living the most ideal life possible? No, no place is that way, but the only way to improve things would be for the US to withdraw its troops from the Korean peninsula (like the treaty they made at the end of the war stated they would) and for sanctions to end

The DPRK has faced an unimaginable level of hardships since the 90s. The American imperialists have done everything they could to undermine and destabilize their economy. They’ve done everything they can to punish the North and build up the South. Carter fully admits to this. I’ll have to find the video of it later. At some point, the DPRK is going to learn the lesson that the Communist parties of China and Vietnam did. They will probably adopt a way of bringing in foreign investment and liberalizing a few parts of the economy. They will have their Deng Xiaoping moment and embrace market socialism. For us in the West, we should always stand up against sanctions and threats of war on the people of the DPRK.

I think they’re a broken and scarred country. A country cannot undergo tribulations of the sort they have without incurring heavy and permanent losses in development and dignity. Even doing well in their situation demands measures which can only exacerbate their particular predicament.

While lifting sanctions would surely improve their situation on many levels, I think the repercussions of sustained and intense antagonism both internally and externally will not be a pretty sight to behold. We hardly have a global community capable of nurturing North Korea back into the fold (and back into the fold of what, exactly, would be difficult to discern). I don’t think that increased exposure to the global economy necessarily results in a net benefit for the DPRK or the world at large, however worse it may prove to sustain sanctions; I’m really just a pessimist all around and no amount of my or anyone else’s sympathies or apologia on their behalf is going to undo the damage already wrought upon them.