u/ouch_oof - originally from r/GenZhou
R1: So, recently, I came across a post by a neoliberal/socdem Vaush fan who tried to downplay the effects of sanctions on North Korea. I’m only addressing one part of the post, which is the economy, because that’s the only part I can kind of address (I mean, could do the Korean War part, but to keep things short, I would rather stick to one thing). Again, for the sake of time and readability, I will paraphrase the arguments that are being made by this person. Without further ado, let’s lose some braincells:

“but the leaders prosper and import goods while people starve”

First of all, we aren’t even acting like market economies such as India starve more than North Korea. Second, only a select few can afford those goods, the entire population cannot afford such things and, again, they can bypass, but that can only mediate the problem to some degree for a limited amount of people. You can’t always get your own way with sanctions, it is often quite hard.

“but South Korea surpassed North Korea and the Soviets and Chinese helped!!!”

Economically, yes, South Korea did surpass North Korea, which is a point which nobody denies. North Korea also did have help from the Soviets and Chinese. However, what this dolt completely sweeps under the rug is the fact that the Soviets and Chinese were not that advanced themselves (China was a borderline feudalist country lol) at that point (the Soviets made good progress, but they still had a long way to go in terms of development) and that socialist countries had embargos placed on them by the West which prevented them from getting high tech goods and access to markets. For instance, countries such as East Germany, which tried to produce various semiconductors and microchips had difficulties doing so due to limitations from embargoes. Access to markets and such have made a difference in socialist countries nowadays such as Vietnam and China in their technological advancement. South Korea had no problem getting access to these markets and tech because it was allied with the West (which had most of the advanced industry, tech, etc. at the time). Not to mention, South Korea wasn’t even that impressive. Socialist Romania, which had major limitations due to various embargoes and was less than fortunate with its situation regarding IMF loans, had quicker growth than South Korea from 1960-1980 (basically until the time when Ceaușescu started austerity programs to pay off the huge debt Romania was in). Plus, the HDI of Romania and South Korea in 1990 were quite similar, with South Korea being barely higher. Finally, South Korea has extracted approximately $1.7 trillion from the Global South from 1960-2017, which has given it a tremendous advantage.

“how could they grow when muh self-reliance”

This is a horrible attempt at trying to understand Juche and represents a very childish/lacking understanding of what it actually is. North Korea is not exactly isolationist, it is a country that has been forced into isolation. They were heavily reliant on trade with the USSR and have attempted to form trade relations with other countries such as India. Self-reliance doesn’t exactly mean to be an isolationist country, it means trying to develop local industry and military. Also, yes, North Korea has $10 trillion in mineral wealth, but cannot exactly access it properly, even mainstream news outlets have admitted this.

Anyways, that will do it for this post, I’m not going to address the rest because this part alone gave me brainworms because of the sheer lack of knowledge.