The People’s Republic of Korea was a united Korean government which administered the peninsula after the end of Japanese occupation. After a year, the southern half was forcibly dissolved by the American military, and the Republic of Korea was formed after Syngman Rhee was flown in from the United States. The PRK became the DPRK and continued on.

In this alternate timeline, the US government’s proposal to divide Soviet and American occupation zones along the 38th parallel on August 10 is rejected by the Soviet government, instead of being accepted. By August 30, 1945, Soviet forces reach Seoul, and by September 5, they have total control over the entire peninsula. Likewise, the Soviet leadership is more aggressive in the Moscow Conference in December, wherein Japan is similarly divided into spheres of influence.

The People’s Republic of Korea is founded by September, with Lyuh Woon-hyung, a united-front moderate-left politician, elected to lead the new unified Korean state in the first democratic elections with 48.4% in the November 1945 election. Kim Koo, a Korean nationalist comes in at second at 36.0%, and Pak Hon-yong, leading the Workers’ Party of Korea captures 15.6%. The WPK and Soviet-allied organizations, however, maintain ownership over presses and media instruments in major cities such as Pyongyang and Seoul, and receive favourable funding from the USSR.

A vicious and highly-successful propaganda campaign culminates in the WPK soaring to 47.3%, placing them above the ruling UKP (Unified Korea Party) lead by Lyuh Woon-hyung, who receives 39.8% of the votes in the 1948 election. Kim, a fervent anti-communist, in a series of talks conducted in November, agrees to enter into a coalition with Lyuh, allowing them to slightly edge out the WPK by three seats in the Assembly of People’s Committees, the legislative and executive organ of government.

However, Kim Koo and Lyuh Woon-hyung prove to have too many policy differences to form a successful coalition, and Koreans, disillusioned with the ability of Lyuh to provide a stable government, and disillusioned with Kim Koo’s rampant opportunism, show their discontent in the 1951 elections. Pak Hon-yong’s WPK, with the help of continued Soviet funding, and restrictions on campaigning by other contestants, wins 77.7% of the vote.

Absent the Korean War, in which 10% of the population were killed, where American saturation bombing turned cities and industry into rubble, and the scorched-earth policy destroyed agriculture, the People’s Republic of Korea thrives. Industrial production is increasingly centralized and coordinated under the 1951 First Five-Year Plan of the People’s Republic of Korea, and war reparations extracted from the former Japanese Empire end up in the Korean budget. Public works programmes electrify the country and lay out vital infrastructure, and agriculture is collectivised from 1952 to 1960. Labour productivity increases, along with wages, and helped by vigorous trade with other COMECON countries, from 1951 to 1980, average annual nominal GDP growth is 12.1%. Pak Hon-yong remains a popular leader, resigning from office in 1971 with a 97% approval rating.

By 1983, Kaesong, Seoul, and Pyongyang have become the idyllic beacons of socialist development, as well as major tourist hot-spots in the socialist bloc. The three cities are visited by 1,150,000 people in total annually. Due to rippling effects in the Soviet leadership that come as a result of the success of the PRK, the power-struggle that plays out between Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 after Stalin’s death results in Malenkov consolidating power. Handsome and charming, throughout Malenkov’s 27 years as First Secretary of the CPSU and Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1954 to 1981, he tactfully engages with the problem of nationalism, retains strong connections with the People’s Republic of China, negotiates bilateral limitations on arms spending with the United States, shifts production from extensive to intensive, increases labour discipline, uses long-term social programmes to reduce alcoholism, and cracks down on the growing “second economy” (the black market) - putting a halt to the social forces that, in our timeline, lead to the downfall of the USSR. Unlike Khrushchev, who focused on light industry (consumer goods - the means of consumption) - Malenkov, in the tradition of Stalin’s leadership, focuses on heavy industry. From 1951 to 1960, the economic growth trajectory continues as it did in our timeline - but not bogged down by Khrushchev’s disastrous Virgin Lands Campaign, and with a focus on long-term future growth enabled by investing in heavy industry, from 1960 to 1975, per capita GNP growth per annum is about 0.7% higher, and averages at 9.3% per year.

By 1983, the USSR is lead by Yuri Andropov, who seems keen to follow the path laid out by Malenkov, but also to address stagnation, formulaism, and ossification of Party institutions in a vast series of revitalization and anti-corruption campaigns. By the time this travel poster came out, Gosplan, realizing the inadequacy of slow hand calculations, in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, had pivoted the Soviet economy in the direction of microelectronics, automation, and computerised planning systems.

In the United States, high unemployment, inflation, and stagnation are the hallmarks of the American economy. The average citizen of the socialist bloc is not as wealthy as the average American citizen in monetary terms, but they continue to enjoy full employment, guaranteed pensions, paid maternity leave, limits on working hours, free healthcare and education (including higher education), subsidized vacations, inexpensive housing, low-cost childcare, subsidized public transportation, rough income equality, and a sense of optimism and hope for the future. By this point, the People’s Republic of Korea ranks 17th by GDP per capita, coming after the German Democratic Republic and New Zealand.

  • stasis
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    1 year ago

    to bad in the us, the history of the dprk is often erased, and people are led to believe that the dprk is a totalitarian regime and many other absurd claims about the dprk without getting more information about the country itself and its history.

    libs just don’t care about the dprk unless the us mentions it :(

  • @Binkie55OP
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    1 year ago

    deleted by creator