> When serving in Iraq or Iran, my biggest fear in those places was always the threat of physical harm, be it ambushes on our person or vehicles, being kidnapped, rocket or mortar attacks on our embassy or accommodation. There were close shaves and the threat and the fear never left you in all of these places.
But as far as life in North Korea was concerned, there were none of these fears. Serving in North Korea gave you this strange feeling of being cut off, isolated and very insular and perversely at the same time “safe.”
When one invades the country, they of course won't feel safety (like in Iraq), but when they dont invade country, of course it feels safe, because no one is bombing and shooting locals
NK is politically aligned with the red countries, and positioned against US. Especially after the Otto Warmbier accident, some believe that Americans/Westerners in NK are in constant danger (my opinion: O.W. did something stupid while drunk; the accusations were obviously fabricated but the incident was not unprovoked), so to those, it may seem surprising that somebody can feel safe there.
The author is British working for the British embassy, UK-NK relations are strained but not as tense as US-NK relations by a mile. They had mutual embassies though the UK NK embassy no longer has an official ambassador and the NK UK embassy is closed because NK still has tight entry restrictions from COVID-19. US-NK relations are tangentially related at best.
I remember one Polish diplomat recalling that his boss told him "I am sending you to the safest outpost in the world" when offering him embassy in North Korea.
"North Korea’s border with South Korea is a disputed border as both countries claim the entirety of the Korean Peninsula." - I did not know South Korea felt this way!
FWIW, this is no longer true for North Korea: a few years back they removed all references to reunification from the constitution and designated South Korea as an enemy state. They even refer to it by its South Korean name now (Hanguk/Daehanminguk), instead of the previous Namchoson.
That does sound a bit agressive. To be clear, South Korea doesn't so much 'claim the entirety of the Korean Peninsula' as much as it aims to unify the entire peninsula into a single country through peaceful means (at least, since the military government left power in the late '80s).
This article is also from 2021 and things have changed a bit in the North. North Korea changed their constitution a couple of years ago and removed any mention of unification with the South, and defined their territory as basically the existing North/South split (aka 38th parallel). South Korea has been redefined from 'partner in national unity' to 'enemy to be destroyed, by nuclear weapons if need be'.
There's a lot of pretty interesting analysis of North Korea at the 38 North blog (https://www.38north.org/), among other good sources.
I was fascinated to learn while visiting they consider themselves ‘at war’ and generations from a unified time still strongly believe in the cause.
In tech specifically this leads to some surprising results such as transit planning being very ineffective or broken in google maps due to onshore data storage requirements. Subway alignments are regarded as sensitive info
Indeed the fighting ended in an armistice so the war was never legally declared to be over. Visiting the DMZ between the countries is a surreal experience - part tense stand-off, part theme park.
I wonder what would happen if South Korea simply said they weren’t at war anymore. Acknowledge that yes, North Korea considers them at war with us. However, we consider us to be peaceful neighbours.
Whenever North Korea threatens them, simply reply with how sorry you are their brother nation feels this way, and you wish them a peaceful and successful future.
Leave the DMZ intact of course, but just unilaterally declare you are not actually at war and have nothing but brotherly love for them.
>I was fascinated to learn while visiting they consider themselves ‘at war’
fun fact, Japan and Russia are technically in a state of war too. The World War II hasn't ended. They have never signed a treaty over the Kuril Islands, and they both claim them.
According to wikipedia
"Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 but did not sign a peace treaty."
Can't open the article, so maybe it was already mentioned. But not only does South Korea claim the entire Peninsula, they even consider North Koreans as South Korean citizens.
A diplomatic mission established for the sake of establishing it and staff making the best out of their time there I can somewhat understand, but not tourism into DPRK for the "curious" and leaving money in that state. Going there to play golf would feel like visiting Pol Pot's Cambodia because they have good forests hikes, just be careful not to slip on all the blood seeping out of the ground.
As to the lack of fear of physical harm, this was reported from a very privileged position where that safety was guaranteed by the clearly willing host. As a civilian visitor I wouldn't feel that confident. One odd look or an unfortunate question an official didn't take a liking to, will get you into questioning. So I'm told.
Man, what's going on with this site that makes every phrase "North Korea" into a link about playing golf there? Some kind of self-link-auto-enhancement plugin gone nuts?
> Did you get many opportunities to travel within the country?
> Surprisingly yes.
And surprisingly title is: "How To Survive 3 Years in NK"
These people are so biased, they show that bias even when they don't have anything bad to say. Poor people in that country might say how to survive, but not a member of diplomatic corpus
[1] https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/ 10,000 km gets you to the west coast and significant parts of the western US, 13000 covers the whole of the US. NK has the Hwasong-15 with a nominal range of 15000 km...
The goal was simply to display performative strongman machismo using the military (just like the missile strikes on alleged drug boats). It's a branding exercise for Trump personally (not even for the US as a whole). To that end, it doesn't seem to be working, especially with the Iran quagmire.
IIRC, one of the highest profile North Korean defectors said that Jimmy Carter's interference in Bill Clinton's Korea strategy basically gave North Korea another decade to build an atom bomb. After that regime got the bomb, they became un-invadeable.
"Passcode to the Third Floor" describes this instance and other missed opportunities to undermine the North Korean regime.
The less snarky answer is that our current system does not have a functioning global government. There is no real “we”. Influencing how other countries operate can only be done by force or diplomacy, and because North Korea has nuclear weapons, force is basically off the table, and they’re not interested in diplomacy.
Venezuela was much more like a coup than a military action. The military didn't meaningfully resist, anti-air weaponry did not fire - and the US knew it wasn't going to fire because otherwise there would've been choppers getting fragged left and right. And then we kind of waved off that Nobel Prize winner lady who wanted war, to say nothing of the Guido guy, let Maduro's VP take over, and she instantly become a US puppet but otherwise kept Maduroing along as usual. Interestingly her father was killed by the Venezuelan intelligence services, which was created by Chavez, and Maduro was Chavez's hand-picked successor. She sounds kind of like a Gorbachev, whose formative years were spent under the joys of Stalin. Consequences of bad actions can, and often do, manifest only decades later.
Anyhow, point being - you're not going to get anything like that in most countries. Iran should make that clear enough. North Korea is orders of magnitude stronger than Iran, and Iran is already basically unbeatable simply because they were prepared for a decapitation strike which is pretty much our only card - Americans would never tolerate a real ground war which would entail hundreds of thousands dying. And this is all just ignoring the fact that North Korea also has nuclear weapons.
North Korea is geopolitically useful as a buffer state between the United States' sphere of influence in South Korea, and China. China has defended it pretty determinedly, historically.
You don't even need China. They have the Hwasong-17 and nukes and would very likely use them to retaliate. There's a reason they were quite keen to develop nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them to the US mainland.
Even short of a nuclear response Seoul is in range of conventional artillery from North Korea and is dug in enough you couldn't destroy them all before the were able to do significant damage to Seoul.
"won" is a very strong word for a country that sits economically somewhere between South Sudan and Congo, with a primary "enemy" that started out similarly and is now easily 20 times richer.
Self-sufficiency and exclusion from global trade can be very expensive for a nation long-term (a cautionary tale, since those ideals are a bit of a siren call nowadays to many Americans, after getting quite wealthy by doing the exact opposite).
The leadership doesn't particularly care, they get to live quite plush lives in their little hermit kingdom and only care about the general population in so far as they need to be comfortable enough they don't risk rebelling. Winning for the Kim family is remaining in power and they've secured their position against outside aggression quite successfully.
Nuclear weapons and ICMBs that can deliver them to the US makes the threat more meaningful too. There was always the chance that a Trump-like president would decide a few days of shells raining down in Seoul while we hunted NK's artillery positions would be worth getting rid of NK. Road mobile ICBMs that can deliver a nuke to the US mainland removes that option unless they're REALLY REALLY strong believers in the 44 GBIs sitting in Alaska. (Ignoring their shoddy track record and the fact we only have 44 and usually shoot 2-4 at each missile)
- An enormous amount of artillery pointed at South Korea. South Korea would likely suffer the worst outcome in any intervention into North Korea.
- A nuclear-armed power who is truly ideological. Unlike Maduro, merely killing the leader is unlikely to dissuade the North Koreans. (a lesson the Trump admin is currently learning in Iran)
None of my friends in a Venezuela have noticed any actual improvements after Maduro. The current president was appointed by Maduro and was VP for 6 (?) years. I know some political prisoners are released, but if you are looking at suffering on country-level I don't think anything has changed.
Nukes. And honestly man the last time the US intervened in NK we didn't leave a building taller than 2 stories standing and killed 25% of their population. I'm absolutely certain an intervention from us would be worse for NK citizens than their current government.
Why? Because the poor are starving? North Korea has ultra-wealthy ... it works a bit differently but there is massive inequality, and there is extreme wealth.
you might want to read about NK >2023, which is quite different from before, of course there is golf courses, cellphones (with Internet, chats...), TV, money transfer, IT schools, ATMs, money changers for USD, cinemas, american movies, markets (with a ton of illicit products from US/EU/China... i.e you can buy USB sticks with ton of movies or music or ebooks), it's changing gradually, millions are living a relatively peaceful life, but a lot are suffering still especially if they don't have family that can go to major cities to send back money, all those aren't only available in Pyongyang contrary to popular beliefs, there is multiple major cities.
There is a huge amount of money invested currently by the gov into making it a better country, it's hard to believe tho.
It's relatively hard to get information without translating South korean forums because the western news just straight up shit on everything related to NK and almost NEVER show anything progressing over there, which is false.
The HN and Reddit hug of death is very real. Getting traction on either can direct an overwhelming firehose of traffic at sites that were never designed to scale up because they're minor personal blogs or projects.
It’s about 3 (I think? Been a while since I watched) US soldiers that defected to NK during the Korean War. One dude stayed for decades and defended NK intensely in this doc, going so far as to star in propaganda movies against the US while he was there. Wild stuff
DPRK is obviously maligned by U.S. propaganda, but I know several people who've gone and loved it. Famously, the "Boy Boy" YouTube channel guys went and got a haircut.
> When serving in Iraq or Iran, my biggest fear in those places was always the threat of physical harm, be it ambushes on our person or vehicles, being kidnapped, rocket or mortar attacks on our embassy or accommodation. There were close shaves and the threat and the fear never left you in all of these places. But as far as life in North Korea was concerned, there were none of these fears. Serving in North Korea gave you this strange feeling of being cut off, isolated and very insular and perversely at the same time “safe.”
When one invades the country, they of course won't feel safety (like in Iraq), but when they dont invade country, of course it feels safe, because no one is bombing and shooting locals
If the current US admin could do this, they would.
This article is also from 2021 and things have changed a bit in the North. North Korea changed their constitution a couple of years ago and removed any mention of unification with the South, and defined their territory as basically the existing North/South split (aka 38th parallel). South Korea has been redefined from 'partner in national unity' to 'enemy to be destroyed, by nuclear weapons if need be'.
There's a lot of pretty interesting analysis of North Korea at the 38 North blog (https://www.38north.org/), among other good sources.
In tech specifically this leads to some surprising results such as transit planning being very ineffective or broken in google maps due to onshore data storage requirements. Subway alignments are regarded as sensitive info
Whenever North Korea threatens them, simply reply with how sorry you are their brother nation feels this way, and you wish them a peaceful and successful future.
Leave the DMZ intact of course, but just unilaterally declare you are not actually at war and have nothing but brotherly love for them.
fun fact, Japan and Russia are technically in a state of war too. The World War II hasn't ended. They have never signed a treaty over the Kuril Islands, and they both claim them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_Joint_...
As to the lack of fear of physical harm, this was reported from a very privileged position where that safety was guaranteed by the clearly willing host. As a civilian visitor I wouldn't feel that confident. One odd look or an unfortunate question an official didn't take a liking to, will get you into questioning. So I'm told.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250409223505/https://mydiploma...
- can't complain!
> Surprisingly yes.
> Did you get many opportunities to travel within the country?
> Surprisingly yes.
And surprisingly title is: "How To Survive 3 Years in NK"
These people are so biased, they show that bias even when they don't have anything bad to say. Poor people in that country might say how to survive, but not a member of diplomatic corpus
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas...
[1] https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/ 10,000 km gets you to the west coast and significant parts of the western US, 13000 covers the whole of the US. NK has the Hwasong-15 with a nominal range of 15000 km...
Also, it didn't work. Not in Iran and not even in Venezuela.
"Passcode to the Third Floor" describes this instance and other missed opportunities to undermine the North Korean regime.
Anyhow, point being - you're not going to get anything like that in most countries. Iran should make that clear enough. North Korea is orders of magnitude stronger than Iran, and Iran is already basically unbeatable simply because they were prepared for a decapitation strike which is pretty much our only card - Americans would never tolerate a real ground war which would entail hundreds of thousands dying. And this is all just ignoring the fact that North Korea also has nuclear weapons.
Even short of a nuclear response Seoul is in range of conventional artillery from North Korea and is dug in enough you couldn't destroy them all before the were able to do significant damage to Seoul.
[0] https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/hwasong-17/
Also comrades from other countries would probably support them.
Self-sufficiency and exclusion from global trade can be very expensive for a nation long-term (a cautionary tale, since those ideals are a bit of a siren call nowadays to many Americans, after getting quite wealthy by doing the exact opposite).
- An enormous amount of artillery pointed at South Korea. South Korea would likely suffer the worst outcome in any intervention into North Korea.
- A nuclear-armed power who is truly ideological. Unlike Maduro, merely killing the leader is unlikely to dissuade the North Koreans. (a lesson the Trump admin is currently learning in Iran)
I think you underestimate the unparalleled dominance of the United States Navy. (Which is but one of 4 major branches, mind you.)
There is a huge amount of money invested currently by the gov into making it a better country, it's hard to believe tho.
It's relatively hard to get information without translating South korean forums because the western news just straight up shit on everything related to NK and almost NEVER show anything progressing over there, which is false.
It’s about 3 (I think? Been a while since I watched) US soldiers that defected to NK during the Korean War. One dude stayed for decades and defended NK intensely in this doc, going so far as to star in propaganda movies against the US while he was there. Wild stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E