So it appears that I’ve partly been validated on my view that the much hyped threat from North Korea’s military might has been no less than media bubble that has apparently been pricked.
From USA Today
North Korea's much-touted satellite launch ended in a nearly $1 billion failure, bringing humiliation to the country's new young leader and condemnation from a host of nations. The United Nations Security Council deplored the launch but stopped short of imposing new penalties in response.
The rocket's disintegration Friday over the Yellow Sea brought a rare public acknowledgment of failure from Pyongyang, which had hailed the launch as a show of strength amid North Korea's persistent economic hardship.
For the 20-something Kim Jong Un it was to have been a highlight of the celebratory events surrounding his ascension to top political power. It was timed to coincide with the country's biggest holiday in decades, the 100th birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, the young leader's grandfather.
The United States and South Korea declared the early morning launch a failure minutes after the rocket shot out from the North's west coast. North Korea acknowledged its demise four hours later in an announcement broadcast on state TV, saying the satellite the rocket was carrying did not enter orbit.
The launch brought swift international condemnation, including the suspension of U.S. food aid, and raised concerns that the North's next move could be even more provocative — a nuclear test, the country's third
It would seem that the actions of North Korea’s political leadership deserves more the ridicule “for nearly $1 billion failure” than ‘condemnation’.
$1 billion lost on unproductive military spending from an impoverished nation is simply suicidal!
Here is what I wrote earlier,
Such totalitarian state has engendered massive poverty represented by rampant shortages of many goods and services which includes the rationing of electricity that has personified what “earth hour” truly means.
And in spite of the North Korea’s vaunted war machinery, wherein much of the misallocation of the nation’s resources had been directed, the North Korean army is in a state of dilapidation and obsolescence: they seem ostensibly good for parades and for taunting, but not for real combat.
The North Korean political economy has been so immersed in abject poverty such that the country has functioned as real life paradigm of the essence of the environmental politics of “earth hour”.
North Korea’s command and control political economy cannot even afford to provide basic lighting services to their citizenry! (satellite images from my earlier post)
And this only implies that for most of North Korea’s army—except for Presidential units—have not only been poorly equipped, but they are famished, insufficiently trained and most importantly they could be mentally or psychologically unfit for any prolonged military skirmishes.
And in case the freshly installed North Korean political leadership of Kim Jong Un becomes whacko enough to openly engage in military conflagration, the administration's downfall will be underwritten by a coup d'état or a massive defections of North Koreans (both from the army and from the citizenry) more than from foreign military interventions.
A clue from Salon.com
Yet more and more North Koreans are prepared to take such risks as they flee hunger and oppression in search of a new life in South Korea, where their newfound freedom is clouded by discrimination, mental health problems and financial hardship.
At around 12 percent, the unemployment rate among defectors is far higher than the 3.4 percent among South Koreans. Those working earn significantly less than their southern counterparts, despite government subsidies and three months of mandatory resettlement training, according to the government-affiliated North Korean Refugees Foundation.
Even so, a recent government survey showed that seven out of 10 adult defectors are satisfied with life in the South; only 4.8 percent said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, according to the unification ministry poll.
About half of those questioned left the North due to food shortages, while 31 percent said they came to the South in search of freedom. Just over a quarter fled because of the North’s political system.
They are among more than 23,000 North Koreans who have defected to the South since the Korean War ended in a truce — not a peace agreement — in 1953. The trickle of defectors through the 1990s rose dramatically about 10 years ago, the result of a prolonged famine in which more than 1 million people may have died.
Last year 2,737 people — one of the highest figures on record — defected to the South.
And the botched missile launch was apparently timed with the unveilment of the statues of Kim Il Sung (left) and Kim Jong Il. (from Business Insider)
And all these attention grabbing destabilization moves are most likely representative of attempts to diversify the public’s attention from the real rapidly deteriorating state of North Korea's economy, as well as, use these events as leverage to hand wring concessions from her neighbors, allies and other patrons or the geopolitics of blackmail.
North Korea should instead follow Myanmar’s reforms of gradually adapting economic freedom. Myanmar is slated to open a stock exchange by 2015, with the help of Tokyo Stock Exchange.
And reforms towards economic liberalization by closed economies has usually been initiated with the symbolical opening of stock exchanges.
For North Korea's despotism, what is unsustainable will not last.
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