A better North Korea?

DUWANG

DUWANG

I had a small idea of a better North Korea, with the POD being no Korean War and no Kim's.
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Now, I don't know a lot about North Korea, or about realistic population and economic changes in a TL. But I worked with some numbers and wanted to ask if those numbers would seem realistic, even if somewhat of a wank;
Population: 31,777,000
GDP nominal: $456,4 billion
GDP per capita: $14,361
With the GDP section being based on the OTL ones of the other still existing Socialist states.
Now of course those numbers represent the realistic best case of a Socialist North Korea in my eyes. But do they seem plausible to you with a POD as far as this?

And with no Kim's and no war, I guess the politics would be more sane. No extreme starvation, no semi-deification of the Kim's, probably no nuclear weapons but a defensive guarantee from China and in general more trade and interactions with the world.

Now the question is how relations with South Korea would be...
And to make it easier, let's just assume that South Korea developed similarly like OTL in socio-economic ways.
Both would still claim to be the true Korea, but I can't imagine relations being as bad as in OTL.

What socio-economic role could this Korea have? Especially after the explosive rise of popularity of Korean culture duo to the South.
 

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Onkel Willie

Get rid of the Kims and have sane people in charge. That should get you a long way towards these goals. The next trick is how to prevent North and South Korea from simply reuniting like West and East Germany or North and South Vietnam did.
 
DUWANG

DUWANG

Onkel Willie said:
Get rid of the Kims and have sane people in charge. That should get you a long way towards these goals. The next trick is how to prevent North and South Korea from simply reuniting like West and East Germany or North and South Vietnam did.
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Well we can prevent the Vietnam situation with simply never having a war.
Now the German situation is more pretty. Like Germany there would never have been a war to sour relations between the two. Like Germany, the two are near enough to each other that the North can mostly consume South Korean media.
But unlike Germany, North Korea wouldn't have a Capitalistic island of West Berlin in it.
Also unlike Germany, at first there would be no big socio-economic differences between the two before South Korea became a first world democracy. With North Korea being able to promise better futures than OTL North Korea even before the fall of Socialism, there would be less political will to unite.

And of course, if the government plays it's card right, then it can use not only economic growth but also political might to silence any big advocates for Seoul based reunification.

Maybe economic help from growing China (if we assume that China still chooses OTL's path) could prevent the decline in life quality?
 
DUWANG

DUWANG

athgtq16129 said:
When is the POD you got in mind?
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Not sure yet.
For certain a POD where the Kim's don't get into power.
This could have Kim Il-sung die as a new born or just before he got a chance to enter North Korean politics.
Although we could also have him survive and simply the Soviets choosing someone else.
 

athgtq16129

DUWANG said:
Not sure yet.
For certain a POD where the Kim's don't get into power.
This could have Kim Il-sung die as a new born or just before he got a chance to enter North Korean politics.
Although we could also have him survive and simply the Soviets choosing someone else.
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Oh alright, cause I already wrote a very big post that talks about North Korea having economic and social reforms in the 1980s.
 

athgtq16129

Onkel Willie said:
Could you elaborate?
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DUWANG said:
I mean as long as those can also work with no Kim's, let's hear them.
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I wrote something in this thread that was about North Korea in a TL where the Cold War never ended:
athgtq16129 said:
An overlooked scenario was discussed about the fate of North Korea in the Death of Russia timeline, where the Kim leadership is overthrown by China, who appoints a puppet leader and reforms the country after itself, now the latter scenario that I will describe did not happened in that timeline, but comments speculated that after North Korea having economic reforms while remaining un-democratic like China, it could become a haven for organized crime syndicates to operate in and out of, similar to OTL Albania and Russia.

This also reminds me of the extremely outdated book The Coming War with Japan (1991) by George Friedman and Meredith LeBard, which took the 1980s "Japan is the future" pop culture predictions to its logical conclusion, where Japan becomes an expansionist great power and rebels against the United States, in it, North Korea is shown as an ally of this Neo-Imperial Japan(!?), implying that Friedman in the late 1980s expected some kind of socio-economic reforms to have occurred in North Korea by the 2000s.

I have been working on a hobby timeline set in an outdated, retro-futuristic world seen from 1980s cyberpunk and sci-fi (especially cyberpunk anime), where the Cold War doesn't really "never ends", but it slowly evolves into something different, with Japan forming its own independent faction in the conflict, and the borders of the 1980s more or less staying the same (i.e. the USSR, East Germany, Apartheid South Africa + Bantustans still exist well into the 21st century, and etc.)

I don't know why, but I find the idea of a reformed North Korea allied to a Neo-Imperialist superpower Japan, while being an organized crime-ridden corrupt state under the influence of the kkangpae, yakuza, and triads is such a cool scenario to me, I can imagine a Black Lagoon-analogue in this TL, where it is set in North Korea instead of Thailand, so much potential for the unique cinema, anime, manga, and pop culture that would be inspired by the situation of this alt-North Korea, as well as the potential for North Korea itself to import its media and culture abroad more efficiently.

Another thing that comes to mind will be how this will affect the Korean diaspora if the country permits its citizens to leave and immigrate abroad, creating a lot of emigration similar with what happened following the OTL fall of the Eastern Bloc, with many of its workforce leaving for Western Europe and leaving their home countries economically and demographically behind, how would the North and South Korean diaspora communities treat one another? would they get along well and consider themselves a single nation, strengthening the calls for unification, or ironically, cause a bigger divergence in identity between the north and south?
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MLK JFK LBJ Beatles

At Russian alternate history Fandom, there's a wonderful "Normal North Korea" TTL, amazing written, very realistic, I recommend it to you, just click Google translate , you'll love it. This is exactly what I mentioned above
althistory.fandom.com

Чосоллю (миниатюра)

30—31 августа 1956 года Северная Корея пережила крупнейший политический кризис в своей истории, когда на пленуме ЦК Трудовой партии Кореи объединенная внутрипартийная оппозиция в лице про-советской и про-китайской фракций предприняла попытку отстранить Ким Ир Сена от власти. Выступление было...
althistory.fandom.com althistory.fandom.com
 
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