AH challenge: North Korea is like China

Here's your challenge: Make North Korea similar to what China is today. That means a booming economy and growing prosperity for North Koreans. North Korea may remain a totalitarian dictatorship but you get bonuspoints if North Korea has local elections like China has. North Korea also must have a more modern military (with a booming economy that's easy). You get more bonuspoints if you give North Korea a succesful nuclear program with a succesful test in the mid or late 90s and a hydrogen bomb test by 2007/2008 and make 'em get away with it. Maybe you can let North Korea not sign the NPT.
 
Well, easiest way I can think of to manage that is to have Kim Jong Il decide to open up the North Korean economy like China did, rather than turning inward and focusing on military buildup to prop up the state. Of course, that probably requires a leader very different from the current Kim Jong Il.
 
IIRC, North Korea built a large number of quality industrial facilities in the 1970's with help from European countries that eventually were allowed to rust into uselessness when the North Koreans refused to pay the loans.

Have Sung die soon after these projects get started (mid-70's?). Jong is too young to take power, so perhaps wiser heads will take control of the country and make efforts to repay those loans, while reducing the expenditures on underground tunnels, mini-subs, and conventional weaponry in favor of putting any excess military funding into a nuclear deterrent.

This appears to be a nice parallel to China in OTL.
 
Yes, I don't think you can get a good economic situation until you can remove the personality cult. The power shifts and cultural changes that come with such a development would be too destabilizing for a paranoid one-man dictatorship, especially Kim Jong-Il's.
 
Yes, I don't think you can get a good economic situation until you can remove the personality cult. The power shifts and cultural changes that come with such a development would be too destabilizing for a paranoid one-man dictatorship, especially Kim Jong-Il's.

Yeah, it's hard to become a modern progressive nation when your leader is constantly trying to convince his own people that he is a living god.
 
The one thing I always wonder about with the Kims (especially Jong Il) is their adherence to the personality cult well after its sale-by date. Maybe Kim Jong Il fears that stepping down will equal a one-way trip to the Hague (if only ...) Or perhaps he's not convinced that he could still drink gallons of Hennessy after sharing the reins. Maybe he's convinced that he is a god, and that the NK adulation is real. In any event, he'd probably be just as better off in a kleptocracy than the current setup. So he must be addicted to the worship -- that's all I can think of.

Another thing I don't understand is why Beijing hasn't "politely told" Kim Jong Il to move towards a "socialist market economy." I guess even the promise of a SAR can't get him to move towards more open trade. Anyway, the Chinese probably realize that the creation of a SAR would require the formation of a convertible NK currency, the establishment of a solid telecom structure, rustling up western investment (difficult after all the loans the Kims defaulted on over the years), etc. Maybe these difficulties have shied Beijing away from opening up NK, even if the SAR could be made profitable down the line.

From an ATL perspective, I agree that an early Kim Il Sung death might provide an opening for reforms. Perhaps even better would be a NK POD around the time of Deng Xiaoping's market liberalization in the early 80's (maybe the elder Kim could pass away then as well?). Maybe Deng convinced the elder Kim of the ultimate failure of Maoist/Stalinist emperor worship, and promised to provide for the material security of the Kims in return for Chinese-style market liberalization. I think the Chinese would have to assure the Kims that they would save face in the transition, and find some way to ease the NKoreans off of their cult.

Not sure about this, maybe some modern Chinese history scholars can help: were the Chinese of the 80's still steeped in Maoist propaganda, or were they already shifting towards what we now see in China? An early Deng POD might not allow the Chinese enough time to get over Maoism, and therefore hinder the Chinese govt's ability to stop the NK personality cult. Perhaps the Chinese would not have had enough time (or evolutionary ability) to create an opening for themselves in the NK power structure, reform the personality cult, and inject Chinese capitalism. That's a lot to ask from a country slowly creeping towards a socialism-capitalism hybrid from a propaganda system not that far removed from the Kim Cult.
 
North Korea's GDP per capita is half of South Korea if North Korea's economy boomed in 1970s up to today. More prosperous North Korea. Ready for reunification with South Korea.
 
I somehow doubt that the communist party will give up power. Many communists have commited a lot of crimes. The best you can hope for is increased economic cooperation and free movement across the borders. If you want total reunification it would have to come by force. North Korea would have to invade the south. Both are technically still at war so they can actually do that.
 
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