alternatehistory.com

In recent fiction, there has been something of a boom in the idea of a Super North Korea; a North Korea which becomes a major power with economic and military strength, conquers the South, and maybe goes on to invade the United States. Such is, of course, silly for anyone who knows even the slightest about the realities of North Korea. North Korea is an extremely poor state, locked eternally on the brink of famine and only kept alive on the charity of foreign nations. The reason it still stands is not because of any reasons of its own, but because the Chinese both fear change and would take military action as a threat against it since that would put the US on its border, and even the Chinese are getting sick of the North Koreans at this point. Everything of North Korea is for show, with skyscrapers and hotels built to show the modernity of the DPRK, which are left empty or nearly empty and dilapidating, roads left empty because most North Koreans don't have a car, villages abandoned, hotels in the middle of nowhere occupied by one person who waits every few months or few years for some tourist to actually come through, food put out in banquet halls to show the western visitors that there is plenty in Korea even though no one is there but that one visitor and that food is picked up and taken back, etc. North Korea is the Orwellian state which no one likes, which is why it is so good on that hand as the great bad guy, but it is totally incapable of being anything but ridiculous. Every view of North Korea as this potential great power or great enemy is a projection of our "Next Nazis" tropes onto a nation which doesn't deserve it and isn't capable of it.

The challenge here is to create a World Power or a Superpower which is an Orwellian state actually capable of exerting its will on the world and presenting a threat.
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