AHC : Make North Korea the Best Korea

Sumeragi

Banned
If you make Kim Jong-Il a bit more rational and less paranoid then NK could've opened up like China did and thus bought in a load of foreign money. It would still be a brutal dictatorship but at least they would have money.

It would also help to make Park Chung Hee have more US support. But I think that is a tad ASB. Afterall, PCH was a snob and open about it to his cabinet. He once referred to Jimmy Carter as the son of a peanut farmer (true, but in the yes of PCH this made him a peasant and in no position to tell him what to do) and didn't like being told what to do by him.
First, not sure what you mean by "It would also help to make Park Chung Hee have more US support".

Second, Park himself was a son of a good-for-nothing farmer, and he was always portraying himself as one of the people (which he actually was, until the death of his wife sent him into a side road of feasts and nice women).
 
Those were told to me by a friend from SK. Being from there I presumed he would be right about such things.
 
Let's see, Kim Il-Sung conveniently dies in 1955 in a plane crash and his son is too young to succeed him so the Kim Dynasty is nipped in the bud.

Instead Pak Chong-ok, leader of the Soviet Koreans faction, comes out on top and ushers in an era of deStalinization and thereby follows Khrushchev's line. Later North Korea's leadership starts reforming in the 70s and 80s a la Deng Xiaoping as their centrally planned economy starts showing flaws.

Defence spending ITTL is high, but not like OTL. The army of NK doesn't exceed 500.000 men in total, it's main battle tanks are the T-72, the T-80 and two dozen T-90s purchased from Russia in the 1990s, and then are several hundreds T-55s and T-62s in mothballed; the airforce mostly has MiG-29s and Sukhoi Su-25s, but there are also still MiG-21s, MiG-23s and some Su-22s in motball facilities. NK has no nuclear weapons program (it does have nuclear energy for peaceful purposes), but does posses chemical and biological weapons that can be put on IRBMs.

South Korea sees Park Chung-hee die in the 1960s and a different military dictator takes over whose economic policy thoroughly fucks up the South Korean economy. By the 1980s, South Korea has turned into a banana republic reliant on US aid to keep up military superiority...

By 2011, the authoritarian, socialist North Korea has achieved GDP growth rates up of to 5-6% annually with a 21.500 dollar GDP per capita (about the same as Portugal) while South Korea is on a similar level as Russia with a 10.000 dollar GDP per capita, high levels of corruption, poverty, crime and an aging infrastructure.

North Korea, for all intents and purposes, is now the best of the two Koreas. It has a mining sector, steel industry, a booming consumer electronics industry, a highstanding car industry and the country gets lots of tourists, among them many hikers and mountain climbers who want to climb North Korea's mountain ranges.
 

Sumeragi

Banned
Those were told to me by a friend from SK. Being from there I presumed he would be right about such things.
It's an unfortunate world where when it comes to Park, you're better off listening to a foreign source because of all the anti and pro Park sentiments screwing people's POVs.


Let's see, Kim Il-Sung conveniently dies in 1955 in a plane crash and his son is too young to succeed him so the Kim Dynasty is nipped in the bud.

Instead Pak Chong-ok, leader of the Soviet Koreans faction, comes out on top and ushers in an era of deStalinization and thereby follows Khrushchev's line. Later North Korea's leadership starts reforming in the 70s and 80s a la Deng Xiaoping as their centrally planned economy starts showing flaws.
That'll be difficult to happen because by 1955 the Manchurian Faction already had hegemony over the military and the security forces. If Kim was to die, his comrades would most likely set up a junta which would rule until either they choose a leader among themselves or until the son grows up.
 

Sumeragi

Banned
Don't like the sound of that.
Why? Having the Soviet Faction come on top would be the best alternative, since they were the most liberal of the remaining three factions at the time (Manchurian, Soviet, and Yenan) and would have likely been able to implicate policies that kept DPRK growing.
 
I don't think a Russian born man could rise to take control of North Korea. Its not as if he was actually Korean.

Why not if he has full Soviet-backing?

After all in the U.S.S.R itself you had a bloody Georgian ruling as God-Emperor for about 30 years.
 
It's an unfortunate world where when it comes to Park, you're better off listening to a foreign source because of all the anti and pro Park sentiments screwing people's POVs.
I came to the same conclusion this afternoon after some research. But still, lesson learned. :D
 
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