How would a unified communist Korea look like nowadays?

Thande

Donor
I don't see why. In this ATL, they'd have won. If anything, they'd have less reason to give any concessions to anyone.

Although it may look that way, North Korea's ideology that it tries to stick to is not "make the country as horrible to live in as possible". Juche would work a lot better with the resources of the South to call upon.
 
Here is an interesting analysis:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/II08Dg03.html
In short, it says that united Communist Korea would be much like China or Vietnam:
In a nutshell, "a great victory in the autumn of 1950" would probably have made life for the North Korean minority (one-third of the peninsular population) much more agreeable, but only at the expense of the lives of South Korean majority. The entire country would have been pretty much like Vietnam nowadays: a combination of a still poor but fast-growing economy, with an authoritarian but relatively permissive political regime.

The North Korean military victory in 1950 would probably have put many millions of South Koreans through very tough times, killing a significant part of them in the process. But it also would have saved many North Koreans and probably have made their lives much better.
 
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I don't see why. In this ATL, they'd have won. If anything, they'd have less reason to give any concessions to anyone.

Liberalizing isn't a concession, just look at China. However, for a communist nation in danger of reunification (DDR anyone?), it is bad to liberalize, lest the government collpase because of said reunification. North Korea OTL is in such a position, and that is why they are not liberalizing. If it controlled all of Korea, there would be no option but to liberalize at a party-ordered pace (like China), as there would be no South Korea to reunify and destroy the DPRK with.
 
There's nothing, including the US, forcing North Korea to do what they are doing. Which, sort of, is the idea in the first place.

No one is ever forced to do anything, philosophically.

Imagine, though, that half of Cuba, had been occupied by US forces following the bay of pigs, which had then created West Cuba. Do you think it unlikely that this would have made Communist Cuba more intolerant of opposition and more militarist? With that the case, would such a development have a) increased the possibility or b) decreased the possibility of Cuba coming under the control of its military industrial complex?

Or, imagine that North Vietnam would never have triumphed, but Vietnam would have remained divided. Do you think such a country would have been as likely to open up in the middle of the 80s? Or would it have increased the possibility of Vietnam being ruled by die-hards hoarding weapons for a eventual second go at unification and mercilessly prosecuting all internal dissent? And, if South-Vietnam turned out to be an economic success, do you think that the North-Vietnamese die-hards would be more or less willing to reform then the government of, say, Laos, considering that such a reform would dramatically increase the risk of collapse and absorption into South-Vietnam, depriving the die-hards of their position and their ideological justification?

So no, history is not made by evil men. I'm sorry, but its much more compelx then that.
 
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Given that Cuba has a superpower just to the north, one that doesn't like them, having the Castro brothers in charge since Ike was president and still managed to not becomming a militaristic madhouse (relatively speaking).

I'd say Cuba is a semi-decent counterexample...
 
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