As we all know, the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is the rogue state exceptional in it's mixture of brutality, batshit insanity, willingness to threathen a major power with war, sheer isolation from the rest of the world, and shitty living standards, so, what other countries do you think have the potential to have become much like the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" and why?
What countries could have become North Korea-esque dictatorships?
- Thread starter Whiteshore
- Start date
I have very difficult to imaginate UK becoming NK style country. Authotarian nation is with right situations possible but hardly NK.
For me more plausible such nation might be in Eastern Europe or Africa.
Many argue Albania was the North Korea of Europe when it was communist, except for lashing out like NK does. Eritrea is also quite similar: brutal dictator with a personality cult, isolated and poor.
What about a more belligerant Turkmenistan which somehow acquires ex-Soviet nukes? They have the crazy dictatorship part nailed down due to Niyazov (he changed the names of the months of the year and days of the week, for starters).
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Albania had a good try, but lacked the industrial base to do much harm beyond laying mines in the Adriatic.
Tito's Yugoslavia could have gone 'To The Dark Side' as he struggled to elude the USSR's grasp. Instead, all the bottled-up grudges 'blew off' later...
Had the Manhattan Project been restricted to a few, semi-tactical, Uranium 'gun-type' bombs, and the Japanese not, um, 'Seen The Light' per OTL, perhaps. If the US took a really bloody nose(*) on first phase of invasion, they might decide the main islands would be far, far too costly, decide to 'attrite' them instead. By the time US fire-bombers have razed everything above 'large village', the islands are semi-Medieval on the surface, with craft work-shops & small factories underground, total dispersal, total paranoia...
(*) Murphy's Law rampant, aka ' Gallipoli#2': Anzio break-out failure, Normandy beach mistakes, the weather turning nasty, a tsunami (!!), 'Human Wave' attacks by civilians shielding kamikase troops etc etc etc...
Several South American countries swung unto 'crazy'. Argentina's Junta made a good try, were very nearly at war with Chile before invading the Falklands. Chile's Pinochet' death-squads killed a LOT of by-standers while fighting the rabid Marxists and, um, vice-versa. If Ernesto "Che" Guevara had not died in Bolivia, he might just have carved a paranoid Marxist enclave out of the border zones...
Cuba was in the running, but the Castro brothers seem to have kept the place 'borderline sane' by force of personality. Sending Che off to make mischief else-where surely helped...
Could Venezuela yet 'lose the plot' ?? IMHO, NO, the borders are too open...
Tito's Yugoslavia could have gone 'To The Dark Side' as he struggled to elude the USSR's grasp. Instead, all the bottled-up grudges 'blew off' later...
Had the Manhattan Project been restricted to a few, semi-tactical, Uranium 'gun-type' bombs, and the Japanese not, um, 'Seen The Light' per OTL, perhaps. If the US took a really bloody nose(*) on first phase of invasion, they might decide the main islands would be far, far too costly, decide to 'attrite' them instead. By the time US fire-bombers have razed everything above 'large village', the islands are semi-Medieval on the surface, with craft work-shops & small factories underground, total dispersal, total paranoia...
(*) Murphy's Law rampant, aka ' Gallipoli#2': Anzio break-out failure, Normandy beach mistakes, the weather turning nasty, a tsunami (!!), 'Human Wave' attacks by civilians shielding kamikase troops etc etc etc...
Several South American countries swung unto 'crazy'. Argentina's Junta made a good try, were very nearly at war with Chile before invading the Falklands. Chile's Pinochet' death-squads killed a LOT of by-standers while fighting the rabid Marxists and, um, vice-versa. If Ernesto "Che" Guevara had not died in Bolivia, he might just have carved a paranoid Marxist enclave out of the border zones...
Cuba was in the running, but the Castro brothers seem to have kept the place 'borderline sane' by force of personality. Sending Che off to make mischief else-where surely helped...
Could Venezuela yet 'lose the plot' ?? IMHO, NO, the borders are too open...
CaliGuy
Banned
Possibly; after all, wasn't Ceausecu the only Soviet puppet dictator who was willing to fight back against revolutionaries in 1989? If so, I could certainly see him creating a North Korea-style police state in Romania had he survived and remained in power.
CaliGuy
Banned
For one, had the Soviet coup plotters succeeded in August 1991, I could see the Soviet Union becoming a North Korea-lite regime due to the massive hostility that the new Soviet regime will likely receive from the West--thus causing this new Soviet regime to become more paranoid and isolationist.
Bear in mind that NK has a geographic "advantage" for becoming a backward hermit hellhole. Korea is a peninsula, so NK is, by definition, surrounded on two sides by water. Its northern border is the goddamn Yalu River as well. And to top it off, its border with SK is marked by a metric shit-ton of land mines. You can try to swim it or navigate a field of deadly, deadly land mines. And this is why NK is able to exist.
Now pretend NK was in the middle of South America, say, where Venezuela is. Venezuela borders three countries and has actual land borders with them. If people in Venezuela really don't like what's going on, the government would have to put mines in a hell of a lot of border to keep them in. It is not feasible.
Any nation that tries to go the NK route needs an ideal geographic position to do so.
Now pretend NK was in the middle of South America, say, where Venezuela is. Venezuela borders three countries and has actual land borders with them. If people in Venezuela really don't like what's going on, the government would have to put mines in a hell of a lot of border to keep them in. It is not feasible.
Any nation that tries to go the NK route needs an ideal geographic position to do so.
So island nations would be well-suited to go down the DPRK route?
Perhaps an Anatolian Turkey that didn't perform quite as well in the Turkish War of Independence and so lost Thrace and much of the east, and became very bitter and introverted as a result? They'd only need to mine the eastern border then which is already quite mountainous.
Also lost the Kurdish and Arab region and had part of it occupied by Italy
The Kurdish region is included in the Eastern part I had them losing, as for an Italian occupation it would have to be vacated by the time the dictatorship is set up otherwise that would be another border they'd have to mine.
Fun fact: Belarus inherited quite a few ex-Soviet nukes, so a NK-esque Belarus could have kept said nukes instead of handing them over.