North Korea to follow Germany's model

[Husar]

that's not what the North Koreans claimed to have found:it's bit more boring than that.

So is the pirate bay story, was a hoax after all, which really surprised me of course, I cried for a few hours.

As for Kim doing a bad job, the question is whether he is really in charge or just the figurehead of an oligarchy of military commanders who demand the hardline stance to manifest their own power. My impression is that he cannot really decide everything alone and there's a weird mix of him being the muchacho uno and everybody playing along with it but behind the curtains he cannot really do whatever he wants without the military leaders. Otherwise the discrepancy between the things people say who talked to Kim directly and the official state output is hard to explain other than by saying he's lieing through his teeth to every stranger who trusts him somewhat. The latter would mean that his studies in Switzerland left no impression on him at all and he actually believes North Korea is better than what he saw in Switzerland. Better for him at least but if you look at his "luxury", it still looks worse than what ordinary swiss people can probably afford.

Wait, I'm starting to drift, what I wanted to say is that the capitalist aggression pact that China and the USA brought to the UN forced NK to act, he wanted to talk to Obama but Obama just sent a faceless message of punishment instead. Way to screw this up, Obama.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I would compare North Korea's political situation (very loosely) to that of Japan towards the end of WWII.

Which would've been an apt comparison if it were not utterly wrong. It's relatively well documented what kind of country Japan was, and it was no North Korea and certainly never aspired to be.

[Papewaio]

Which would've been an apt comparison if it were not utterly wrong. It's relatively well documented what kind of country Japan was, and it was no North Korea and certainly never aspired to be.

I wouldn't say utterly wrong.

Admittedly Imperial Japan was a colonial super power that steam rolled through East Asia. Killed civilian prisoners and POWs by the thousand, its own people were starving during the end of the war and it was a problem during occupation to get enough food staples to the people. The Japanese people adored their god emperor too and it was a very fine line to be trod in trying him for war crimes and accept mass rebellion or let him live so that his subjects would be peaceful.

So all in all North Korea looks a much more benign toothless tiger compared with Imperial Japan. Both suffered from the cult of personality and militarization of both economy and political sphere. Which eroded personal freedoms because people would unite against an enemy real or not whilst letting slide laws that were there for the good of the political-military apparatus not the people.