I think this is a really good piece, particularly because of the explanations of the nuances of China's policy on North Korea. Too often people claim China is North Korea's allie, but the truth is much more complex and multi layered than that.
Yesterday I was talking to a friend who ran a Twitter botnet of sorts and was telling me he outsourced a lot of his menial tasks to Indian workers, but found out that a lot of those workers would outsource work to China. Realizing now that some of those Chinese workers may be outsourcing the same work to North Korea.
yes...imagine if samsung or hyundai gain unprecedented access to this ultra ultra cheap labor force.
overall the article is bang on, the only people that benefit is north koreans and maybe south koreans but give the reunification a few decades or more, the end result is a shift of the status quo of regional power for neighboring countries.
Actually, unification might make this less attractive, as wages likely would rise in the North, changing the economics of doing this kind of stuff (I guess a bit in the way the abolition of slavery changed economies)
This is why Russia is more involved with eastern europe and China rather than Korea and most activities in the Pacific. Unless it's stationing battle ships off the Australian coast during a visit by Putin [1]
North Korea is directly connected to russia. They share a border...
> This is why Russia is more involved with eastern europe and China rather than Korea and most activities in the Pacific.
Russia is involved in the denuclearization talks. Also, they are involved in the pacific. They hold countless war games to ward off threats from china, japan and north korea. Their main naval port is in the pacific.
I notice that there is a blob of color right on the border to NK. So even if most are over towards Europe, its not just bears and reindeer over on the pacific side...
