chankljp
Donor
There were many underlining causes that led to the infamous famine that hit North Korea (The Arduous March) from 1994-98, which killed upwards of 3 millions people in the country. With factors such as the loss of Soviet support and oil shipments with the fall of the USSR, poor government decisions and the inflexibility of the country's centrally planned economic system, etc, all playing a key role in causing the famine.
However, what really kicked off the chain of events that ended in massive food shortages was a series of natural disasters that hit the country during the mid-1990s, with a single flood in 1995 affecting as much as 30% of the country, destroying not just farmland and ruining harvests, but also wiping out the country's emergency grain reserves, and damaging key parts of the economic infrastructure (Losing 85% of it's power generation capacity) which ultimately led to the collapse of the public distribution system.
So, what I have always wondered was what would have happened if North Korea wasn't hit by the natural disasters during the 1990s' and instead, only had to deal with the underlining economic problems of their system? Would North Korea be less radicalised without the famine, and instead, be more similar to Cuba when it was dealing with the 'Special Period' in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, and ultimately slowly move towards liberalising it's economy with the formation of worker co-operatives internally and the additional establishment of free trade zones such as the one in Rason or the Industrial Zone in Kaesong to open up the country to the wider world economy?
In a DBWI that I posted on this same topic 2 years ago (https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...1990s-toppled-the-north-korean-regime.397299/), however, other users seems to think that it will be the exact opposite of what I have envisioned. They think that instead of the DPRK government being less radicalised, the regime will need to crackdown on internal dissidents even more as even with the famine averted, all the blame on the people's economic hardships would have been place upon them instead, forcing the Kim family to tighten their grip. Some even suggested that without the Arduous March crippling the country, North Korea would have been able to develop nukes years ahead of schedule without having the need to divert what little hard currency they had in order to buy food from the international market. And hence overall making the country even a greater threat to the region's stability.
So, what are everyone's thoughts on this?
However, what really kicked off the chain of events that ended in massive food shortages was a series of natural disasters that hit the country during the mid-1990s, with a single flood in 1995 affecting as much as 30% of the country, destroying not just farmland and ruining harvests, but also wiping out the country's emergency grain reserves, and damaging key parts of the economic infrastructure (Losing 85% of it's power generation capacity) which ultimately led to the collapse of the public distribution system.
So, what I have always wondered was what would have happened if North Korea wasn't hit by the natural disasters during the 1990s' and instead, only had to deal with the underlining economic problems of their system? Would North Korea be less radicalised without the famine, and instead, be more similar to Cuba when it was dealing with the 'Special Period' in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, and ultimately slowly move towards liberalising it's economy with the formation of worker co-operatives internally and the additional establishment of free trade zones such as the one in Rason or the Industrial Zone in Kaesong to open up the country to the wider world economy?
In a DBWI that I posted on this same topic 2 years ago (https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...1990s-toppled-the-north-korean-regime.397299/), however, other users seems to think that it will be the exact opposite of what I have envisioned. They think that instead of the DPRK government being less radicalised, the regime will need to crackdown on internal dissidents even more as even with the famine averted, all the blame on the people's economic hardships would have been place upon them instead, forcing the Kim family to tighten their grip. Some even suggested that without the Arduous March crippling the country, North Korea would have been able to develop nukes years ahead of schedule without having the need to divert what little hard currency they had in order to buy food from the international market. And hence overall making the country even a greater threat to the region's stability.
So, what are everyone's thoughts on this?