How did they manage to survive the fall of Soviet Union?
They were never a part of the Soviet Union and didn't undergo the social movement that swept Eastern Europe after the Berlin wall fell.
See also: Cuba, Vietnam
>>430318
See, this is weird. By all means, NK ought to be SHREKD by the fall of the USSR. Its whole economy was dependent on them.
강성대국
>>430323
Their economy depended on China if anything.
>>430334
Nope. Thats just recently. Because the USSR fucked up.
>>430318
Vietnam adopts Chinese-like socialism which is effectively capitalism with a little sprinkle of marxism, so I'd say it doesn't count.
Hardcore communism is adopted only in NK and Cuba nowadays. And even Cuba is beginning to open a bit to free market recently.
>>430318
Basically this. Cuba and Best Korea didn't suffer ideologically that much (Cuba did some market reforms for cash) but both of them almost did starve (Norks still are on the brink of starving every year) from the aid stopping.
>>430364
Low scale black market capitalism is pretty common in North Korea.
>>430323
They got wrecked economically pretty bad. North Korea has always been a totalitarian shithole but it wasn't as desperately impoverished as it is now until the USSR fell. I do however wonder how the government has been able to survive its complete economic collapse.
China throwing in token aid money and food shipments.
>>430287
some millions didn't
Hello, I pretend to be an expert on these sorts of things.
First thing to check out if you're curious about this is the Sino-Soviet split. During the Khrushchev regime, Stalin was vilified, rightly, for the crimes he committed, and it was proposed that perhaps capitalism and communism could co-exist peacefully. China remained stalwartly Marxist-Leninist, and began making its alliances/connections more private. In the Communist world, this split meant you could play both sides to get the most aid possible. See, Albania, Romania, the DPRK.
The DPRK initially was backed by the Soviet Union, THEN China. You have to remember that until the 70s, the DPRK had a better economy and superior living conditions to the majority of those in the South. It was a sound kick in the rear to the West to keep supporting it. Coincidentally, the Soviets abandoned the DPRK during the same time because of the split; Korea was clearly in China's sphere of influence, and by proxy the United States, if it were to assault the country, would have to go through North Korea and then China to reach the Union.
Think of it like this: maintaining the DPRK was a serious drain. It has little agriculture, a lot of resources, and few tools to recover those resources. The Chinese were sinking a lot of money in to the economy, hoping one day they would become self-sufficient. The Soviets knew they would be a) making China 'happy' by giving them the DPRK, b) give a very escalationist client state to their enemy and, c) one that would over time drain a lot of money from them.
While the DPRK still receives aid from China, after the 80s, they were mostly 'self sufficient'. Their economy is kept going only by their sales of cheap goods to SE Asia.
China interfered. They also have nukes
>>430376
Wasn't it true that Cuba under Castro ordered citizens to begin producing their own food via rooftop gardens and coupled with cheap pork they managed to survive?
>>430999
Yes there's urban agriculture everywhere in Cuba now.
>>430999
Meanwhile Baby Doc in Haiti slaughtered every pig on the island because of US pressure.
Interesting parallels really.
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1985/12/ebert-porkbarrel.html
>>431113
>"Thus PEPPADEPs most obvious-though unstated - objective is to eradicate once and for all the Haitian model of swine raising, whose `primitive' conditions may at all times be a source of nuisance for the modern swine industry of North America."
Capitalism in action.
By the way, I'm pretty sure the EU wanted to ban domestic pork production, which pissed off Eastern Europeans to no end.
arent they largely self sufficient? other than their help from china
>>430287
UN foreign aid lmao
>>430287
At first because China wanted a proxy, now because China doesn't want refugees.
By Chinese and American foreign aid. America needs an enemy to fight and China needs a buffer. Cuba and the others received no such help and would have collapsed very hard without reform.
>>430287
Resiliency. The disastrous years following the 80s forms something of a new founding mythology for a lot of Koreans, the West destroyed the USSR and they're just waiting for Koreans to drop their guard and take their independence. In an alternate history where Yeltsin's coup was stopped, the DPRK would still have the famine but wouldn't be as hard hit and wouldn't be set back after their economic gains. Maybe Kim Jong-Il still takes power, but he's less opportunity to be authoritarian, or maybe a new underground communist party forms and they depose Kim Il-Sung/Jong-Il, and form a more unified relationship with the USSR and China (maybe not China, Jiang Zemin probably wouldn't be thrilled with Left counter-counter coups in both the USSR and DPRK).
>>431147
Yes, but it's been mostly stagnant. But if Jong-Un is able to initiate all the reforms he wants the DPRK will economically take off. As long as the Americans don't do anything pants-on-head-retarded (a big 'if') we might see Jong-Un attempt to redraw the unification plan for a confederal state that his grandfather originally thought up.
http://bipolarpeninsula.com/2015/11/27/how-kim-jong-un-is-liberating-north-korea/
>>431523
Oh please, it'll be 25 years in a few months.
The Chinese needed a buffer.
Now Korea's like that friend who's really just an annoying sperglord burden but China lets him tag along because he'll do a school shooting otherwise.
Probably the UN secretly keeping them around as a boogeyman.
The halt of aid from the Soviet Union in the form of tractors, fertilizer, and fuel, coupled with a drought that hampered hydroelectric production led to the famine situation that dominated the country in the 1990s. How did the regime survive mass starvation in the countryside? Simple, they gave priority of scarce food, medical attention, and material wealth to the military, which secured their loyalty and prevented a coup. The peasants in the countryside are just that, peasants, and as long as the military and party members are kept fed the regime will maintain its control.
