Read and weep
On wiki you can find under North Korea economy the sentence "Experimentation in small scale entrepreneurship took place from 2009 to 2013, and although there continue to be legal uncertainties this has developed into a significant sector.[37] By 2016 economic liberalisation had progressed to the extent that both locally-responsible and state industrial enterprises give the state 20% to 50% of their output, selling the remainder to buy raw materials with market-based prices in akin to a free market.[38]"
Sry to break it to you but your media has been lying about everything they possibly can.
Okay but reading that article itself seems like a very thinly veiled propaganda push.
If the streets are so beautiful and the businesses so bustling, where are the pictures? When Vice was allowed into NK, they were shown fake storefronts and what were pretty clearly actors set to seem like businessmen. That's not just from The Interview, that actually happened. If you want me to believe that a country that has some of the toughest sanctions in history, that spends an exorbitant amount of very limited money on nuclear funding, and sells drugs out of the back of their embassies is "bustling", you're going to have to show me some irrefutable evidence.
Small scale liberalization is easy as hell and is not a good indicator that the nation as a whole is being liberalized. And a 20-50% product tax? That's draconian, and hardly a sign of liberalisation.
I have seen the Vice Docu, at least the one with Rodman.
But you know what, you convinced me. The US should really bomb NK, the country will finally be prosperous and free again. Look how well that worked in the middle east.
It seems you are one of the few people who still believes in the warmongering mainstream media. Just stay on the internet for a while and your soul might be cleansed.
I repeat, once again for clarity, I am not supportive of war after war. The war in the middle east is/was a shitshow. Period. That does not mean that ending a nuclear war before it begins is a bad idea. Those two aren't connected.
Because the US never made that very same argument against the Iraq?
The argument was not made against "the Iraq".
The chemical weapons threat was a threat against innocent people. Regardless of whether or not there ever was any legitimate threat of chemical weapons in the area, there is a HUGE difference between the use of chemical weapons in small, defenseless villages and nuking San Francisco or Tokyo.
You're still using the same broken argument. Iraq/Afghanistan is not the same as Korea. This is a global, existential threat. There is a difference between a global, existential threat and some religious extremists that pissed off the wrong, oil hungry government.
You and I agree on more than you think, but for you to say that because of Iraq and Afghanistan, a war with a nuclear megalomaniac is inherently illegitimate is illogical.
That is false. NK is a threat to Japan and SK and especially SK does not want America to handle this, they want diplomacy and not bombs.
Nobody wants bombs. The MAD principle still very much rings true. Nobody wants to see Seoul melt, just as much as they don't want to see Pyongyang or San Fran melt.
If you think that a nuclear war with NK will be localized to NK, Japan, SK, and the US, you're severely mistaken. Nuclear war will not stay localized, and even then, we're talking about millions of lives at risk.
That's why the world would all benefit from diplomacy. Nobody is arguing against that. BUT. If it does have to go ballistic, a joint UN war resolution, likely to be lead by the US, would be far less likely to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. The strike would likely be with conventional, non-nuclear weapons. I'm not entirely confident that one could say the same if we let the Kim regime strike the first blow.
There is nothing false in calling a nuclear hegemony that speaks on striking populated city centers of sovereign nations with nuclear weapons a global threat. I feel like that's at least one point we can agree on.