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Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

This is probably the first time in my life that I read something not negative about North Korea.

Western propaganda is not what it used to be ;-)

There's a negative side:

I'm fairly certain that if the greater North Korean people could catch these birds to eat, they would disappear. But the birds are in a security zone. Because the people can't get to the birds (or any other food) the people are starving to death.

Thanks to this coverage, NK will likely begin to send out military groups seasonally to harvest the birds.

They're not starving because they can't get to the birds. There are different reasons for that.

But, if they could reach the birds they wouldn't be starving.

NK has 25 million people. If their government can't feed the population, catching some birds won't make a meaningful difference.

... Unless you're one of the people eating the birds.

Eh, even this ends up being pretty negative. It's basically, "Birds thrive because North Korea is a total shithole, which leaves lots of undeveloped shoreline."

That was my first thought too.

Would it be even possible in today's world to have a country that is purposefully underdeveloped/feudal, but without an oppressive regime?

Bhutan would appear to fit the bill.

Nope. Bhutan created a mess of a refugee crisis when they evicted all Nepalese-speaking citizens in 1990. [0], [1]

There are still some refugees living in camps in Nepal, and it took over 10 years before some Western countries agreed to take them in. They are still slowly being resettled.

I know some of these refugees who spent the first 17 or 18 years of their lives in squalid camp conditions. They are lovely people.

[0] http://www.oocities.org/bhutaneserefugees/forcedeviction.htm...

[1] http://www.hurights.or.jp/wcar/E/doc/other/Refugee/AHURA.htm

Does the Amish country count?

and do native american countries/territories count too?

It might depend on which one. Modest lifestyles in those places isn't always by choice

What? I'm a little confused about what you think Native American areas are like and why?

My point was less about what they are like, but more alluding to the fact that they are their own nations.

That would be a myth, and not quite what "sovereignty" means in that context.

I wouldn't call North Korea purposefully underdeveloped. It just refuses to accept foreign investment like every other country on the face of the planet. It's modernizing, albeit slowly and on its own terms.

> It's modernizing, albeit slowly and on its own terms.

On the terms of its dictatorship. Not on the terms of the people.

South Korea also modernized on the terms of its dictatorship. It did so very quickly, though.

Rate of modernization has little to do with the form of government.

The trade embargoes haven't help.

If we'd been more active in engaging North Korea on friendly terms, maybe they would have developed along a similar route as China.

It seems like we're trying to squeeze them till they collapse, and North Korea are understandably doing all they can to be self-sufficient and not appear weak and desperate.

The problem is NK is nothing like China. NK leadership is nothing like China, opening them up would only make them militarily more dangerous to deal with. But I agree with you that there needs to be and end to this, but I have no idea how.

It actually describes Australia, which for the most part is uninhabited and undeveloped, and has massive amounts of mostly untouched wilderness.

Take a land mass the size of the lower 48 states, and take out all the people except for Oregon on the west coast and Florida on the east coast. Remove nearly all the interstates and all but three of the railroads. That is Australia.

And yet their hills are virtually stripped bare of trees as they are cut down for fuel.

IMHO, you should use term "Planet Earth Propaganda", because more than half of our planet is against NK. ;-)

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