A Different Form of a Threat

North Korea’s poverty since the USSR cut off the gravy train of aid led their rulers to focus their resources on nukes to deter invasion (and extort money from potential targets) and on the secret police to control the people and the largely defunded military. I coined the strategy “kooks, spooks, and nukes.”

America is going hard against the nuclear angle with sanctions, missile defenses, allied support, and offers of diplomacy. So the nukes part of the regime survival plan is shaky.

And about the secret police pillar:

The secret police have become more obviously corrupt, especially those along the Chinese border charged with making sure the border guards enforced the laws. The secret police were soon corrupted up there and that rot has infected more and more levels of supervisors. It has reached the point where deputy directors of the secret police have to be sent to the border to assess the damage and try to convince subordinates to obey the laws they enforce.

Corrupt spooks? Uh oh. The kooks are all by themselves with this trend.

And the people are not so much poor, exploited, and oppressed as they are poor, exploited, and cut adrift from any state support. How do the people adapt and act under these circumstances over time?

Perhaps the kooks can survive this as they have survived past problems post-Soviet subsidies. But the situation is quite new.