Odds are that the Kims and probably a number of people at the top would be worse-off if things changed.
I mean, when you compare North Korea to the poorer parts of the periphery that capitulated to neoliberal capital - Haiti, Liberia, the former Yugoslavian states, Argentina right now, the Philippines, Lebanon or Iraq or Gaza - even the lay resident is getting out reasonably well off. They aren’t living in an active war zone, they’ve got a backwards but still functional economy, and they’re even making inroads on foreign trade at long last.
The xenophobic siege mentality of the Kims appears to have spared them a far worse fate, just by keeping the country isolated from shit like COVID and The War on Terror. They never got the windfall of the 20th century industrial economy, but they also didn’t get systematically wiped out like American Natives or Black Angolans or Rohingya Muslims.
I mean, when you compare North Korea to the poorer parts of the periphery that capitulated to neoliberal capital - Haiti, Liberia, the former Yugoslavian states, Argentina right now, the Philippines, Lebanon or Iraq or Gaza - even the lay resident is getting out reasonably well off. They aren’t living in an active war zone, they’ve got a backwards but still functional economy, and they’re even making inroads on foreign trade at long last.
The xenophobic siege mentality of the Kims appears to have spared them a far worse fate, just by keeping the country isolated from shit like COVID and The War on Terror. They never got the windfall of the 20th century industrial economy, but they also didn’t get systematically wiped out like American Natives or Black Angolans or Rohingya Muslims.