True, but not wholly true. First, resources are fungible, so under sanction, Pyongyang could re-orient away from the army to vulnerable sectors. But they don’t, of course, which illustrates why they’re under sanction to begin with. NK is committed to being a quasi-fascist, /1
nuclearized, barracks state. Second, PY stopped providing many services decades ago, especially in rural and northern NK, where you’re basically on your own for a lot of your calories.Hence all the corruption and small markets. One of the most memorable passages of “Nothing to /2
Envy” shows a community reeling from the PDS’ collapse but nonetheless required to find the resources to put up a memorial to the leadership. Third, PY routinely rejects aid. The vanity of the Kims outranks calories for the population. All this is @freekorea_us’s point: the /3
driver of NK’s problems are not sanctions - a notion that’s practically become a fetish of the SK left at the conferences these days - but the state’s priorities - nukes, missiles, the KPA. Everyone agrees that sanctions are a blunt tool, and we’ve tried to think of creative /4
ways to only target the leadership (that’s really hard tho). But if not sanctions, then how else to punish the regime for its nuke & missile program, human rights record, criminality, provocations, and so on? If there’s any one state which deserves to be under sanction for an /5
extraordinarily long record of international (and domestic) bad behavior, it’s NK. Everyone’s open to alternatives but just giving sanctions away in hopes of better behavior would be a huge error, like when Trump gave away a POTUS meeting, and got nothing in return for it. END
