The entire economic strategy of the North Korean regime in recent decades has involved playing a game of brinksmanship with pussy willow US administrations, blackmailing the US into giving it funds and food so it can keep its people alive a little longer, and using the bulk of said funds to arm its next game of brinksmanship.
It is always tempting to label the regime crazy, but this is dead wrong. The strategy of unpredictability is entirely rational because up until very recently, it had worked.
Donald Trump has called the North Korean’s bluff, and in just a year and a half has forced Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table. The God Emperor has a very highly attuned people radar. Having previously exchanged Twitter barbs with Rocket Man, he understands that now is the time to pump Kim’s ego.
And what a pump this is:
This is sheer genius. The lazy will dismiss it as cheesy propaganda but in doing so will miss the entire point: cheesy propaganda is precisely how the communist regime communicates, thus Trump is speaking their language, and changing reality in the process.
The vision he has presented is not at all outlandish. The video basically shows what South Korea looks like, and makes the point that North Korea could be the same if it negotiates in good faith and adopts a system more like the South. North and South Korea are indeed home to the same people, and it is only natural that they should live together.
It has even been suggested in dark corners of the internet that Kim Jong un could step aside given the right persuasion. I can see The Don giving him a personal security guarantee and putting him up in one of his hotels in the States. Kim would go down in history as the guy who forced the US President to look after him for the rest of his life in exchange for agreeing not to wipe the USA off the map, or something. Kim would love it.
Thinking well ahead, although the North would be a huge economic burden to the South for some time under a reunification, similar to the situation in Germany, in time the direct experience of what life is actually like under communism for those from the North may provide some bulwark against encroaching Cultural Marxism and defiance of traditional values, if future generations of Koreans get too fat and lazy due to sustained peace and prosperity.
