#andrei lankov

[camewiththeframe]

“To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence."

—Andrei Lankov

[psychicheart]

To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.

— Andrei Lankov

[indizombie]

Getting foreign investment into Russia is difficult; businesspeople are not particularly eager, as they have doubts about the security of their investments and the investment climate is not particularly good. And because of sanctions, it is getting even worse. The combination of a bad track record of foreign investment and sanctions make it highly unlikely that people are going to invest in the Russian Far East. The Russian government has spent the last 30 years trying to get people there, but cannot even halt the gradual reduction of the local population [which dropped from 10 million in Soviet days to just 6.3 million at present]. People do not see why they should go to an area which is far away, has poor communications with the main part of Russia, has a pretty bad climate and would require a great deal of hard work.

Andrei Lankov, a Russian expert at Seoul’s Kookmin University

[its-all-down-hill]

[repinipi]

Why North Korea’s leaders refuse to emulate the Chinese/Vietnamese

“Reforms worked in Vietnam and China because their situation is different [from North Korea]—simply put, Chinese reform succeeded because there is not a prosperous ‘South China’ whose size would be comparable with that of the China of the Communist Party. The prosperity of, for example, Japan or the United States is well known in China, to be sure, but is not seen by the common Chinese as politically relevant—after all, those are different nations, with different histories, so their remarkable prosperity does not necessarily demonstrate the inefficiency of the Communist Party rule . . . .

Neither Vietnam nor China has a rich ‘other’ with which to seek unification: Taiwan is too small to have a palpable impact on the average Chinese income in the event of unification, and South Vietnam ceased to exist in 1975. Thus, for the time being the common Chinese seemingly accept the same bargain accepted by the South Koreans or Taiwanese of the 1960s: they put up with authoritarian rule as long as they enjoy stability and economic growth. In North Korea, due to the allure of the rich and free South, such a bargain has very thin chances of success, and the Pyongyang leaders of Kim Jong Il’s generation were well aware of this.

Reform is impossible without a considerable relaxation of the information blockade and daily surveillance . . . .

It is doubtful whether the North Korean population would acquiesce to enduring a further decade of destitution followed by a couple of decades of relative poverty and backbreaking work if they were to learn about another Korea—affluent, free, glamorous, and attractive. Would they agree to tolerate a reforming but still authoritarian and repressive regime on the assumption that this regime will on some distant day deliver a prosperity comparable to that of present-day South Korea? The North Koreans, unfortunately for their leaders, are much more likely to react to the new knowledge and new freedom in a different way: by removing the current regime and unifying with South Korea in order to partake in the fabulous prosperity of the wildly rich South.”

[leninsbody]

North Korea ends Congress with pomp ©Reuters North Korea wrapped up a rare Party Congress with an enormous tightly choreographed parade through the centre of Pyongyang on Tuesday, complete with goose-stepping students, models of nuclear missiles and wailing women in traditional Korean dress.

[volverepronto]

To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.

Andrei Lankov

[quottyquotes]

To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.

- Andrei Lankov