>>533383while SK is richer than NK, the comparison is quite funny: most south koreans live in massive apartment complexes too. (indeed,
because it is richer, i would wager than
more south koreans live there - since north korea is more rural.)
also south korea is an insane and fascinating place to contrast with Japan. it was both rich-ish and dismally poor in the 1990s leading to a string of insane disasters: bridge collapse (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seongsu_Bridge_disaster ), mall collapse (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampoong_Department_Store_collapse ), gas explosion (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Daegu_gas_explosions), overloaded ferry sinking (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Seohae )… and while Japan's politics are a constant game of "how high will the LDP's score be in the game they always win?" with two brief interludes of other people totally fucking their chance to change this, South Korean politics are comically volatile yet also stable: no party seems to last longer than about 5 years, but the broad exisence of a contest between right-wing and centrist-democratic parties remains constant.
south korea is a country where after Park Chung-Hee staged a military coup, the person running against him in the subsequent election and trying to restore democracy ran as a
McCarthyite by attacking Park - a right-wing military dictator! - as a
communist, which (ironically) cost him support because there were quite a few socialist sympthisers. it is a country where Park (nominally, you'd think, a US puppet) signed an agreement on the terms of reunification negotiations with Kim Il-Sung that deeply angered the Americans - since it basically argued this was a Korean issue and no foreign powers should be involved. it is a country where his daughter, Park Geun-hye, could win a democratic election (perhaps with some aid by a corrupt KCIA, but still a more legitimate win than anything y
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