DPRK The darkness empire


If we had to redesign the geographic map of Asia following the shadow lines featuring its society, the Democratic Popular Republic of Korea (DPRK) would certainly be the darkest, the most secret and perhaps the most dangerous area of the whole continent.  Kept alive, at an international relationship level, thanks to its strategic position and to the most profitable nuclear blackmail, the DPRK, is a nation that lives at the limit of survival. Its population, reduced to starvation before silence, has no opportunity to free itself from the iron grasp of a cruel dictatorship that controls any details of the Korean society and one of the largest armies in the world. The worship of the personality of the “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-il, inherited by his father Kim Il-sung “ The Eternal President” and now passed into the hand of the young Kim Jong-un, is the element around which develops the whole apparatus of power. Like a continental fault that separates the Chinese empire at north and the USA influence area at south (South Korea), the DPRK plays this role of  buffer state, for the interests of the parties, like a political weapon for its own subsistence. However, the population seems to fight a different battle: along the semi desert avenues of Pyongyang, among the desolate streets of Kaesong as well as in the small countryside villages, in an unreal, deep silence, hidden behind the scared and lost glances, the daily struggle against hunger seems to be the only act and only answer that North Korean citizens are able to give. Squashed by the party propaganda and by the lack of any form of information  coming from the exterior world, they move like robots in grey and impersonal towns where the only bright colours are reserved to the worship of the personality of the “Great Leaders”. Their  whole life is managed by the government: control on the work and family, food rationing, prohibition to travel without authorization, prohibition to travel abroad, are just some of the restrictions imposed to the population. The black market is not sufficient to provide the quotas of food given by the government. Many try to escape from this tight country through the Northern border with China and through the Southern border with South Korea, by sea. Escaping is not easy, especially to China, where the refugees are not recognized as political refugees. With the recent death of Kim Jong-il, the reins of the country are held by the third son, Kim Jong-un, identified as the heir since a long time. The domestic situation of the DPRK remains tense like the international relationships with China, USA and South Korea. The nuclear nightmare hangs on the eastern Asia’s future and the stabilities between the nations are fragile and thin silk threads.

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