North Korea Documentary

DW, the English language German channel that has the nice habit of releasing some excellent documentaries, put out a few days ago the best documentary about North Korea that I've ever watched. All the dictator's men explores the topic of how a country suffering a devastating economical blockage can afford a Nuclear Program (not even keeping the standard of living of its population extremely low would seem enough...). You should watch the documentary, but long in short we can say that by exporting workers to other countries (Mongolia, China, Eastern Europe) where they'll work hard for a salary that will go directly to the pocket of the North Korean government! so yes, basically they are exporting slaves...

The second half of the documentary is also particularly interesting but in a totally different sense. This time (almost for the first time in a Western documentary) they give us a not so gloomy perspective of life in Pyongang. In the last years there's been a construction boom to try to better accommodate the population, and there seems to be a real scientific elite. Scientific development in North Korea would be a really interesting topic for another documentary. From what I read somewhere time ago, due to the sanctions, North Korea is supposed to design and build good part of the technological gadgets (TV Screens, smartphones, laptops...) used by the population. Also, they are supposed to have "an army of hackers ready to attack the West..." Regardless of how real this "cyber-army" is, I think the country has an important level of know-how in multiple matters.

I won't end this article without short mention to my thoughts about the North Korean nuclear program. For sure I don't like them to have nuclear weapons, as I don't like that any other country possesses them. This said, until the day that all the other Nuclear Powers decide to destroy all their weapons, I think they are in their perfect right to develop a Nuclear Program. Furthermore, I don't understand why the world is so worried about North Korea developing these weapons. Whatever I think of their dictator, I don't see North Korea as a crazy society willing to annihilate the rest of the planet. What really should worry, scare and drive us crazy is the fact that a Fundamentalist, medieval country like Pakistan joined the group of Nuclear Powers many years ago. At any point some "religious" leader could decide to wipe out the infidels from the face of the Earth...