I worked in the Japan Section of the Asia Dept., old Manufactuers Hanover Trust Co. in NYC, while doing my night school MBA at NYU at bank expense, while doing 2 lunch seminars on both domestic and international credit every week, being aide de camp to the then President of MHTCo. to the World Bank/IMF Annual Conference in 1969 held in D.C.I don't think North Korea is controllable. I do think the situation is manageable, though the management will not be entirely satisfactory. Their nuclear capacity is subject to deterrence, and their perennial shortages of food and fuel are a point of vulnerability that can be exploited. Internal political change will come, but it will be internally driven and it could take a long time (or it may not; we don't know). I don't see any external action that is likely to accelerate the process.
This self serving b. s. is said to say that I think, as I have written here before, than mainland China, still being politically a communist governance system, is the most akin model for N. Korea to follows.
N. Korea could start by setting up a free trade zone with S. Korea on one side, and another such free trade zone on the China side, and offer to set up a third N. Korean free trade zone, if welcomed to do so, in Japan!
You need to think outside the box, and stop trying to reinvent the classical Japan and German post WW II models which can't work for N. Korea, ever, my view.
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