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Russia Writes Off 90 Percent of North Korea Debt
jones_supa (887896) writes "In Russia, the State Duma (lower house) on Friday ratified a 2012 agreement to write off the bulk of North Korea's debt. It said the total debt stood at $10.96 billion as of Sept. 17, 2012. Russia sees this lucrative in advancing the plans to build a gas pipe and railroad through North to South Korea. The rest of the debt, $1.09 billion, would be redeemed during the next 20 years, to be paid in equal installments every six months. The outstanding debt owed by North Korea will be managed by Russia's state development bank, Vnesheconombank. Moscow has been trying to diversify its energy sales to Asia away from Europe, which, in its turn, wants to cut its dependence on oil and gas from the erstwhile Cold War foe. Russia's state-owned top natural producer Gazprom is dreaming shipping 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually through the Koreas. Russia has written off debts to a number of impoverished Soviet-era allies, including Cuba. North Korea's struggling communist economy is just 2 percent of the size of neighboring South's."
Russia sees this lucrative in advancing the plans to build a gas pipe and railroad through North to South Korea
Seriously? Lay critical crucial infrastructure through North Korea to South Korea?
There's no way Pyongyang would manipulate those rails and pipes in a fit of political pique that seems to happen, oh, once every eight months. Absolutely now way.
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In long term, massively. South Korea will get much cheaper gas, and it might have a stabilizing effect and North Korea will likely be even more closely tied to South through the financial benefits of the functioning pipeline, such as transit fees.
The main problem is that North Korea may start behaving like Ukraine with the gas, stealing it from the pipeline and even using it as a weapon against South Korea. But potential of getting gas pipeline in South Korea will likely far outweigh the cons.
It's $11 Billion. I know that sounds like a lot, but it's not really. Not on a Global scale. It might help stabilize North Korea a bit though. They're a poor enough nation to notice it.
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Compared to North Korea, Cuba is a beacon of democracy and human rights. They're just a banana republic that pissed off the wrong people.
I don't know about Korea, but some nation of obese tv-lovin' asshats decided to embargo international trade in...farm machinery, food, medicine and other important things. "Ya, let's starve the shit outta their children. That'll teach 'em good."
Did you know that most of the "evil commies" of yesteryear are dead and gone? The US believes that making sure children starve and die is okay foreign policy. That's just fucked up.
The irony is that most of the people they pissed off are long dead, and half of Cuba now lives in Miami.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Compare Cuba to Domincan Republic. Both are quite similar except for the politics - Dominican Republic had an US sponsored coup and is very much capitalist because of that. Still Cuba has a higher GDP and a higher HDI. Or take Jamaica. A capitalist constitutional monarchy and a commonwealth realm with close ties to the Brits. Still, same here, Cuba has a higher GDP and a higher HDI.
Funny thing though. North Korea used to have a milder form of government than South Korea and the people were also better off - up to the early 1970ies. Then the former went downwards, while the latter shot upwards.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It was founded by Kim Il-Sung, who had communist ideals, yes. However it has ventured far, far, away from those ideals. Indeed the present day US is vastly closer to being an ideal free-market state than North Korea is to being anything that can be approximated as being close to actual communism.
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That's not the enlightened view. Everything that goes wrong is always someone else's fault. It's the #1 Truth of progressive thinking. Poor people are poor because someone else made them poor. If socialist policies don't fix everything, it's because someone else interfered. If all the someone elses could just be burned or imprisoned or gassed or reeducated, society's problems could finally be solved and progressive paradise would be achieved.
Assassinating North Korean leadership would be fairly easy for US today if it wanted to do it.
The reason it's not been done is the fact that sudden power vacuum would cause a collapse of North Korean state, and North Koreans have proven to be extremely difficult to acclimate to South Korean society, where they would massively flood to.
Believe it or not, the biggest proponent of keeping the current leadership in power is South Korea. They are the ones who would take by far the biggest hit from North's collapse. They advocate long term assimilation policy instead, where North Korean leadership is slowly made more and more dependent on South's money until eventually they have to open their own country enough for cultural exchange to start to happen, demolishing the power base.
Is in American's best interest to become an international pariah and for the average American income to fall?
Oh, PLEASE tell us all how the Arab Spring was Obama's fault... And Fuck Israel.
Nobody takes us seriously because we started two wars over bad intelligence. No one takes us seriously because we talk about democracy and freedom and then invade countries that don't do what we say. Nobody takes us seriously because we've overthrown democratically elected governments. No one takes us seriously because we're a f'in joke.... We're a child with a giant stick running around hitting other children
It's weird, but plenty of countries are taken seriously without waving their military around. Japan's taken seriously, and they don't even have a military to speak of! We wield enough economic and cultural power that we shouldn't even have to use our military. And strangely enough, when we DO use diplomacy and sanctions, stuff gets done.