How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea - Jordan Weissmann

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-kim-jong-il-starved-north-korea/250244/












With the USSR gone, the prospects for a small, isolated, neo-Stalinist regime looked rather grim. The government could have opened up its economy, much like Vietnam did with great success. Instead, North Korea chose to stay frozen in time.
"The mystery is why the North Koreans did not understand the historical magnitude of the change around them," Noland says.