The World and I

Quite often this year in my development economics lectures I have seen the picture of two countries at night: one with loads of white dots, representing lights, and the other with one white dot. The point of these pictures is to show how what was formerly one country, has now, after splitting, developed so differently: North Korea following the path of communism and South Korea the path of capitalism.

North Korea is an interesting country for the world media, partly because we know so little about it. However, what is perhaps more intriguing and frightening (and thus makes the better news) is that North Korea is one of the few countries (outside the five permanent members of the Security Council) that has admitted to possessing a nuclear weapon. Ever so often, usually when little else is happening in the world, we will get reports about North Korea and the nuclear weapon. Sometimes they seem to play with the world by letting weapons inspectors in, other times they make the news because they do not.

When I switched on BBC News today the headline was “North Korea Steps up Row with the South” as North Korea has expelled South Korean workers. The word row should have us shaking in our shoes as we associate North Korea with nuclear weapons, and therefore an unfair advantage in a row. 

Whilst I agree that Kim II Jong is not the most predictable of men and that we do not have very much information from North Korea and in particular its nuclear weapons programme, these types of headlines do not worry me as much as perhaps a headline pertaining to the Kashmir conflict or the Middle East. For me, these two regions are currently far more volatile than North Korea.  It may be a country that has cut itself off from the world, but it is still extremely reliant on food aid and other aid to keep its country running and therefore it has a lot to lose, should it make mention of its nuclear weapons.