Jonathan Cheng

It's amazing.

Certainly compared to South Korea, North Korea is lagging very, very, very far behind.

Now, there was a time when the two Koreas were roughly at parity, but that would have been back in the 70s and the 80s, because the strength of a Stalinist system did allow North Korea to make some advances in the early years.

But by the 80s and the 90s, it was not a close battle anymore.

And today, South Korea is far, far, far ahead of North Korea.

That said...

In the capital, Pyongyang, where Kim Jong-un is and where the elites live, there are pockets of wealth there.

And there are places where the elite can feel comfortable and can say to themselves, maybe our standard of living is not up to what it might be in other countries, but it's pretty good.

And it's good enough that I don't feel a need to run away or to rebel or to try anything foolish like that.

I have enough buy-in in the system.

Now, if you're on the edges of society in North Korea, I think it's a woeful and miserable experience indeed.

And I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone.

But I do think that partly because they simply don't have much of an awareness of where they stand relative to other countries around the world.

I think in some senses, there may just be a feeling that, well, life is hard.

But life is hard everywhere.

And I'm going to make do with what I have, despite the fact that it is true that there are compatriots on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, even on the margins of society in South Korea, are doing far better.

But if they don't know, I suppose that there's some bliss in that ignorance, perhaps.

I think the biggest mistakes are to treat them as if they are willing to give up their system or to give up key planks in their system, whether it be their nuclear program, whether it be their control over their populace.

I don't think the Kim family is interested in that at all.

I don't know that there is a more clever way to get North Korea to engage.