Hermit kingdom

Never let a good crisis go to waste, and from the outside, that seems to be exactly the advice North Korea is running with.

From the outside looking in, it now seems like the Hermit Kingdom is home to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Satellite data, which we can use to track overall output, shows that the country is now about three times brighter than it was three years ago.

Pyongyang built more new homes last year than Chicago or Los Angeles, for what that's worth, and for the first time in its history, there seems to be a very real push towards modernization and potentially even liberalization.

No

... you know, not in the Hermit Kingdom.

No. No.

You, you gotta be careful.

Let's start with Korea and North Korea, South Korea.

So Korea is always been called the Hermit Kingdom.

Why has it been called the Hermit Kingdom? It's-- that's actually rooted in history, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right.

Usually, if you read an article on North Korea today, they will refer to North Korea as the Hermit Kingdom because it is so isolated from the rest of the world by its own choice.

It is also sanctioned by the US and by much of the Western world, so that's part of the isolation.

But even without that, I think North Korea would have been somewhat set apart from certainly South Korea, as well as even from its o-old patrons, the Chinese and, and the Russians.

And so for me, when I moved to South Korea as a journalist in twenty thirteen, this is of course more than a decade ago now, I just had that assumption that the Christian Korea was the South.

Um, and like so many young, earnest Christian young men of that time, he wanted to go to the ends of the earth.

He wanted to share the gospel, and so he sails for Korea, which at that time was known as the Hermit Kingdom.

It's still...

Today we sometimes use the Hermit Kingdom to refer to North Korea, but really it was coined for all of Korea because Korea was up there with Tahiti, was up there with Greenland, was up there with, um, you know, Central Africa or Central India.

These were the most inaccessible places in the world if you're a Western missionary, and Korea today, of course, is deeply integrated with the rest of the world.

It seems strange that it was so isolated, and yet it was.

They helped the people there." Let's say he had that example.

I don't know that he did, but let's...

Never let a good crisis go to waste, and from the outside, that seems to be exactly the advice North Korea is running with.

From the outside looking in, it now seems like the Hermit Kingdom is home to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Satellite data, which we can use to track overall output, shows that the country is now about three times brighter than it was three years ago.

Pyongyang build more new homes last year than Chicago or Los Angeles, for what that's worth, and for the first time in its history, there seems to be a very real push towards modernization and potentially even liberalization.

But I think that we do underestimate at our own peril the appeal of the North Korean ideology, as strange as that may be to say, because it is true that he also was able to cordon off his state of twenty-five million people from the rest of the world, and even with the advent of the internet and now s-smartphones and perhaps with artificial intelligence, we'll see how the Kims handle all of that.

But even now, they've managed to effectively seal off their country and keep it still very much the Hermit Kingdom as it was first nicknamed more than a century ago.

So you block the outside world out, you punish those who dissent, and yet I think what is missing is a sense that people, I think in many cases and to a large degree, really did come to look at Kim Il-sung as a father figure.

You could even put a capital F on that father figure because he did want his people to call him father in that way.

So similar to what we said before, Bitcoin is for everyone.

And that includes the Hermit Kingdom itself, North Korea there, with their various hacking teams that are always out there trying to find exploits and stuff.

And yeah, they managed to find an exploit in this exchange and drain $300

million.

He's been forced to make a deal with North Korea.

In order to supplement the Russians fighting Ukraine, they've been bringing soldiers from the Hermit Kingdom.

The terms of the arrangement aren't clear.

Major Sladek has speculated, I think reasonably, that these troops are effectively slaves, that they are working on behalf of Russia while their families are under duress, under threat by the North Korean government.

United States Marines and Blue Jackets stormed Korean river forts defended by cannon.

All objectives were taken and heavy casualties inflicted, but it remained for Japan to open up the Hermit Kingdom to trade four years later with the threat of war.

Russia had not been a disinterested bystander during this era of cannonball diplomacy.

Her participation in Far Eastern affairs dated back to the 17th century and had once extended to the North American mainland.