A story that can teach us a lot about what works, what doesn't, and what the future holds.

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Hi ecotrain friends hope you are very well. the situation must be really bad for the supreme leader of the hermit kingdom of north korea to turn to the international community, and make a call to deal with climate change, obviously, like all calls for help from the Asian nation, it has a darker hidden agenda, however, north Korea's problems with climate change are very real, and offer us some evidence as to how isolationist, backward, poor or poorly governed countries would withstand climate change.

The context.

However, to provide a clear picture of the environmental situation in North Korea, we must first define its historical, economic and political context.

Korea, both North and South, has for millennia been a relatively small country among great powers such as China, Japan, and Russia. And therefore, maintaining its independence has been in some cases very difficult, in many others, impossible. At the beginning of the last century, the Japanese empire set its sights on the Korean territories, annexing them to its territories in 1910. From that moment on, the Japanese rulers noticed that while the northern mountainous regions had immense deposits of minerals, there was a shortage of viable land for agriculture. The southern region, on the other hand, consisted of large fertile valleys, so the Japanese authorities built a large amount of infrastructure for mineral extraction and processing in the north, and irrigation systems and roads in the south to produce food, all to be shipped to the Japanese islands.

After the bloody Second World War, Korea was divided in the 38th century between a communist north and a capitalist south. The reasons for the subsequent Korean War are the subject of academic study even today, and it is still not entirely clear who fired first, however, among North Korea's reasons for invading the South was the fact that in order to create an independent and prosperous Korea, the North needed the South's agricultural lands to supplement its economy.

An excellent documentary series on the Korean War here.

Unfortunately, and as is usually the case with wars, things did not go as expected for anyone, the best that could be negotiated in the midst of the conflict between the capitalist and communist world fighting over the territories of Korea was an armistice that maintained the borders of the 38th parallel, there is still no signed peace. So technically, North and South Korea are still at war.

But the North came out of the conflict very badly. All the industrial base that remained in the country after the expulsion of the Japanese was destroyed by the bombings of the United States, and a brutal communist dictatorship of the most oppressive in the world was installed in the power of North Korea, governed at first by Kim Ill Sung, then his son, and now his grandson...

For a long time, though, North Korea held its own by selling minerals to its communist neighbors, China and Russia, and receiving large amounts of economic aid from them.
However, well into the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China's economic reforms, their aid to North Korea diminished greatly, and the country's stagnation began to show its consequences. Consequences that would eventually become environmental.

A bad relationship with the environment.

North Korea is according to many experts, the worst place in the world to live, an isolated country, with a minimal standard of living, in a bloody and oppressive dictatorship, and in the 1990s and 2000s the country was constantly plagued by famine, with an obsolete and inefficient infrastructure of mineral extraction, a meager agriculture, and isolated from much of the world socially, scientifically and economically, the population of the nation had to resort to extremes to survive.

Intensive extraction by old methods has polluted the country's air to levels that are theoretically unsafe for humans, intensified by the fact that the country's electricity is generated on antiquated coal-burning systems.

The lack of arable land has led to the deforestation of hillsides and mountainsides, which in conjunction with the increasingly frequent rains has caused flooding and landslides, which have ironically destroyed cultivated land and grain reserves.

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The shortage of energy and fuel has caused the long-suffering people of North Korea to resort to cutting down trees in order to burn wood to heat themselves during the region's harsh winters. This, coupled with deforestation to make land available for agriculture, has caused the loss of at least 50 percent of Korea's forests since 1953.

Subsequent famines have driven the population to eat anything, and as a result, the few scientific expeditions that have managed to enter the Hermit kingdom report that the forests are eerily uninhabited, animal life is tremendously scarce.

The environmental situation in North Korea is precarious. You can read more about it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_North_Korea
And now, as the effects of climate change are being felt on a global scale, with climate disruption, the unthinkable has happened.
An excellent video on the North Korean economy here.

At present.

One of the most worrying effects of the constant flooding followed by drought, rising sea levels, erosion and general contimantion is the destruction of the country's ability to produce food, something that has affected them for decades, this has led the supreme leader of North Korea to do something that a few years ago seemed unthinkable, ask for international aid, try to improve their relationship with the outside world, and even give a speech at the UN calling on the world to work to address climate change.

In 2020 alone north korea was hit by 3 powerful cyclones that rocked the country. this coupled with the paralysis of trade brought on by the covid pandemic, meant more hunger for the country's population, and the failure to reach any agreement to open up the country makes the future outlook for the nation very dark.

Conclusion.

Many lessons can be learned from all this, the first would be that backwardness and isolationism are bad for the environment, only with sensible technological development can the united world tackle the problem, good relations with the rest of the world are the bridge to take joint actions that benefit all and protect us from climate change, militarism and warmongering only make things worse.

Another lesson is that no matter how much a country pollutes, or how independent its government thinks it is, climate change will affect us all, and poor countries perhaps more strongly.

And finally, we should learn something about the terrible threat of climate change if the world's craziest and most arrogant dictatorship humbles itself by asking for help in the face of this threat... if Kim Jong Un is willing to make concessions to protect himself from climate change, the whole world should be willing to do so.