re: #194 teleskiguy

More: Predicting the Korea “deal.” Kim gets everything he wants. | Contrary Brin

For reasons of both economic and personal survival, Kim desperately needs a smaller army.

I’m not so sure about the “personal survival” bit, though: the NoKo regime has managed to keep itself in power for 70+ years thanks in no small part to that oversize military - and Fat Kim’s father and grandfather were leaders of a country that was pretty much a rogue nation (outside of the old Communist bloc). I can’t see the Nork military turning (yet) on a Leader who has managed - thanks to a semi-viable nuclear-arms program and Donald Trump’s idiot ego - to make the former pariah-state a (semi-)serious player on the world stage, and will probably end up successfully extorting billions of dollars and tons of prestige for the DPRK as a result.

Ceausescu got invited to a target shoot for basically running his country’s economy into the ground. And since “run into the ground” would probably be an upgrade for North Korea as it stands, it’s hard to see KJU suffering for improving things.