[gaijin]

Sometimes they beg SK for cash, grain, oil, whatever.

And Da Gummint there does give in and give it to them; they ran the numbers from the West Germ/East Germ integration and blanched at the expense.

In fact most SK experts believed that SK/NK integration would be **500%** more expensive.

So many government people there think just keeping NK on life support is cheaper.

I really want NK to pancake into the dirt, though.

[CondorFlight]

China probably is more than annoyed that Kim bumped off his brother —who was a Chinese protege.

[volunbeer]

I really want NK to pancake into the dirt, though.

---

For both moral and security reasons this is the only answer. China may finally be recognizing that their crazy kid in the basement poses a real danger to their house and continuing to prop up such madness pisses off the whole neighborhood.

[Billthedrill]

Yeah. At least the Ostis had infrastructure, such as it was. What it would cost to bring NK up from the ground is likely to be staggering, and the Chinese aren't going to kick in if they lose their buffer state out of it. At some point the South Koreans are going to have to take the hit but I sure wouldn't look forward to it if I were them.