The Oil Drum

Did Cuba still import food post the Soviet collapse?

North Korea really is a far more effed up place than Cuba.

You could argue NK was in a favoured position. Industrialised, and with large domestic coal reserves.

However the nature of that government and its policies is so odious, that this did not stop them from starving over a million people to death, running a giant Gulag, etc.

Partly the problem is the level of militarisation. Cuba has its local militias, but NK is one giant armed camp, and producing more arms, and digging more tunnels all the time.

Cuba is hostile to the US, but NK digs tunnels under the DMZ and sends suicide squads to attack its neighbours.

Cuba is a police state, but the political prisoners number in the thousands at most. In NK, they may number a million or more.

An advantage Cuba has is the remittances by Cubans in the US and other countries, which has sustained domestic consumption and benefited the government. Again NK's policies make that impossible.

When Bush said 'Axis of Evil' it really was propaganda *but* not inappropriate in the case of NK.