Today I will write you about North Korea, it is one of the five communist countries in the world. The remaining four are China, Laos, Cuba and Vietnam. North Korea is the only country that is completely cut off from the world.
History
After the war between Russia and Japan in 1905, whole Korea (North and South) became a Japanese protectorate and since 1910 it became a Japanese colony.
After World War II and Japanese capitulation the Korea is divided into two parts. It is divided by 38th parallel. The north part was assigned to the Russians and south part to Americans.
In 1948, in the north, the Democratic People's Republic was proclaimed. The first president was Kim Il-Sung.
Kim Il-Sung
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Two years later started the war between South and North Korea. The war lasted until 1953 and over a milion people were killed in the war. North Korea started the war but today they still don't want to admit that. North Korea conquered almost the entire peninsula with the Russian help but American army came soon and they won the area till the Chinese border. After this, Chinese army also came into war on North Korea side and they conquered land till the today's border between two Korea's. After this there were no major conflicts between the two sides.
Today, at the border, there is a line of four kilometers wide in which there are armies of North and South Korea. In 1953, a peace between these two countries was signed but they never signed end of the war so practically they are still in the war.
A common security zone at the border is called Panmunjon and this is the place where the families, who stayed divided after war, meet each other (they can only do that once in a year).
Panmunjon
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Today, there are over 700 thousand soldiers at the border between these two countries.
Kim Il-Sung dies in 1994 and his son replaces him, his name is Kim Jong-il. After USSR breakdown North Korea becames one of the poorest countries in the whole world. In the 1990s, over a milion people in the country died of hunger.
Kim Jong-il
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North Korea is a nuclear force (it cannot be proved because we don't know so much about their army) but that country was have economic sanctions because of nuclear tests which they had made.
Today's president of North Korea is Kim Jong Un.
North Korea today
This is a pretty mountain country with a little processing ground and over 90 percent of the population lives on that ground. The largest and capital city is Pyongyang where almost three milion people live.
Pyongyang
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North Korea has a total population of about 24 milion people. Religion is poorly expressed in the country. People generally have the right to religion but all of them are scared to express their religion.
The most important sector in economy is mining. North Korea is extremely rich in miners especially those for the production of nuclear weapons. Imagine that, right in that country….A major problem for this country is the lack of electricity, because of this the law was introduced, after eleven o'clock in the evening, electricity goes down in whole country except in the premises where the president is located.
You can see North Korea at night
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North Korea's army
North Korea is among 20 largest military forces in the world. It has over one milion regular soldiers (only USA has more) but North Korea has over 5,5 milion reserve soldiers (most in the world). Also, Korea has about 450 hunter airplanes (known as MiG) and there are still about 600 fighter planes.
According to aircraft numbers they are behind USA and Russia. They have about 80 helicopters which is not that large, they have over 5 thousand tanks and about 4 thousand armored vehicles. According to their numbers, they have most rocket launchers in the world.
From the rest of the military forces they are weaker on the sea because they don't have aircraft carriers and they have small number of submarines. The only thing that the world is afraid is that nobody have numbers of their nuclear and chemical weapon so we don't know how strong is North Korea. What do you think? Can they be a threat to the world?
Interesting facts about North Korea and it's presidents
- The second president of the country, Kim Jong-il, has it's own biography. Inside of it, he writes that he started to walk when he was three weeks old and he began to talk when he was seven weeks old. He wrote over 1500 books and he also wrote six operas. The most inetersting that he said is that he can control weather with his mood.
- The average worker in Korea earns about three euros per month. For that money he can buy about 2 kilograms of rice but workers get food at the work. Rich entrepreneurns earn about 5 hundred euros per month.
- The entire country has about 2 thousand cars. Only military and government people can have cars.
- There are only 28 types of hairstyles that people can wear. If they have some else haircut they end up in the prison.
- The Internet is not used in North Korea.
- Today, more than 200,000 people are in prisons, most of them die of hunger or overwork.
- North Korea spend more than a third of their income on the army.
- North Korea is the third country in line with most death sentences, in front of it are China and Iran.
- Marijuana is legal in the country and it is not considered as a drog. (At least something good).
- Wearing jeans is forbidden because people wear it on the west.
- In North Korea is only in 104 year, not in 2018 because their calendar started with the birth of their first president.
These are some interesting facts about this country but there is much more stuff that are weird. Also, we can't be sure in these informations so maybe some thing are lies. This is everything from me. Thanks for reading and what do you think about this country?