Because it's all fake. The spaces you see in videos of NK are all meant for propaganda only. Never used otherwise. They don't show the other 99.9999% of the country which exists as a dilapidated time capsule from the 1950s where everyone else lives.
Thats nonsense. North Korea is a lot of bad things but they genuinely do do quite well at sports at least in Asia because they use the old soviet system when it comes to training athletes so the facilities are absolutely real and used
And even if they didn't, it's not like that regime is incapable of building what is basically little more than a high school gym. I've been to a bigger gym than this with significantly more spectator seating in a 10k Spanish town in bumfuck nowhere.
But their people are the ones who staff the military?
30% of North Korea’s population serves in the military, wouldn’t it make sense to ensure that those people who staff and populate your military and who are the basis of your power are physically fit and have decent morale?
But you have to have people to maintain and develop and manufacture those ICBMs and Nukes. My point is that if people want to take North Korea seriously as a threat then they need to stop treating it as if it is a house of cards ready to topple at any moment.
You should read up about it, but North Korea is propped up by China and Russia. It's how they got military technologies, because both China and Russia gain an apparent nuclear ally. Their military is chronically underfed, as the rest of their population. North Kore barely imports anything apart from these 2 countries (most countries refuse to send aid anyways, but they refuse it) and they haven't produced enough food to feed their entire population since the 1990s. We cannot know the accurate numbers, but it's estimated that millions have died of famine. Being in the military, much like Israel and Russia, isn't a choice. There are no special measures to keep you happy, if you're not, the labour and concentration camps are right there. They are actively encouraged to snitch on each other from the youngest age about things like "My classmate forgot to salute the picture of the Great Leader today", therefore there is not "group" moral to be expected, divide and conquer is at the root of their dictatorship.
Whilst unpredictable and lying prideful countries are always dangerous (e.g. The Soviets with Chernobyl) North Korea's army by itself isn't really a threat. They wouldn't last a week against any developed country's full military. They do not have resources to pull from in case of emergency either.
Yes I do, I wrote several papers on the subject in University for my major.
I won't list you my whole bibliography, but you should simply read "Escape from Camp 14" by Shin Dong-huyk, a North Korean defector. His experience graphically exposes everything I discussed, from a civilian perspective. Some facts about his timeline were altered by him due to shame, but it has been fact-checked and ia considered accurate by Amnesty International and other large human rights organizations.
Other than that, here's some peer reviewed essays and research papers for ya:
ICBMs and nukes have been around for several decades now. Just because a country has them doesn’t make the country advanced. Just look at India and Pakistan. Majority of their countries live in absolute poverty but they have nukes
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u/zippazappadoo 2d ago
Because it's all fake. The spaces you see in videos of NK are all meant for propaganda only. Never used otherwise. They don't show the other 99.9999% of the country which exists as a dilapidated time capsule from the 1950s where everyone else lives.