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Notes -
How exactly?
By every sensible measure? Income, GDP, opportunities, quality of life, technological advancement, etc. SK is a highly advanced modern nation, while Viet Nam is "developing". If you take pretty much every criteria that common people would use when comparing one nation against other, SK would come ahead.
Vietnam is just an average, mostly functioning Asian nation free of extremes of any sort. South Korea is a realized cyberpunk hellscape afflicted by every conceivable form of degeneracy and blight brought about by modernity and late-stage capitalism, whereas North Korea somehow managed to the realize the horror of Confucianism and Communism being combined and ruled over by a dynasty. And yet you’re arguing that the long-term outcome of US victory for the Korean Peninsula is preferable to the long-term outcome of US defeat for Indochina.
I'm sorry but I vastly prefer "degeneracy and blight brought about by modernity and late-stage capitalism" - aka civilized living in good conditions, decent income, nice job and all trappings of modern civilization - to "mostly functioning nations" (side note - did you notice how "mostly" became the most deceitful of words in English recently? Take "mostly peaceful"...). Given how many people move from "mostly functioning" to "degenerate late capitalist" nations and how many move the opposite direction, I somehow suspect I am not a rare exception.
LOL...is this what you unironically associate late-stage capitalism and existing cyberpunk conditions with? "good conditions, decent income, nice job"? Do you think this is the lived experience of South Korean normies, for example? People who cannot even reproduce themselves?
I meant "mostly well-functioning Asian nation". English isn't my mother tongue. Either way, I think Vietnam, as unified through force of arms, represents an overall outcome that is clearly preferable to both those of all other former COMECON member states and that of the partitioned Korean nation.
Yes. It is the living experience of the normies of virtually every Westernized country, I don't see why SK would be an exception.
Viruses reproduce themselves excellently, and they aren't even alive. I think you need a better criteria. And as far as I know, Koreans are capable of reproduction no less than any other human.
Preferable to whom? Again, migration patterns show a lot of people prefer the horrors of "late stage capitalism" to the paradise of "mostly functioning". The only exception maybe are wealthy retirees that prefer being rich in a poor country. But the "being rich" part is rarely achieved outside of the capitalist hell. If Vietnam and USA declared that citizens of each country could freely move and remain in the other country indefinitely, without any impediment, how do you think migration patterns would change? Would the oppressed people of capitalist cyberpunk hell rush to escape it into the mostly well-functioning paradise?
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