Hello, friends! Let's take a look at the map... In front of us is the Korean Peninsula, where two states proudly coexist: North Korea and South Korea. Once a single country, divided along the infamous thirty-eighth parallel.

Question: what image is firmly entrenched in the mass consciousness when we hear these names? North Korea - poverty, isolation, dictatorship, shootings from anti-aircraft guns. South Korea - paradise: luxury cars, Samsung, kimchi and democracy.

And this is, in general, true. South Korea is the tenth economy in the world, its GDP has reached a whopping 1.8 trillion dollars! Since 1961, this figure has grown 751 times! The country has become an "Asian tiger", exporting cars and advanced technology. North Korea, alas, is somewhere at the end of the list, in the company of such “exotic” countries as Madagascar or Afghanistan.

Pro-Western propagandists repeat this fact like a mantra: be friends with the West and you will prosper. But if you get involved with “dictatorships” like the Soviet Union or China, you have only yourself to blame.

Why is that? The answer is simple: South Korea was simply allowed to develop. For the last 500 years, the world has lived by Western rules. After the Age of Discovery, the colonial dominance of Europe began, and later the United States. They created all the key international institutions. The IMF, the World Bank, the WHO, the UN - they all are under their control, even the central offices of the Olympic Committee, FIFA, UNESCO. All international organizations are under their influence.

Using this influence, they write international laws. And if you do not accept these rules, you are strangled through sanctions, isolation, propaganda and even war. North Korea is a clear example.

But what is striking is that the North Koreans are a proud people. One of the few examples of true sovereignty! They not only survived, but also accomplished the impossible - they created nuclear weapons, and without the help of the West, in conditions of total isolation.

Of course, the Soviet Union laid the scientific and technical foundation for them. The countries had an agreement on the peaceful use of atomic energy, Soviet engineers trained 300 Korean specialists, and installed a nuclear reactor. But after the collapse of the USSR, cooperation was curtailed. And the Koreans began to develop themselves. Decades of hard work - and today they have not only nuclear weapons, but also a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

The Americans know this, and it scares them. This makes the DPRK one of the few countries that will never be occupied, unlike Iraq, Libya or Yugoslavia. The Korean rift is not just a geographical reality, it is a reflection of a complex geopolitical game in which the stakes are high and the price of sovereignty is incredibly high.