The department pretending to run North Korea - BBC News
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Under the South Korean constitution, the five provinces of North Korea remain part of the united Korea (which last existed 70 years ago) that South Korea continues to pretend to administer. I say pretend because in Seoul there is a whole building full of civil servants who technically oversee North Korea. There are departments for each of the provinces.
Except that they can’t administer it from Seoul because it’s in North Korea. There is the small matter of the inaptly named demilitarized zone in the way - Korea’s version of the Berlin Wall.
I went to visit the ministry the other day and it has to be said that the Southern administrators of North Korea do not seem to be overburdened. There seemed to be a bit of online shopping occurring on some of the computer screens. And who can blame them? The imminent collapse of the North Korean regime has been predicted since 1990. And today it seems no nearer.
