(SEOUL, South Korea) — Asked if there might be war, the 40ish woman with the spangly purple shirt laughed out loud. She waved her hands back and forth, as if whisking away a pesky insect. She fled North Korea late last summer, pushing her way at night through the chest-deep waters of the Amnok River, following a guide into China and, eventually, to South Korea. The journey cost her $5,000, a fortune back home. She comes from a part of rural North Korea where electricity is a rarity, and the punishing winters seem to last forever. She came to a city of two-story-tall TV screens that light up the night, a city stalked by armies of financial analysts in well-tailored suits. Now, amid international fears that North Korea may be preparing for another missile test, and relentless over-the-top rhetoric from Pyongyang that it will destroy its enemies, she simply scoffs. The exiles have seen life in both Koreas, and are unimpressed with what they left behind. "It's not even possible for North Korea to have a war," said the woman, who spent years arranging black market deals for bronze smuggled to China. She asked that her name and other identifying details not be used, to protect relatives still living in the North. "They don't have fuel. They don't have electricity," she said. "Even if they yell to the world that they'll go to war, it's all just talk." Foreign analysts have long said that North Korea's desperate shortages are, in part, because Pyongyang channels so much of its resources to the military and into weapons development. But in a country where many soldiers have to spend months every year working on farms or construction projects, and where bicycles remain a status symbol for most people, the exiles say North Korea is so poor and undeveloped that it knows it would lose any fight. And lose badly. North Korea's most recent round of over-the-top threats, including warnings of pre-emptive nuclear attacks on the United States, come in the wake of U.N.(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=82216&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin