The main problem with the vox.com article is that the headline is some obviously misleading clickbait.
Here’s some professional journalism advice: Don’t oversell your stories with flashy and misleading headlines.
As a country, North Korea is a wreck. Its people are starving to death, and it hasn’t the money, resources or infrastructure to keep the lights on at night. This isn’t a metaphor. The country literally goes dark at nighttime.
By any normal measurement, North Korea is a failed hellscape of authoritarian rule.
Vox.com doesn’t see it that way. That is, one of its headline writers doesn’t seem to think so.
« Turns out North Korea’s economy is actually doing pretty well, » read a vox.com headline Tuesday.
This ought to be good.
« Resolute in its commitment to communism and plagued by sanctions, North Korea has one of the most isolated economies in the world. And yet its economy is showing signs of expanding — potentially at a pretty decent pace, » reads the story’s opening paragraph.
The author then adds this part just four paragraphs into the story, « None of this is to say that the quality of life in North Korea for many is anything other than nightmarish. Food shortages are rampant, and the economy is far from self-sufficient: About 70 percent of the population relies on food aid, and 40 percent of the country is malnourished.
