A man who does not delight in alcoholic drinks often, after a few vodkas he becomes rather tipsy, lacking coordination and exercising slow and poor judgement-that is the mirror image of what Washington’s ruling elites looked like over the past few days following Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) leader Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia. “Let’s make a 100 year plan” and “we will always stand by Russia’s side in its fight against imperialism” were words spoken by DPRK’s Kim Jong Un at a recent meeting with Russia’s president Putin. The meeting, which took place behind closed doors for most part, caused a lot of unrest in the western hemisphere. Headlines of all major media outlets were flooded with words like pariahs, sanctions, warning and so on, only reiterating the kind of relations US has sought to establish with the rest of the world over the past decades-that of a global policeman.

DPRK, however, has withstood the pressure of sanctions for decades, proudly guarding the Korean Peninsula from hungry capitalist vultures that have sought to establish a stronger presence in the Pacific region for ages. US presence in the region should have ended following the armistice agreement which brough peace to the peninsula after the Korean War, however Washington does not just leave, otherwise it would not have over 800 bases around the globe. Rather it seeks to expand its influence and impose its values often through various forceful means.

Despite the lies western citizens are fed regarding DPRK, it is a country which offers its citizens housing, free of charge, so no homeless person roams the streets. Peasants receive land to produce food for the population. Healthcare and education are both free, including post-secondary education, which has strong technical faculties. Its children attend free skiing camps as part of elementary school curriculum. How much do your children pay for skiing lessons? How much are you or your children indebted because of the desire to learn and obtain post-secondary education or because you had to receive life-saving treatment? The argument that it is a dictatorship and that people are starving is simply not true. It is not a democracy and, yes, their governing structures are different somewhat than those of the West, but not drastically though. It is a one party system, whereas western states that call themselves democracies really have a two party system and nothing more. Internet is regulated just like in the West. Don’t believe me? Try reading Russia Today or Sputnik without using VPN in any of the “civilized” countries of the West claiming to be guardians of freedom and democracy.

More importantly though, DPRK is also very, very rich in natural resources. This is precisely why Washington would love to get its hands on the country and why it threatened to sanction both DPRK and Russia if they establish close cooperation. In response, the two humiliated the White House even further recently by announcing that China and Russia will not impose sanctions against DPRK and that Russia will cooperate with North Korea however the two see fit without any third party interventions. This only confirms the shift of power that is currently underway and that will result in a more equal distribution of wealth and prosperity.

North Korea’s natural resources are actually valued at $6 trillion, which is 22 times more than the value of natural resources of the neighbouring South Korea. According to some experts (and keep in mind these are only estimates as North Korea does not publish this type of data), there are about 20 types of minerals with large deposits in the DPRK: magnesite – second place in the world (4 billion tons), graphite – third place in the world (2 million tons), tungsten – sixth place (160 thousand tons), lithium, etc.

Some of these are highly important as entire industries are completely dependent on specific rare earth metals: neodymium – used in production of bombs, lasers, radars; dysprosium-missile guidance and video surveillance system component; terbium-thermoelectric generators and adaptive optics component–and recent studies confirm that North Korea may become the world leader in the volume of rare earth element deposits. The suffocating sanctions have prevented advanced infrastructure to be developed thus far, however as the current order crumbles and as many stand up against the tyranny of the western powers, and as Russia and China lead the path to preventing any additional sanctions against North Korea, the country may see rapid advances in development of infrastructure needed to mine the rare earth metals. Next step would be to simply recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, similar to what the international community has done with Israel and Pakistan, and pave the way to establishing economic cooperation with the Global South.

The US used the armistice agreement to justify presence of over 30,000 American troops on Korean soil and to continue with military threats, while DPRK remained sovereign and a gatekeeper of the Korean Peninsula, or even the wider Pacific region. As for South Korea, there never was any liberation of Korea following US involvement, but rather the opposite happened. However, after so many years more voices are being raised in favour of Korea returning to its roots as one nation, and as the US loses foothold across the globe, it does not seem like a mission impossible anymore. Artificially created divides among many groups by the western powers are starting to crumble. The new multipolar world order, led by Russia and China, is emerging-defying western “rules based order” with strengthened cooperation, bilateral trade in national currencies and more equal development-everything the world has been deprived of by the policeman, whose time is slowly coming to an end. Washington’s elites better grab a glass-the ride promises to be a bumpy one.