it blows my mind that South Korea was a military dictatorshipWhy? China, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan all derive their political cultures primarily from Confucianism, a strongly hierarchical system that modern commentators would probably, if it could be seen undoctored today, describe as a dictatorship. North Korea, a personality cult with similar structure, persists.
At the same time, in the 1980s, nearby Taiwan was also a dictatorship of the Nationalist Chinese army and was also supported if not set up by the US. They stopped off in Burma to grow heroin and prop up a military dictatorship there along the way. In the last few years, the US has basically let the dictators out of prosecution to counter growing regional Chinese influence which was formerly set to dominate the country. Singapore is widely accused of setting up its stock market explicitly to launder the drug revenues, and still has - and indeed probably only exists today - because of major US support.
Vietnam is the only really strong story of the lot, repulsing an attack from China after kicking out the French and Americans and re-asserting its independence, then removing another dictatorship (Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge) from Cambodia in 1978.
Why? China, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan all derive their political cultures primarily from Confucianism, a strongly hierarchical system that modern commentators would probably, if it could be seen undoctored today, describe as a dictatorship. North Korea, a personality cult with similar structure, persists.
At the same time, in the 1980s, nearby Taiwan was also a dictatorship of the Nationalist Chinese army and was also supported if not set up by the US. They stopped off in Burma to grow heroin and prop up a military dictatorship there along the way. In the last few years, the US has basically let the dictators out of prosecution to counter growing regional Chinese influence which was formerly set to dominate the country. Singapore is widely accused of setting up its stock market explicitly to launder the drug revenues, and still has - and indeed probably only exists today - because of major US support.
Vietnam is the only really strong story of the lot, repulsing an attack from China after kicking out the French and Americans and re-asserting its independence, then removing another dictatorship (Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge) from Cambodia in 1978.