What if the capitalist North Korea is just as bad as the communist North Korea?

There are many reasons why the Sunshine Policy failed, most of them rooted in the character of the men who rule in Pyongyang, and in the character of the men in Seoul who conceived and executed it. And in that conception, the flaw that was obvious to some of us from the very beginning was that Sunshine — and its surviving derivatives — invested its monotheistic faith in economic reform, yet in practice (and to a large extent, in theory, too) it was agnostic about political reform and disarmament.

I have always held something closer to the opposite priorities. Personally, I believe that capitalism, with just enough regulation to maintain a peaceful society, is a superior economic system to any form of statism, but I’m not messianic or Hegelian about it, as long as the system doesn’t deny its people the right to live. Of course, North Korea does deny its people the right to live, but things like privatizing agriculture and local markets have never been the principal focus of Sunshine advocates, either. They have always invested their passion in top-down capitalism — specifically, projects like Kaesong, Kumgang, and any sign that the regime was interested in trade and money.

Which, of course, it has been all along. Pyongyang has consistently allowed just enough trade to feed, equip, and maintain the military, and buy swag for the elite. The Washington Post‘s Anna Fifield reports from Pyongyang that the elite are getting more swag, but this does not mean that North Korea is reforming.

Cars, for instance. A recent visitor, in the capital for the first time since 2008, found many more of them on the streets — and not just the locally produced “Pyonghwa” brand or Chinese BYDs, but Lexus sport-utility vehicles and late-model BMWs and Audis.

And shoes. Many women are dressing more fashionably, and brightly colored, shiny high heels, often with jewels, appear to be the trend du jour.

Changjon Street, in the heart of the city, near Kim Il Sung Square, is unrecognizable from a few years ago. Rows of round apartment towers line the street. Lit up at night, they are festooned with neon bands, giving them the appearance of giant fireworks. By day, the towers are reflected in the glittering river, making the city look “just like Dubai,” in the words of one government-appointed minder. [Washington Post, Anna Fifield]

I’m far more likely to accept these representations from Fifield than from, say, Jean Lee, because Fifield is no one’s cheerleader.

But the situation in the cities outside the capital, and even more so in the countryside, remains extremely dire. The state does not provide anything like the kinds of rations it once did, and hunger remains widespread.

Even in Pyongyang, there are still many more signs of extreme poverty than wealth. Bent-over elderly women carry huge sacks on their backs, men with weathered faces sit on their haunches by the roadside, and North Korean children appear noticeably smaller than their South Korean peers.

Foreign visitors to Pyongyang are driven along the same routes from their hotels, no matter where they are going, leading them to conclude that only certain streets are fit for foreign consumption.

We see reflections of the same thing in Pyongyang’s military belligerence, its continued weapons development, its spurning of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, its retrograde crackdowns on information, agriculture and trade by non-elite North Koreans, and its new foray into hostage-taking. The rich are getting richer, but the people in charge are still psychopaths.

The most interesting question Fifield’s report raises is where all that money is coming from. An easier question to answer is where North Korea is getting all the luxury goods that it’s banned by U.N. resolutions from buying.

But indirectly, Fifield raises a more fundamental policy question. What if we accept, for the sake of argument, that Kim Jong Un has abandoned socialism for state capitalism, without disarming or altering its essential contempt for humanity? Did economic reforms in China necessarily equate to political reforms? Was Nazi Germany less of a menace despite being state-capitalist? If North Korea’s de facto abandonment of socialism means that Sunshine has succeeded, it’s an awfully hollow victory.

Derivatives of Sunshine still live, of course, as do a surprising number of die-hard adherents. But whenever I ask them why they adhere, they confess that it isn’t really because they believe, but because they can conceive of no better ideas.