The current population of North Korea is roughly 25 million people, of which probably around 1 million are actively employed by the government or military (and the way I interpret your question, I am not counting them as “citizens” to be replaced).
So, we will be swapping 24M North Koreans for 24M random Americans.
There are roughly 320M Americans in the world, so roughly 7.5% of the US population (which is, coincidentally, about how many Americans of Asian descent there are) would suddenly be replaced. To put that in perspective, if you were in a room of 40 people, 3 of them would suddenly be North Koreans.
As this would be a random sampling, it would be Americand from all round the planet, and there are 8 million of us in the other 168 countries around the globe.
This also includes infants, children, elderly, sick, people in hospice care (you get the picture). And the way “random” works, it’s quite possible that North Korea would suddenly get 24M infants and toddlers on their doorstep, ready to indoctrinate. For the purposes of this, we will assume they will get a little bit of everyone, rapture-style.
Unless you were paying close attention, (and be honest, we aren’t known for our observant qualities) I don’t think we’d notice right away just because of that.
However…
100,000 of North Koreans are in internment camps or prisons, treated brutally and in terrible conditions.
They are also smaller than Americans, and thinner, having been underfed (and starved) their whole lives.
Many are sick.
And, they only speak one language – Korean. Thankfully, it’s the same version spoken by Koreans around the world, so when we have 24M sick, frightened and hungry North Koreans popping up everywhere and speaking rapid fire Korean, we can find people to talk to them.
Meanwhile, in North Korea –
As mentioned, 100,000 of them are in internment camps. Obviously freaked out about the situation, we will leave them alone so they can organize, because they should be able to overtake their captors from the element of surprise A because even the average American child is stronger than a North Korean prison guard, and 100,000 organized Americans can easily take down a prison camp.
The rest of the Americans aren’t faring so well.
They are spread throughout the country and have no clue what is going on, with no access to the Internet, no easy transportation and no ability to communicate freely with one another.
It would be as if each group of Americans was sent to a different farm in the Pennsylvania Dutch community, and they didn’t have any wagons, or bicycles, and when you met with other families for work or social events you didn’t actually get to talk to them.
While initially surprised, the government is able to quickly take hold of the situation and lock people individually up. Any Americans that appeared who were holding weapons are quickly subdued.
Kim Jong Un is apprised of the situation and he creates a propoganda film to the rest of the world about how he will magnanimously return all of his honored guests who chose to come see the beauty of North Korea for themselves once they have expressed their desire to do so, which he’s sure they will not because it is so wonderful. He holds off on airing it until he observes the reaction of the rest of the world to their missing people.
Some Americans will initially try to break out of their individual prisons, but the only hope they have for survival will be from the prison camp crew getting to safety or from the rest of the world getting together to invade and get them out.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world has no clue the Americans are. They could have been abducted by aliens. Vaporized. Etc.
All they know is there has been an invasion of North Koreans around the world at roughly the same time, and they aren’t talking (they don’t know what happened, anyway). Most don’t want to go back, and the world logistically couldn’t send them there anyway, as there simply aren’t enough flights to North Korea.
The “North Korean invasion” becomes a weird legend, and some countries accept refugees, others send them back through South Korea, wit Kim Jong Un happily welcoming his people back and thanking the world for their kindness toward his people.
Meanwhile, he can simply keep the Americans forever by keeping them out of satellite range and no one would ever know – raising the children in the North Korean way.
Within 16 years he would have the most formidable army in the world.
So, let’s not swap them out, eh?
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/What-would-North-Korea-be-like-if-their-citizens-were-swapped-with-Americans
Originally Posted On: 2015-12-27