Westernized Gooks go BRRRRRR
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I followed your example and also had a civilised gook game in "very hard" HPM (haven't played Vicky 2 in a while). We can compare whose Korea is best. Here is my final Korea. It is an absolute monarchy, but the socialist nobles implemented healthcare and pension reforms. I abstained from any war. Emigration is banned. The focus is mainly industry, but in retrospect I should have done more to build up the army for the points. I became a great power far too late. There have been some rebellions, first from traditionalists and then from socialists, but nothing very serious. It was sad to see that the fascists were too weak, just two fascist charities in the whole game.
I did manage to beat Japan in terms of population. Japan has 60.7M to my 59.4M on paper, but a few million of those are just Papuan colonials. Meanwhile, my Korea is 100% Korean. The population is fairly evenly spread. Hanseong has 1.7M, Pyongyang 1.24M, Pohang 1.15M, Kwangju 1.1M, Chonchon 1.0M, etc. For comparison, Tokyo only has 1.43M, despite the insane life rating given to it by HPM. Despite only having 4 regions, Korea is 3rd greatest producer of iron, 3rd producer of steel, 4th in machine parts, 5th in glass, 4th in luxury clothes, 3rd in tea, 3rd in phones, 2nd in artillery, and 3rd in small arms, 1st in tanks, 2nd in steamers.
Internationally, the weirdest country is Peru, which ate up a lot of migration. Lima ended up being the new New York with a whopping 2.3M people. London has 2.9M, Paris 1.15M.
Overall, it looked like I was missing something. I recall having a more developed industry in a previous game.
Population - POPs - Politics - Demographics - Industry