The Sprawl (Setting)

[Faanku]

AD 2050. A civil war broke out in North Korea after the assassination of the dictator “General Kim” during a local inspection. North Korea collapsed and entered a state of anarchy, and the territory of North Korea was absorbed into South Korea with help from the US and China.
The ruin of the state meant the opportunity for new capital. The corporations of Korea, US, China and Russia started the construction of factories and arcologies on the wreckage of North Korea. With national feeling and political confrontation in the mix, the competition between corporations grew into a fierce, but covert, corporate war.
Human resources were plentiful for doing the corporations’ dirty work. Because the soldiers, hackers, and various experts who once belonged to the North Korean army became unemployed all at once, they started to taste the good and bad of capitalism.
It is AD 2070 now. North Korea, which was the most closed autocratic state in the world, is now on the cutting edge of capitalism and has become the arena of a new cold war.

Rason City
Rason is a port city which borders China and Russia. Before the collapse of North Korea, it was the second richest city after Pyongyang, the capital city. Rason has always been caught between China’s Pacific ambitions and Russia’s desire for an ice-free port. The US has concentrated its efforts on preventing the deployment of North Korean nuclear missiles in the city because of the short distance between Rason and Alaska. After the collapse of North Korea, Rason was the first city the People’s Liberation Army occupied. China tried to construct a naval base in the city but failed due to the threat of military force by the US.

Rason made rapid progress after unification, aided by the Korean government. Now the city is a Korean outpost for Manchuria and Siberia, and the eastern terminus of the Siberian Railway. A vast amount of minerals, oil, and natural gas are imported into the city by rail. After refining in the local facilities, those resources are transported all over the country. Most of the corporations in Rason are Chinese and Russian concerns which had moved in before the fall of North Korea, but the number of Korean & US corporations are rapidly growing nowadays.

Present-day Rason is a megalopolis which has absorbed its surrounding cities. The city is divided into eastern and western districts by the Siberian Railway. The eastern district is filled with warehouses and port facilities, and in the western district corporate arcologies shine amidst the vast sprawl of chemical plants, refinement facilities, and slums. Each arcology is regarded as an extraterritorial area belonging to the country of the corporation’s nationality.

In the narrow alleys of the city, signboards written in Korean, English, Chinese, and Russian are everywhere on haphazardly built storefronts. Thanks to a growing number of foreigners in the past 20 years, most citizens can speak brief greetings in four languages. Merchants tout and haggle in mixed languages. People dress in the height of fashion, and only a few old people wear Mao suits. In the main streets, old and new cars from every country fill the road. The sky is always gray and foggy because of fumes from factories and cars. Most people wear face masks.