It's retroactive and it's not based on sales, it's based on installs. So for example, I purchase a game on steam and I own a PC, a steam deck, and I have a kid with a PC. That's 3x the fees for one sale even though I can only play it on one device at a time. Maybe I get bored of the game and uninstall it. A year later I want to play it again, there's a new fee for the same sale and PC that unity gets.
It's extremely common in Germany. Take Münster for example, there are at least 9 cities and towns with that name. Others include Berlin, Hagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Freiburg, and so on. It's such an issue when trying to trace down ancestry as many records only include the city or town and not the state / region.
You said sanctioned by the West, not the US. The West didn't start sanctions until 2006. The US wasn't a primary trading partner of any eastern bloc county during the cold war so it wouldn't have made a difference.
I believe that you have it backwards. North Korea, backed by China and with the approval and arming by the USSR, invaded South Korea. South Korea remains independent today because it was defended by the UN. The North's allies promised to rebuild the North after the war and poured billions of roubles into the country. They remained dependent on the eastern bloc countries until the USSR fell and China opened up to the West. The North's economy fell apart in the 1990's after they were no longer propped up by others. The US provided $600 million in aid for food and energy starting in 1995. Sanctions against North Korea did not start until 2006.
What you said is correct except that they went into it ignoring the lessons of the past. NASA had done tons of testing and knew that the launch pad wouldn't survive half the Starship's thrust and designed a launch pad that worked. Space X instead chose to believe that a special concrete would be enough. The new launch pad is missing a flame diverter and will likely be the failure of the next vehicle. The iterative approach doesn't work if you can't get a launch clearance from the FAA due to a lack of trust.
"And?" really conveys the level of empathy that you embody.