scratch beneath the surface of the booming economy and enviable trade figures and it was apparent that they were only achieved at continuing expense of the itinerant population , the majority of whom still lived way below the standard of living attained by their contemporaries both in the west and in other asian countries , and decades of oppression and the relentless subjection to propaganda on the public psyche could not be dispatched so easily as could the missiles that had , inadvertently , resulted in the changing fortunes of the new state .