The East Germans also had 360,000 Soviet troops on their soil in 1989; however, North Korea has not had any foreign troops on its soil since 1958. "East Germany collapsed because general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev chose to do what none of his predecessors would ever have done, namely, keep those troops in their barracks rather than mobilize them to save the Honecker regime". The East Germans looked favorably at the fact that West Germans had good retirement benefits, public order and strong civil society, whereas the North Korean citizens are not aware of any immediate benefits from uniting with South Korea, because all such knowledge is kept from them by the state.