How come nobody does anything about North Korea?
We all see and hear what goes on over there. Kim will execute kids if they don’t cheer hard enough at his birthday party or something? He’s always threatening to nuke countries and is probably has the highest domestic kill count out of any world leader today.
So I ask? Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people. I saw a survey asking Americans and Escaped North Koreans would they migrate to North Korea and to the US if given the chance (hypothetical for the refugees). And it was like <0.1% to 95%. Obviously those people live in terror.
Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization? Nukes on South Korea? Is just not lucrative to step in? SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME PLEASE!?
118
Comments266
Generally countries in the west only get involved in conflicts if they get something out of it, be it directly via getting wealth from the country, or indirectly like curbing successful non-capitalistic economies before they catch on and their own people start questioning the billionaires. The "we're there to liberate people" is just marketing speech.
I wonder why you say "countries in the west" and not just "countries". It's not like, I don't know, Banín is shouting about North Korea every day and nobody listens.
I don't know enough about how the rest of the world runs to generalise further
The US has invested a lot in its capacity to police the world (just look at how many bases we have around the world). So it’s logical to ask why the US would or wouldn’t police something. And usually before the US polices something with force, they start talking about it publicly.
Benin has no such capacity or intentions and so neither polices anything nor telegraphs its opinions.
You're saying that no one with empathy has any power to help these people?
People in power in the west are barely moving the needle for their own people sadly.
Also even if they did, they'd still need a valid cause to start an international conflict I think, it's why Russia tried the "it's actually russians in Ukraine that are being oppressed and we're liberating them" excuse
It’s more that there’s little that can be done that doesn’t also risk making the situation much worse.
Something like going to war to depose Kim would lead to mass death and risk spilling over into a much wider conflict since North Korea has the backing of China.
It seems as though unfortunately any people with the capacity for empathy never end up in positions of real power... :(
It's not a lack of empathy as much as a kind of educated empathy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. We historically have a notorious and awful track record of nation building, and I think a lot of people believe this boils down to the fact that it's very difficult to impose a national identity on people from outside, even with direct, physical intervention. We have tried to get around this at times by only supporting what we believe are legitimate independence movements which clearly already possess a strong national identity. Unfortunately even those tend to devolve into ethnic cleansing campaigns and dictatorship as soon as we leave. And if we don't leave, then we have to stay there forever and we have to keep interfering every time things threaten to go off the rails and then it becomes paternalistic colonialism.
Keep in mind too that a lot of people living under oppressive regimes are genuinely damaged people and there is nothing but time that can heal those wounds. They are traumatized, they are angry, they have lost loved ones, they have been subjected to horrors we can only imagine and clinically document, without feeling the fear and emotional scars those things inflicted on millions of people. If you suddenly give them back power again, even small amounts of power, it is in human nature for many to seek revenge for what they've gone through (and not always against the right people). They've learned how to operate within the context of a deeply flawed and dangerous regime, and it is natural to adopt some of the same tools and practices. As resilient as the human spirit is it still is difficult to teach new ways.
At some point, people have got to learn to stand on their own two feet and find a way to build an equal, fair and just nation for all of themselves, by all the people and for all the people. While we certainly can do a better job of supporting this, we can't do it for them and our attempts to do so have typically ranged from highly questionable to disastrous and extremely counterproductive. We fought for our own freedom, and it is not out of selfishness that we tell them they must fight for their own too. It's not that we enjoy the fighting, it's that as awful as it is, it appears necessary to get that hostility out into the open and understood to be as awful as it is, for a successful outcome to be possible.
On the other hand, even that hasn't helped in Israel/Palestine where it seems like we've tried almost everything and failed. The fact is, nobody has the answers. We don't know the way to fix this. We are always trying, even when it doesn't seem like it, but we have to be abundantly cautious that we're not making it worse, because we often are. For that matter, we have our own problems, and we haven't figured those out either. Just because we're doing much better than the worst countries in the world or even much better than average doesn't mean we've got it all figured out or even that we're doing anything right at all.
no one with political power gets that power through empathy
It's one of the most heavily fortified countries with an extreme nuclear power regime out in the mountains. How could a country like the United States help North Koreans without threatening intense military conflict?
I think the answer is simple: end the sanctions.
McDonalds and Starbucks can take down the Kim regime much more effectively than B-2 bombers and Hellfire missiles.
Is that hard to believe?
Generally frowned upon to invade countries.
Ludicrously costly. Your tax payers will want to know why it's more important than everything else you do with their money.
Immense suffering. Mostly by the people you're trying to liberate but also your own troops and their families.
They have nukes and could probably blow up at least a few regional cities. If the regime is threatened they will most likely use them.
South Korea or China or Russia are the only countries with land borders. China and Russia find NK useful to have arround to annoy US. Seoul is within artillerty range of the border.
Building up a new state in it's place is very difficult. Remember how the Taliban took back power about 15 minutes after the US left Afghanistan?
That's not how it would play out or herw, but even in the best case scenario, you'd end up with a huge area with rampant poverty and discontent that would take generations to develop. We've had something similar in Germany. Even after thirty years and vast amounts of money spent, East Germany is still way behind and there are areas that have no perspective at all.
America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the "Korean War".
We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.
Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime's propaganda will make sure they never forget.
If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the "Arab Spring" model is much more effective and humane than the "Afghanistan War" model.
Ohhhhh it's so much worse. Here's the intro to the BlowBack podcast S3, which is all about the Korean War https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZX1YIvtHhxuoOTaH41VNC
It's the peak of chauvinism to think people would need propaganda to remember you leveling their entire country.
Yes I agree.
If you use context instead of cherry picking a half-sentence then maybe you would understand that is part of the broader point I am trying to get across to a western, chauvinism-brained audience.
If you read the previous comment more closely you'll realize that the commentor wasn't comparing today's NK to Gaza, but Korea during the Korean War to Gaza. That is a reasonable comparison, as nearly every standing structure was bombed.
Damn, maybe we should stop doing them then.
North Korea was the one that started the war by invading the South
You can't really "invade" your own country. North and South Korea were two sides in a civil war, with both sides claiming each other's territory and aiming towards unification. It's like saying that George Washington "invaded" Yorktown or that Lincoln "invaded" Virginia.
The South did invade the North though in the US civil war.
And if you don't want to use the word "invaded", I guess you could just say that North Korea attacked the South, kicking off the war
This is like saying Ukraine started the war by invading Donbas
If Donbas was at the time part of Russia it would be like that. So it's not really like that. Since North Korea actually went into South Korea with the intention of taking it over.
What war? The Korean War from 70 years ago? Because they've been at peace since then, but some loonies in this thread want to go over and start trouble with them.
Not peace. Peace treaty never signed just not currently engaged
You have obviously misunderstood me.
I was comparing the United States actions in the Korean War(1950s) to Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza. The mass civilian bombing campaigns, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure, manmade famine, widespread preventable disease, and imposed economic isolation are very similar between the two cases.
I am not comparing current-day North Korea to current-day Gaza, and I agree with you that would not be a good analogy.
So your thesis is that the 1950s war was inconsequential, and then you lay the entire blame on the Kim regime and their policies?
My dude, how do you think the Kim regime became a dictatorship?
Before the 1950s war, Kim was a weak puppet leader propped up by the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Kim regime had dictatorial power, which persists to this day.
Nobody said that.
The issue as you see it:
The prescription you suggest:
World powers typically let countries do whatever they want to their own citizens, it's only when they do stuff to people of other countries that they get involved.
Simple and to the point. WW2 didn't happen just because the Nazis were killing Jews, it happened because Hitler decided to barge into other countries.
More like when it threatens some status quo or be inconvenient for them to deal with or might cause a shift to some power dynamics.
I mean nobody(western leaders) gives a fuck about whatever is going on in Africa and Asia. And it's quite literally mindboggling how the shit in Urkaine and Palestine is still ongoing without any major consequences for the aggressors other than mayyyybe harsh words or hurrdurr sanctions. Soo..as long as it does negatively not impact then, world leaders don't give a shit about what other countries do.
Same reason why no one does anything about the atrocities that happen within the US.
So.. Nukes.
Part of it.
How many children have been killed because an insurance company refused payment for healthcare.
Comparing "the atrocities" in the US with NK is really out of touch.
Shifting focus on the fact that US has its hands in vat fulls of blood yet the question is "Why isn't anyone doing anything about NK?!"
Also there’s a city of 20 million people like 10 miles from the border that could get nuked just by conventional weapons. Adds complications
Because that roads leads to war. The moment one country decides it has the authority to overule another's sovereignity because they disagree with what's going on there, it becomes a free for all.
This line of thinking is the very reason why there are two Koreas today, because of two superpowers who thought they knew better and could make a nice profit in the process.
We have a word for this: Colonialism.
And we certainly don't do THAT anymore.
If NK was oil rich and off the coast of the US, we'd colonialism the shit out of it.
It's not because the world is now too enlightened for colonialism. It's because the juice isn't worth the squeeze. NK has nothing of value, and China wants it to stay there as a buffer to SK.
Bullshit.
Yeah all the terrible shit we see is just a tip of the iceberg.
Why would you believe your media regarding a country they admit is “closed off”?
Do you seriously believe they execute ppl for having the same haircut as Kim? And then execute ppl for having a different haircut from him?
They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.
I fully agree that a lot of the shittalk about them is exaggerated and ill-informed. They don't execute people for having wrong haircut (dyeing can get you into some trouble), no, I do not believe that.
People live there. It's certainly not nationwide Auschwitz as you might think.
But they also execute/punish people(and their family members) for trying to leave the country for good or talk shit about their supreme leader. I don't know you but if that's not a red flag I seriously don't know what is.
Can't get all the shit right, yes. That doesn't make their countless crimes-against-humanity testimonies and proof any less valid. And since they are so closed off that even the whereabouts of high-ranking generals are often hard to know, it really is just the tip of the iceberg.
But I'm very sure that you are going to say all the defectors and reporters are liars and parrot all the wild cringe tankie shit that no less than 14 should you have outgrown and that's fine. You do you. I hope someday you can make a personal visit to North Korea and leave the horrific, capitalistic hellhole of a society the West is.
If you are an American, eat what's on your plate before you worry about NK.
I'm Korean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
It's not a tu quoque when NK isn't hurting anyone but themselves and the Americans are burning down the fucking planet. One is an urgent situation, the other is political theatre that most of us are unqualified to even analyze due to the embargoes, censorship and pervasive propaganda.
Being worried about rumors that:
from a tiny, insignificant backwater nation when the so called leader of the free world is disappearing people from potentially every country on Earth, when the most powerful trading nation is intentionally destabilizing the global economy, well it reeks of looking for a distraction. The US government has as much to do with what is happening to NK people right now as the NK government does.
NK is one of the most exceptionally successful aggressors in cyber crime. They perform heists in the 10s or 100s of millions of USD at a time, about 2 billion in the past two years. Their targets are global and indiscriminate, and their scope and skill set is growing at an alarming pace.
If it helps you sleep better at night that they're only physically terrible to their local neighborhood, then whatever - I would argue that their reach is only limited by their lack of wealth, but that still has a radius that can reach nations as far away as Japan and they constantly threaten them, and would do so to others if they had the means, but again, if that doesn't bother you then ok I guess.
But to say that they don't affect anyone outside their borders is at best ignorance and at worst willful misinformation.
Calling it a distraction when they literally harm our people and bomb our land. Thanks.
To us, it's at least as urgent and as the U.S. crap and it has been that way for quite a long time.
Why do .ml's get so triggered with this topic? And y'all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints when we know what totalitarian regimes do and have done throughout the ages.
When you recognize the amount of bullshit propoganda that is consumed daily and realize how false it all is it's very easy to switch to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" mode.
Additionally it's harder to break others (and oneself) out of the propoganda soup without an extremely sharp distinction between the lies being spoonfed and the material reality. The material reality often ends up getting distorted as a result and the cycle continues.
I fully support the idea that we have a problem with bias in the news and people profiting from scandals, and we also don't need to downplay what the government does. We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.
It depends entirely on how you define "accidentally bootlicking" because I think [email protected] has done an excellent job of calling out how you have been making that distinction.
Taking a step back and decontextualizing how do you think one should make that distinction?
I'm sorry, but Objection has taken the wrong idea and run with it. If you think they're making a great point, I'd suggest you reread with what I've said in mind. I do own that I'm a little hasty to judge .ml accounts from experience, but that's about it. The rest is Objection assuming things with extra dressing to frame the conversation.
Tbh, I don't even know what the fuck they're arguing about now, and I can't be bothered. Seriously, go take a look a that word salad and the embedded quiz of them just being an extra little argumentative gremlin.
Let's just review this conversation, shall we? What the other person said was:
So, that's two examples of egregious misinformation that they pushed back on. How did you respond?
The reason we """bootlick""" and """treat them as absolute saints""" is that you chatacterize any attempt to push back on blatant misinformation as """bootlicking.""" So no, it is impossible push back on misinformation without "bootlocking," because, by your standards, anything short of uncritically accepting every bad thing said about a US rival (that is, anything short of actual bootlicking towards the US) counts as "bootlicking."
If I'm wrong, then show me what in their comment led you to conclude that they were bootlicking, aside from refuting misinformation.
I think you're connecting two things in my mind that were completely separate, and are using that as a springboard to jump to conclusions about my supposed standards based on one flawed premise, then about me uncritically accepting things, and also that I'm explicitly against US enemies. Brother, I'm not even American. Can I not talk about a pitfall that I often see with people defending NK, as an "inb4" if you will? Because I hope you reread the sentence that way.
If anything, my only direct comment about the person I'm replying to was the first question: Why so eager to jump in like that about a known violator of human rights that has voiced unconditional support for Russia, a country actively picking a fight with the entire West side of the world? A tyrannic, totalitarian regime is everybody's enemy as far as I'm concerned.
But sure, maybe I'm reading the other person wrong too, and I'm unnecessarily assigning blame because of my previous experience with this exact same topic with other .ml accounts behaving that way and swarming the person commenting.
Can you? You don't' seem to be able to.
Your reply doesn't really follow the conversation. This is tangential to the main thread. We're talking about how we present and defend information as a meta commentary on these threads, and not how the egging on of an invasion of a totalitarian country upsets some folks.
Also, did you just make an account to participate in this thread? Your account is brand spankin'.
This you?
It takes huge balls to go around calling people stupid only to miss the entire point yourself. Terrible troll, honestly.
Because we've seen what the real life effect of this kind of mindless jingoism and chauvinism is; millions killed by American bombs.
No, .worlders just can't stop themselves from strawmanning.
That's an absurdly broad generalization, and one I'm going to present as proof that you see things in a cartoonish "good guys vs bad guys" framing.
Western chauvinism is a faith based belief.
America was never about helping the people of the world. Many who believe that are mostly victims of propaganda. It’s all about American interests. If it’s in their interest they will give some reason like liberating a people as a pretence to enable military action.
Also to directly answer the question, they have nukes trained on Seoul, have the backing of China which considers it a buffer against western influenced south kr
Nukes. We know they have them and missiles to deliver them. Any situation where a wildcard like North Korea uses nukes in any offensive capacity is terrifying. "Nuclear War: A Scenario" is a great modern book on how things could go to hell if one single North Korean nuclear missile is launched towards the United States.
Artillery. In any case of open war on North Korea anyone within artillery range of the NK border will be bombarded with heavy shelling. Even if it lasted for just an hour or two before the batteries were eliminated the civilian casualties and destruction would be like a large natural disaster. Now imagine if chemical shells were added to the mix, because they have those too.
China has the most leverage to help North Korea on a humanitarian and diplomatic level without risking war, so if it could be done the best chance is through them.
To add to this, N Korea also has a huge conventional army, and is a very mountainous country. Lots of soldiers+mountains=very bloody to invade.
This is also why Iran is fairly safe from ground invasion. It's like a gigantic Switzerland, which if you're familiar with WW2 history, even Hitler left Switzerland alone despite kinda wanting to occupy the place. The cost was just too high compared to the benefits, so, y'know, may as well skip it and invade the USSR instead.
Despite what people keep saying, a war in NK would be short and one sided. While they could cause a lot of destruction at the start, after a few salvos their artillery would be taken out by air power. Then their entire command and control structure would be eliminated so they couldn't communicate with their troops at all. And those troops are conditioned to not do anything without orders. So at best they'd be sitting ducks waiting to be taken out. And I'm pretty sure most of them would cost to surrender once it's clear that the regime is gone. There'd be a share of diehards that would choose death over surrender but i don't think that would be a large percentage.
Modern war planners mostly know better than to count on everything going well.
Yes, that's basically what we did in Iraq. It led to a 20y occupation, thousands of troops killed, hundreds of thousands to millions of civilian deaths, and several new terrorist organizations. It will cost the US alone about 8,000,000,000,000. Basically the entirety of cultural progress and then some was lost in a few months.
https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar
We saw how that failed in iran
When you're so racist you think Koreans are the battle droids from The Phantom Menace.
Because - improbably, given its track record elsewhere - the world has worked out that the solution to someone killing kids isn't to kill more kids.
But not after having killed a lot of kids first.
We are still ... learning
Because north korea only make empty threats and the west are hypocrites and never gave a damn,about internstional law, democracy and human rights in other countries
Or, just hear me out, because the west doesn't want to enter into a war with China in Korea a second time.
In that case they should stop pretending to care about what i mentioned instead of acting like they care about Palestinians but still buying arms from them and keep great economical relation with the terrorist state , celebrating Israel attack on Iran under of the pretext that Iran is ruled by authoritarian regime while having great connection with Saudis, not pressuring UAE to stop support the RSF in Sudan using UAE, Israeli and USA arms
The goal poasts moved so far that I can not even see them in the field. Good talk!
😂😂😂
China is the answer. Nobody does anything about North Korea for the same reason China doesn't invade Taiwan.
And this goes back to the Cold War, which goes back to WWII, and the politics of the president and military commanders, specifically MacArthur, who wanted to continue north and take North Korea decisively to keep the Soviet Union and China from controlling it before it could be reinforced by Chinese soldiers.
At the time, North Korean soldiers were outnumbered by UN forces 3:1, with far more tanks, etc than NK had.
The UN waffled, and by the time they decided Korea should be reunified, China had shipped in nearly 300,000 troops, and an unknown amount of matériel.
Fuck the UN. It's their fault this is still going on.
Why “fuck the UN” and not “fuck China?”
Sounds like the UN could have made better choices, but the real villain (at least in the part of the history you describe) is China. No?
No
Short answer is that NK is pretty much self-contained. Occasional Kim might rattle his sabre but no one is too worried about it. Until they start making serious threats to the stability of other countries it's just a case of leave well enough alone.
Sure it sucks what the people of NK have to endure but it's not for other countries to tell them how they should live unless they directly ask for help or start threatening the sovereignty of other countries.
As someone else in the comments mentioned, WW2 wasn't an intervention to protect the German citizens that were being persecuted, it was a reaction to German invasion of other nations.
Oh absolutely the west would love to effect regime change in North Korea. Morale win, keep the military industrial complex going, grow the economy, get rid of some pesky poors in combat, maybe hoover up some natural resources.
The problem is China, NK is strategically important to them as a source of said natural resources and as a buffer zone against South Korea. Plus lots of slave labour, global economies can never have enough of that.
So yeah, messing with North Korea means messing with China. Despite some real grade A morons in power nobody has been that stupid yet.
Those pesky poors! Always getting in the way of some good imperialism 😤
Don't worry! There's this new little number called 'Iran' coming up. Plenty of opportunity to get rid of them there.
Are you familiar with the Korean war? There was a massive conflict which got drawn out into a stalemate and everybody agreed a temporary ceasefire was preferable to even more destruction.
Trying to topple a regime that has nothing to lose and a highly indoctrinated population is not an easy ask. We can only hope that like most authoritarian regimes they eventually succumb to the weight of their own opression. It's better than torching the whole continent in the name of freedom.
The difference is that the North Koreans still fight with the same technology as back then while the other side has made some advances.
Even if true, an old nuke will destroy your city just fine, don't worry about that.
Seoul is so close to the border, it’s within artillery range of NK. Kim can cause all kinds of havoc without resorting to nukes. If provoked enough, he could put one (or more) craters in South Korea’s largest city, without even playing his scariest card.
Then there’s the possibility of a military response from China. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that.
Lastly, NK has been under all kinds of sanctions for years. It might not be the “anything” you have in mind, but many nations seem to be doing about as much as they can without risking all-out war.
china is the only reason why NK doesnt collapse right away, the ccp uses NK as a buffer against SK and the west. NK is a true vassal state of china, and ccp has recently begun making headways into russias natural resources.
I never thought about it like that
yea thats why ccp is so friendly with NK, its a good buffer against South korea and the asian neighbors and eu and usa. i think they are the only ones that have major trade with them, russia is probably only convenient right now.
NK could not defeat the US or China militarily but it could do quite a bit of damage to SK before anyone could stop them. This is a big reason the US doesn’t intervene.
China is concerned about the population of NK suddenly becoming millions of refugees they’ll need to recuse and deal with. So they would rather the regime not collapse.
Ah, the old question about what to do about North Korea, it occupies the minds of many, there are some answers, many lead to more questions, and so on.
The stakes are increadibly high, so we have to tread very carefully.
Let's bring up a few key facts.
Now, you ask what other countries can do to help the people of NK, that is a hugely complicated question, which in general is mostly answered with an answer no one really wants to hear:
For any proper aid to get into NK you need the support of the regime, and they will take the credit for the aid.
I saw a documentary of a film crew following a team of surgeons travelling to NK to help people who had lost their sight, it was a simple operation, preformed and funded by foreign organizations, the regime had only allowed the team access.
The operation took maybe a few min per patient, they replaced a lens in the eyes of the patient, and as soon as the patient was done, they rushed to the portraits of the leaders of NK, got on their knees and thanked them deeply for their graciousness of restoring their eyesight.
This is the kind of society NK is, everything is tied to the leader.
This is the starting point, and you have 26 million people to deal with...
Ok, say that a world power decide that they have had enough with the Kim family and this is worth going to war over.
What can we expect?
Regardless of what countries are involved, Seoul WILL be bombarded.
So now the attacker is hated both in NK and SK as well as probably a lot of other countries.
NK will use their nukes, and possibly other WMD they have.
Then comes China....
China loves NK as a buffer against the west, so they would and have deployed the PLA to save NK.
I fell asleep a few times while writing the pervious comment, so if it seems cut off, that is why.
Now, there are a few more things to talk about.
Lets start with 1 first:
I think we can rule out direct military action by a foreign power, any action will see Seoul in SK destroyed within a day, and even Japan is at a high risk here.
Political collapse is possible, but not realistic to happen in the current situation, remember that the government has an extreme level of control over the media in NK, this includes extreme control over the smartphones sold in NK, everything you do is monitored, any photo you take with the camera is cryptographically signed on the device so the government knows the origin of any photo spread around in NK, you can see more here: https://youtu.be/czJaA0S2AjE . With this level of control of the media, the regime will probably not fall soon.
Gradual change is the most probable, but will take a long time, people in SK do send baloons with USB sticks containing SK media, so people in NK are somewhat aware of life in SK. But as I noted earlier this will take a long time.
Ok lets move on to number 2, what would happen after a collapse of the NK government.
The most probable thing is that China will come and run NK as a kind of colony, NK lacks a LOT of modern infrastructure, and the citizens will be at extreme risk of exploitation.
Whoever colonized NK would face the daunting challenge of integrating 26 million people into a modern society, meanwhile other groups will try to exploit the cheap labour NK citizens can provide.
Bringing NK citizens into modern society with zero oversight will end in disaster, look at Albania as a warning, there was little knowledge of financial scams in the times after communism and several pyramid schemes was established and later collapsed, wiping out 50% of the GDP of Albania at the time and contributed in large parts to the 1997 Albanian rebellion.
Teaching the NK citizens about the dangers and advantages of modern society will take a long time, it will involve a lot of shattered illusions, plenty of people will want to go back their old ways, other's will want to go full steam ahead, making their own paths without help.
This is just a small taste of the issues to come...
Great clarification. Do you think lifting sanctions and creating Pro-NK surpluses would help? Would Kim even do that?
The main problem with NK is the lack of trust and respect between them and the rest of the world, they don't respect the rules of other nations (look at the NK kidnappings of Japanese citizens), this makes it very difficult to deal with them.
So trust and respect needs to be built up from the ground up.
As it stands now, even small lifted sanctions should be expected to be exploited by NK.
To start work to handle NK, the world could start by involving NK in talks, generic talks, acknowledging their existence outside of just conflicts and mandatory communications.
Talking will lead to better understanding which we can use to slowly try and lift some sanctions, and working from that angle.
Countries are not good or bad they don't have friends they have interests. Is always a good rule of thumb when thinking about Geopolitics.
Jesus Fucking Christ. Stop trying to "liberate" other countries. Don't you understand what that entails? Rampant slaughter of civilians followed by propping up a colonial regime. How many times are you gonna try this shit before you learn? When has it ever worked?
At least DPRK minds it's own business. Imo, the country most in need of a war of liberation is the United States, which not only has a backwards, oppressive regime that's disappearing people off the streets, but also has been directly involved in multiple wars of conquest and aggression, and indirectly involved in more. Whatever you wish upon Korea, let it happen here, let's let China or someone bomb our cities and set up a government they like. Will you be greeting them as liberators? Not so fun when the shoe's on the other foot, is it?
Someday I hope y'all are able to see yourselves for the warmongers you are. I have no idea how liberals are able to convince of themselves as "peace-loving" while saying shit like this.
Liberal has nothing to do with peace loving, or pacifism, that's a right wing delusion they use to pump their courage before committing more atrocities on them. No different than 'God forgive me for what I'm about to do'.
Right wing revolutions end with the left in political prisons and slavery. Left wing revolutions end with the aristocrats/oligarchs, and their families, in the ground. It's really just a question of what flavor of violence is about to happen.
It's more of a liberal delusion that they're "usually" antiwar, but the one that's happening now is always "different." Liberals are right-wing, and generally their (especially US) meddling with regime change ends up installing a fascist who kills or imprisons the left.
I mean sure, if you want to make up your own meaning for right wing, then go for it.
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. Capitalism is right-wing. Leftism is defined by anti-capitalism.
In the UK, for example, the "Liberal Democrats" are right-leaning. It's primarily in the US that "liberal" and "leftist" are used interchangeably, because once there was no longer a substantial (self-indentifying) socialist presence to scaremonger about, the right started scaremongering about liberals by equating them to socialists, and the meaning stuck. But I reject that and stick by the original meanings, which are used internationally.
Depends on the leadership. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. There have been times when they've been further left than Labour.
Currently of course, that's easy because Labour is too busy trying to appeal to Reform voters and Conservatives and are governing like they were the Democratic Party, which is a shame, because the country is desperately needing some wealth redistribution.
Labour are in power because were gasping for some sanity after a succession of Conservative lunatics, but all the Conservative Party needs to do is stump up a leader who can sound like they have a couple of good ideas and have a bit of charisma and they'll be back in power before you can say "short memory".
I'm just going off what has happened historically every time you people have tried this shit. What happened when y'all tried to "liberate" Vietnam? What happened when y'all tried to "liberate" Afghanistan?
I hope you get exactly what you want and get to experience foreigners coming to "liberate" you through mass bombing campaigns. Maybe you'll even get a front row seat to Agent Orange from your "liberators." Shame on you.
They have nukes
The nukes are recent, and probably not tactically functional. It's purely a cost benefit analysis. As long as NK isn't in serious motion to cause more damage outside their country, than it's worth to stop them, no one will.
Yeah true. Like Turkmenistan. That country is like North Korea, but not in conflict with other countries. So no one cares.
Plus, they occasionally release pretty decent music
https://youtu.be/8PwHytpomC4?t=16m30s
And don't forget the former president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov with live performance and rap song
Certified hood classic.
Do we? We only get a little bit of news from there, and I wouldn't be sure how reliable it is.
Help how? Go to war and slaughter most of their population? They are already heavily mobilized, and no doubt they'd conscript a lot more in case of a conflict. Not to mention they have nukes.
Who is 'we'? No offence, but this sounds like some oblivious American patriot asking why America hasn't saved the world yet.
Most countries don't have their own nukes, so they will never even consider getting into a conflict with a country that does have them. Most countries don't have even a fraction of the resources needed for any sort of operation.
Plus, North Korea has powerful allies (like China) and is technically a member of the UN, so you can't just disregard everything and conquer it.
Feel free to pitch the idea to congress. It will cost somewhere in the realm of trillions of dollars to invade, occupy, and rebuild North Korea. We're talking an occupation lasting decades. A full time military presence for the foreseeable future as North Korea rebuilds something resembling a functional democratic society.
Don't get me wrong, their military would get absolutely bodied in a full on shooting war with any sort of NATO-esque military coalition. But they have a sizable entrenched force with more than a few functional nuclear weapons. It would cost A LOT of lives.
So, that's the bill. If you think you can convince congress to go for it, go nuts.
China would never let that happen, it would end up being a China US proxy war... Which it always was
Because China doesn't want anyone to.
Why should we, as the collective west, spend soldiers lifes and money on "liberating" a population that hates us? Oh, and please mind: "Liberating" a country normally also includes killing a shitton of civilians in this process.
We live in a sad world, western democracy with high standard regarding human right are the exception, not the norm.
So are we gonna start war against every dictatorship? Look at the results in Afghanistan instead of freeing them, they now rank worse than North Korea in the economist democracy index not only they got a 20 year long war, but in the end stayed one one of the worst dictatorship in the planet, not really a success
The western democracies who support the longest occupation? That organized ton of coups? That support genocide??
Oxymoron
What exactly are you suggesting we do about it? They’ve got enough conventional artillery aimed at Seoul to cause millions of casualties the moment it even looks like we’re about to intervene.
Can't do anything as long as China wants the situation to stay like this.
Nukes baby!
Who knew nukes would be terrible for human rights? /s
But it is great for a country's sovereignity
Nobody wants to do that. North Korea is a shithole-class country that hates SK, is propped up by China, and to a lesser extent, Russia, who basically use them as slave labor and cannon fodder for their illegal war in Ukraine.
While NATO could easily steamroll NK, SK is right there and would get heavily damaged in a war. And then SK would probably have to take care of a ton of starving, brainwashed, uneducated people and a bombed flat country. Nobody wants to fix them, and superpowers like China are actively working against peaceful initiatives like reunification.
It's an injustice for the world, but there's much bigger fish to fry on the world stage right now. Existential, extinction-class threats like climate change and nuclear war. Democracies fighting tooth and nail against totalitarianism, like Ukraine. And western countries in various fights against the predictable but extremely annoying rise in fascism.
"Step in?" Well, because the world isn't run by a mom and dad who step in and make governments do the right things.
The short answer is that they have nukes.
China would be really pissed off about that.
The major problem is what do you do with the massive humanitarian crises you after you remove the regime?You will have to care for millions of people who have had everything given to them.
Tthis is really messed up, what is the economic interest in doing something about it?
There’s really no economic interest for anyone other than South Korea in this situation
You can't treat governments like they're people. The same detachment from the human spirit applies as it does to any sufficiently large corporation, multinational, politburo, royal court, whatever.
Even if your specific nation holds your specific code of ethics and standards, there can be severe consequences to holding all other nations to the same standard.
Unless you're a superpower, in which case you're the oppressor, simply by engaging in diplomacy.
Given all of this, what you're asking for is for one nation to have perfect foreign policy that would compel change in North Korea. Then, all other nations would need to adopt and extend the same policy, but independently and without external pressure.
No one wants the ugliness of a war over NK, but everyone wants their natural resources, estimated to be one of the largest deposit of minerals in the world.
iirc one of the issues is that even if things go perfectly on a military front no one is quite sure how to handle and de-program/rehabilitate 25.5 million people a large quantity of which likely lack any skills that would be useful in western economies.
What an alarming thing to say...
I'm not saying its a good reason, just a reason. We could easily afford it if we took some of that magic money that goes into military funding blackholes or magical infastructure projects that never get built yet somehow break records on cost. Sadly the decision is being made by people with no sense of empathy or value for human life.
No, the alarming part is that you view North Koreans as subhuman animals with no skills.
We see and hear what the US state dept wants us to hear. And nothing more.
As to the core of your question. The answer is nukes. Nukes are the only way to fend off the imperial aggression of the United States and its imperialist partners.
Because China.
China sees NK as a buffer to the US, sort of a little brother that's a bit too crazy so they have to tug on the leash to get them to chill every now and then.
We've already got bases in SK, but the Yellow sea separates us from China. NK is the land barrier.
First of all, there are a lot of people willing to die for their country as it is. As soon as people are willing to give up their lives, you're not changing shit. These people didn't grow up like you and me.
Secondly, there is a world of difference between stepping in and stepping in. One of the main reasons that North Korea is so isolated is because of sanctions. That is also a form of stepping in.
Thirdly, we already saw war and foreign meddling in that area. That's exactly why America is the great evil opponent of North Korea. That's not a coincidence or just because Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il or Kim Jung Un hated "freedom".
Now you ask, what other solution is there?!
Well, a lot of people are actually working on that. By launching information campaigns and spreading Western/foreign music into the country. Real change comes from within. But please remember that this country is now lead by the third generation of absolute leader.
One thing I have not seen brought up yet is that Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea. Even if North Korea didn't have nukes they could bombard the city with conventional arms or even chemical weapons and kill hundreds of thousands in the first day or two.
Loads of reasons. It has (or at least had) protection from China who doesn't want a Western nation at it's border. It can wreck havoc on SK if invaded. It would cause loads and loads of casualties to invade.
In any case: The way SK is going now, all NK has to do is wait another 30-50 years and they can just walk in empty land, there.
Not quite answering your question, but I highly recommend reading Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demrick. It's a really interesting book about daily north Korean life based on accounts of defectors. It does a really good job at humanizing North Koreans and understanding how the country works for day to day life.
Not really an answer, but I think this Laibach song vibes well with your question - How do you solve a problem like Korea?
Watch Time Ghost's series on the Korean War.
No one does anything, because it’s not actually that bad. Most of the quality of life issues are due to western imposed (illegal) sanctions, and not the authoritarian leadership.
You’re sensing the cognitive dissonance between western propaganda vs western actions. Keep going in that direction. You’re close to getting it. Most of what you’ve been told about North Korea is made up bullshit.
Could you please share source for better education about North Korea?
Edit: reworded the question
https://thegrayzone.com/tag/north-korea/
Lol what cool aid have you been drinking https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/28/north-korea-execution-man-k-pop-human-rights-report
You say without a speck of irony, as you post a well-known propaganda rag.
Lol the guardian as a propaganda rag? The only people that complain about that are the fascists/right wing. So what would you consider a reliable reporting of the situation? I'm guessing only things that agree with your existing opinions.
Everyone calls the guardian propaganda, outside of those advocating for very narrow pro-imperialist neoliberalism. So yeah, those opposing neoliberalism from both the left and right will obviously point out their agenda and inaccurate reporting.
They also openly coordinate with western intelligence agencies.
https://thegrayzone.com/tag/north-korea/
So do tell me what reliable sources of information you use?
There’s a link in the post. Can this bot not follow links?
Not a bot sorry. Didn't realise that a single random source with no cross references constituted reliable information
Empty threats and geopolitics. It's also complicated because the guy is crazy. What would you do? Also there are a lot of dictatorships that are more dangerous for us. Remember Irak?
Anyway the whole thing is philosophical. Do you want to bomb everyone because they are the bad guys? Nowadays the bad guys are the USA, would you agree if Europe invaded the USA because they elected the ultimate dictator?
There is no answer.
Rosie O'Donnell?
Again, Trump.
How many nukes going off does it take to ruin everyone's day? One. Modern rationalization is "maybe if we make it small enough", no, it's still one. Not only because it's an environmental disaster even if small, but it crosses a line and once crossed, lines move around a lot. The last thing needed is a nuclear detonation and the world's countries analyze it and determine, "well, it was terrible, but not THAT terrible. Maybe two is the limit."
Nuking North Korea is an absolutely ridiculous idea. Not a solution. How has the world forgotten the mastery the CIA possesses over political assassinations and coups? Like, c'mon. A couple of coups could probably at least help the world out. As long as you don't just peace out as soon as the government gets destroyed, or install a dictator. Basically, don't be too much like the CIA.
Depends if we get the Scandinavian model out of it. Sure would be nice to not worry about well, everything.
I don’t disagree, the US definitely are the bad guys today on the global stage. But just hearing and seeing the stories from North Korea breaks my heart. Has the NATO or any western country tried some sort of diplomatic deal with Kim for better living conditions for his people?
The official line is that North Korea is thriving - it'd be political suicide for Kim Jong Un to accept help.
The comparison with the US isn't unwarranted. The respective propaganda machines are the reason both countries are the way they are.
When people are told daily how their country is the best in the world, the ruling class can get away with an awful lot.
It's 2025, and many places in the US don't even have clean tap water. People are being "disappeared" off the streets by government agencies. People are dying from easily-treatable diseases. The wealthy ruling class live lives of luxury, while poor people work multiple jobs and still exist below the poverty line.
So, with all that said, do you think Trump would accept a deal that would allow better living conditions for his people? I think we both know the answer.
The problem is, for all the problems the country has internally, a "deal" with the west is going to turn out the same way it turned out for other countries: Forced "market reforms" that really just mean allowing western capitalists to exploit the country's resources and labor. There is no good path for a country that involves western intervention. We'll just make it worse, or at least as bad, but for out benefit.
Besides, why would they ever trust us? We bombed them to smithereens within living memory and since then have gone out of our way to punish the people living there for whatever reason you choose to believe was our motive. If we cared about the people there we wouldn't have invaded or embargoed them in the first place. And since then it's not like we've stopped acting like that to the rest of the world. If the US cared about freedom and democracy or people's living standards, we wouldn't be allies with places like Saudi Arabia or Israel. We wouldn't have installed right wing dictators in all the countries we tried to stop from having self-determination.
The best thing that could be done if we actually cared about people's living standards would be to back the fuck off and let people sort out their own politics without a global superpower breathing down their necks. They already fought one revolution, if they really want to change their government I'm sure they could do it without our "help." Maybe if they didn't have an existential enemy they could deal with their own problems more easily.
Well Trump had a go in his first term but unsurprisingly didn't get far.
It's the same reason why the world is leting Israel commit genocide, or not get involved in the Yemen Civil War, or ongoing genocide in Maynamer, or the dozens of current active war zones.
The world simply doesn't care. The wold only cares when the global economy is being threatened.
It's not that people "don't care". We've tried intervening with force in e.g. Afghanistan, where the oppressive regime was forcibly removed, and military power was used to ensure that elections were held and the results were respected.
We have observed, several times, that everything goes to shit when we leave. Not only that, but people generally don't seem like it when outsiders take over and tell them how to run their country, who should be allowed an education, and that cannot be oppressed. So a side effect of the armed intervention is that a lot more people hate you now.
Western countries "aren't doing anything" because we've both learned from experience that military intervention doesn't really work, and been repeatedly told by the rest of the world to mind our own business.
The west and israel literally wanted to overthrow the regime in iran few weeks ago
"The west" isn't really a cohesive unit regarding Israel/Iran. You have some western countries supporting a genocide and committing blatant violations of international law, while others condemn them for it and try to pressure them to stop.
Sadly, one rogue state can cause a lot of damage, and countries typically have a very high bar for using military force against their closest allies in defence of a third party.
Kinda shocking to me how anyone can present such a whitewashed take on the Afghanistan War in 2025. It didn't go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.
We shortsightedly allied with brutal local warlords, and the failure at local politics blew up in our faces. We bombed 100s of villages, losing the hearts and minds of the people. We sent innocent people to be tortured in Pakistani black sites, creating a fanatical resistance willing to martyr themselves. We forcefully changed the main agricultural output from wheat to opium poppy, leading to widespread drug abuse and addiction. I could go on and on...
I'm not sure if there is a military intervention model that works, but American-style military intervention with mass civilian deaths and warcrimes from beginning to end is a proven failure.
It seems like you didn't observe the thousands of people swarming the airport in Kabul trying to get out with the last planes. It also seems like you haven't picked up on the people crying about how people are being brutally punished for getting an education or listening to music now.
I'm not denying that shit was really bad while coalition forces were there, but acting like it didn't get worse for a lot of people when the left is just closing your eyes.
Regardless, it's ludicrous to claim that western countries "aren't doing anything because they don't care". It's not like we've spent truckloads of money and thousands of lives over 20 years of trying to get a functioning system in place while preventing a humanitarian crisis because we "didn't care". People saw it as immoral to just turn our backs on Afghanistan and let them solve their own problems. The result was largely that we learned that you can't force democracy and human rights onto someone else, as proven by the almost complete absence of people willing to fight for just that once the coalition left.
I did not close my eyes when America turned it's back on the thousands of Afghans who helped the American regime during the war. The people who helped America were left resourceless and with giant targets on their back. We betrayed them.
I did not close my eyes when the flimsy and deeply flawed education system America propped up instantly failed the moment we left.
The abandonment of Afghan allies and the destruction of girl's education in Afghanistan are just two more data points showing the deep failures of the American model of foreign intervention.
We did not spend truckloads of money trying to get a functioning system in place. A lasting functioning system was never the goal. I urge you to read into our military's functions and objectives in Afghanistan, because you are deeply misinformed. Anyone who suggests our goals were "democracy and human rights" is obviously infected with US propaganda.
I don't really understand what you're trying to say here?
My point is that, while flimsy and flawed, there was in fact an education system and a humanitarian system in place that was propped up by coalition forces. This system did fall apart, leaving no system at all when the forces left. And yes, a bunch of Afghanis have every right to feel betrayed. I never said otherwise.
It's not like Afghanistan is the only place where schools, hospitals and infrastructure has been financed by western countries. By and large, we spend a lot of money on these things because a significant portion of the population sees it as the right thing to do. Because we care, and want to help people.
What became very clear in Afghanistan was that you can't force a population to be a liberal democracy. They have to be willing to fight for it themselves. The Afghan army (on paper) had several hundred thousand men, loads of heavy equipment, and several years to train and prepare for coalition forces leaving. There was a government structure in place. These things instantly folded when the coalition left because, clearly, enough people preferred Taliban to what the outsiders had forced upon them.
I guess I'm saying it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If you stay, you're an oppressive occupier. If you leave, you're a traitor that permits a humanitarian crisis to occur.
The OP here asked "why doesn't anybody do anything about NK", and my answer is that we (seem to) have learned that you can't force democracy and human rights on a country. Chalking it up to "we don't care" is reductionist.
Since you are still completely missing the basics, let's do a little history lesson then.
The bombing of Afghanistan started in retaliation to 9/11. After initial bombing of Al-Quaeda training camps and Taliban headquarters, we asked the Afghan government to hand over Bin Laden. They said "yes we will hand him over if you agree to stop bombing". George W's famous response was " we don't negotiate with terrorists". The bombing continued, and Bin Laden fled to Pakistan to survive for years.
The propagandistic idea that we were there to nation build and create a liberal democracy only entered the picture a year into the brutal bombing campaign because the US populace was turning against the war.
Then, we propped up a classic puppet government that was always destined to fail when we left. Elements of a puppet government include:
The Afghan army had many huge problems. There is a plethora of news stories from 2008-2021 showing how the army is poorly trained, unmotivated, and largely drug addicted. Military leaders have been saying the entire time that this army would not stand on its own.
The Afghan army did have one strong motivation though: money. It was a mercenary army. But when the US withdrew in 2021 we stole the majority of the funds from the Afghan Central Bank (over $7bln dollars was taken by the Biden administration). Not only did this immoral act of theft cripple the Afghan economy, it destroyed their ability to pay the mercenary army.
No one who was actually paying attention expected the unpaid mercenary army to defend the puppet government once we left. Maybe, if the money kept flowing, they could have held up for a few months, but the stolen Central Bank funds ensured that was impossible.
I'm not saying "we don't care". Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best. But the military and civilian systems created by the US were never built for the benefit of the Afghan people. Your positive spin on this war is naive and ahistorical.
Great, it seems like we agree on the major points here! I'm not denying any of the major issues of the Afghan war, nor any of the glaring problems with how the whole "nation building" attempt went about. I'm very well aware of the history of the Afghan war, and have seen several of the documentaries you refer to that point out that it was largely known that the Afghan army would likely desert once the coalition left.
That is quite literally what you said in your first comment, and is literally the only thing I've disagreed with you on so far ("the world simply doesn't care"). If you didn't mean that, then I don't see anything I disagree with you on.
This is literally the point I've been trying to make, but it seems like you keep misinterpreting me as saying the whole invasion was a misunderstood humanitarian operation. I'm not saying that.
First, the ROK unfiltered propaganda on DPRK is as believable as Ukrainian propaganda. We all know "the pure unvarnished truth" as the complete trust in that propaganda.
The US's unjustified war on Korea was to overthrow a democratic unification election in which the less corrupt North party won. Ever since, an oligarchist duopoly has been propped up by the US, and standard of living is determined by the isolationism imposed by US/ROK alliance.
DPRK is aligned with winning future alliance, and ROK is being canibalized, like other colonies, by its master. DPRK has always been the stronger military side, by necessity, and the future is likely better for them. In your example, "why not do something about the US for actual verified first hand threats to citizens not cheering enough for Trump"?
Interesting tankie take.
Holy hilarious nerve hitting, Batman. Superman is the American way/might that simplistically pretends to side with truth and justice.
Strange Red Herring.
Care to talk about Chewbacca next?
No, you don't.
Yeah, and then a year later those same kids appear in public alive and well, as it's happened again and again.
"In nk people have to push the trains and they kill your family if you don't whistle merrily while doing it".
There’s a novella by Ursula K Leguin called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas wherein there is a utopian society that is able to exist because of the misery of one child who endures all of the hardship and sadness of the society. NK is that child for the world. They are kept like a specimen in a cabinet of curiosities warning everyone against communism, making the “free” in the West thankful for what modicum of freedom they’ve managed to preserve.
It's a whole ocean away which means you are not allowed to invade. And decades of sanctions make it hard for diplomacy.