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North Korea runs contrary to my intuition about dictators. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of regicide, but most dictatorships, even among the most horrific, represent some sort of misguided attempt at benevolance. Killing dissidents? Sure, they're getting in the way of your utopian plan. Failed economic plans that lead to famine? Well, the idea had some justification, better pivot to avoid further harm. Hell…
I'm sure SK tries to send propaganda information to the north. Maybe they should saturate them with bullshit first world problem complaints instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)
I would have gave MacArthur whatever he needed to win.
I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…
What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)
I would have gave MacArthur whatever he needed to win.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)
I mentioned at the end of my comment I don’t have a good solution. I think something being tragic and shameful is possible even if we don’t have a solution. Just on a human level, this is humans doing horrible things to other humans. To me that’s shameful for all of us on the scale of history.
Tragic, disappointing sure. I also happen to disagree that it is ignored or forgotten, this article just being the latest example.
I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…
1. Not the utterly pointless, banal conflicts started by lies and personal vendettas that have already killed hundreds of thousands and millions of people, spilled over into neighbouring (and not so neighbouring) countries, and destabilized entire parts of the world?
2. If this is going to be among the worst of this century, you must have an incredibly optimistic outlook on what the next 80 years are going to look like!
North Korea runs contrary to my intuition about dictators. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of regicide, but most dictatorships, even among the most horrific, represent some sort of misguided attempt at benevolance. Killing dissidents? Sure, they're getting in the way of your utopian plan. Failed economic plans that lead to famine? Well, the idea had some justification, better pivot to avoid further harm. Hell…
I think when looking back through history, the continued torture of the entire North Korean population is going to be one of the most tragic events of the 21st century. Despite the regime originating earlier, it feels to be most tragic now; long after any maligned geopolitical reason for the regime to exist has since disappeared. It’s something we don’t think about often currently, because it’s almost become a joke.…
One of the big problems has long been that North-Korea has a large network of artillery within shelling distance of Seoul. Now they also have rockets and nukes and stuff, but even without those any serious threat to NK would come with devastating cost of civilian lives in South-Korea.
See e.g. [1], which estimates that "the DPRK could cause thousands of casualties in just a minute and more than 100,000 in an hour" and some of the case studies in that report have more than 200,000 in an hour. And all of that assumes only conventional HE rounds – no chemicals or nukes. And all of that is in the first hour alone: a full war would cost millions of lives (during the Korean war, South Korean casualties were about a million civilians and 250,000 soldiers).
You need to move carefully when you've got almost 6,000 pieces of artillery pointed at your head, never mind nukes, and the people in control of them seem rather unhinged.
I've seen people express this kind of "we should have just intervened" opinion before, and in principle I don't disagree, but it's really not that simple: both due to the strong risk of heavy civilian casualties, and the geopolitical impact with the USSR during the cold war (and to lesser degree, contemporary China and Russia – I can already see China invade Taiwan using "but you invaded NK!" as an excuse).
[1]: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA619-1.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you have the world do? Tens of thousands of Americans died trying to prevent it in the Korean War. Even if North Korea didn't have nuclear capabilities, it's asking for Iraq 2.0 (dictatorship threatening others, populace under severe oppression)
If China decided they would no longer back North Korea, the regime could be replaced in hours. Most of the time, when toppling regimes, you have to be worried about someone even worse taking over. In this case, I don't see how it could get any worse.