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North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

bbc.co.uk

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Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#51

Post by leeter »

arp242 wrote: post #29
graypegg wrote: post #9

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.…

> I really feel like we’ll look back at how we ignored it for so long shamefully 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 ca…

It's a complicated issue. Part of the problem is nobody really wants to fix it because the costs will be enormous. When and if the regime falls it's going to take tens of billions of dollars in aid to keep it from destabilizing South Korea. Not to mention the massive refugee crisis that will occur. I'm pretty sure that's one of the many reasons why China hasn't dealt with it. Because the vast majority of refugees would go north across their border.

China has made it clear they aren't particularly thrilled with the idea of having someone not under their thumb next to their border as well. As a consequence of that... the "best" scenario would probably be China invading. But "best" is definitely in scare quotes as that could go VERY wrong very very quickly. I think the PRC is aware of that too. So unfortunately that means the DPRK will starve, because the realpolitik is such that solving the issue is just not a tenable solution for all the other parties.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#52

Post by fragmede »

jraph wrote: post #18
Tade0 wrote: post #13

> They must attend their weekly Life Review Session, compulsory for every citizen. Here they admit to their mistakes and failures, whilst reporting the shortcomings of their neighbours. This sounds like something taken straight from https://elan.school/ . Or is it the other way around? My parents lived through communism and even during the worst days of the system it wasn't this bad - chiefly because it was impractic…

> > They must attend their weekly Life Review Session, compulsory for every citizen. Here they admit to their mistakes and failures, whilst reporting the shortcomings of their neighbours. This is agile/scrum's sprint retrospectives, for every aspect of life and even more often. Seems horrible.

Call it therapy, charge $200/hr, and people will be lining up at your door to do once a week for an hour.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#53

Post by jraph »

rqtwteye wrote: post #39
jraph wrote: post #37

I just can't understand what motivates so much violence towards a whole population. This is a mystery to me. Even if it's greed or something, how are you happy with yourself and sleep well when you are causing so much harm? I usually try hard to understand fellow human beings but I'm badly failing here.

It's not any different from capitalists having terrible working conditions in their factories. Humans have an enormous capacity to ignore others' suffering as long as they have a good life themselves. And somehow they always find a way to rationalize this.

> It's not any different from capitalists having terrible working conditions in their factories

Is it not, really? Have we read the same article?

I hate capitalism, and I hate many consequences it has including horrible working conditions for some workers, sharp inequalities, terrible incentives like preferring to produce stuff in countries with terrible laws because it's cheaper and therefore promoting horrible working conditions and terrible environmental practices, etc. I see capitalism as a worldwide oppressive system. However, as a human being, I can see how capitalism can be applied in good faith by other human beings, and the things I listed being somewhat unintended consequences (at least I can hope so - and now we know the consequences I would hope we would move away from it).

But this?

(this is not a communism/socialism vs capitalism debate by the way, what this article describes is not communism or socialism. It's torture)

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#54

Post by arp242 »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #20
reducesuffering wrote: post #12

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.

> I don't see how it could get any worse.

The embattled regime could employ a scorched earth policy and will launch all the weapons they've got, resulting in millions of civilian deaths. That seems worse to me.

It's not like Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, or even Putin's Russia.

If it wasn't for that Korea could be reunited and it will probably end up fairly well, similar to how the reunification of Germany ended up well.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#55

Post by kelipso »

jraph wrote: post #37

I just can't understand what motivates so much violence towards a whole population. This is a mystery to me. Even if it's greed or something, how are you happy with yourself and sleep well when you are causing so much harm? I usually try hard to understand fellow human beings but I'm badly failing here.

People in this thread itself are talking about how they wish NK would be invaded. You can justify pretty much anything using any justification as long as enough people believe or support it.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#56

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

arp242 wrote: post #29
graypegg wrote: post #9

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.…

> I really feel like we’ll look back at how we ignored it for so long shamefully 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 ca…

That's military industrial complex propaganda. The North Korean air force consists of just 40 MiG 29's. The ROK military outclasses NK in every way that matters, including 167 F16's, 60 F15E's, and 40 F35's. This is in addition to the 160 F16's the US has stationed there.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#57

Post by xhevahir »

graypegg wrote: post #9

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.…

Why do you say there's no more geopolitical reason for the country to exist? The Cold War is long over but China may well see DPRK as a valuable buffer and a means of diluting the military capabilities of rival countries. Belarus, another dictatorship that seems to be frozen in time, has a similar role vis-a-vis Russia.

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#58

Post by CrackerNews »

jemmyw wrote: post #22

I remember years ago reading about someone from the north who had defected to South Korea after they were shown an episode of a SK TV show about two women fighting over a car parking space. Seeing a normal person in the country next door being able to argue over something so inconsequential because they already had every basic need met cut through. I'm sure SK tries to send propaganda information to the north. Maybe…

The harsh reality is that NK defectors could end up being second class citizens in the South or wish to return back [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/forever-strang...

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#59

Post by mrguyorama »

okdood64 wrote: post #35
dangerwill wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are referring to is allowing MacArthur to have nuked China when they entered the Korean war, aka killing millions of civilians and leaving the eastern seaboard of China irradiated for generations. We should be glad he was kept on his leash.

> leaving the eastern seaboard of China irradiated for generations It might depend on the particular warhead, but this was not the case for Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

The nukes we had by korea were much larger

Re: North Koreans speak secretly to BBC from inside closed country

#60

Post by kneebonian »

> It is not just the police she fears, it’s her neighbours. There is now almost no-one she can trust.

This is interesting. Reading a book recently called Ivan's war about the Soviet Union under Stalin one of the things it emphasized was the effort by the state to ensure no one could trust each other, to make sure each person felt isolated and alone.

Remember the purpose of propaganda isn't to convince you of something it is to convince you; you are alone.

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