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North Korea actively threatens the use of nuclear weapons, offensively, against its neighbors and enemies. There should be no sympathy for this regime or anyone

North Korea actively threatens the use of nuclear weapons, offensively, against its neighbors and enemies. There should be no sympathy for this regime or anyone who collaborates with it.

ricochet11 5y ago
How do we go about improving relations? How do we improve the lives of the people living under that awful regime? How do we give people ways to exit and escape, and have access to the freedoms we have?
- mdanger007 5y ago
  Sanctions are one of the few tools the world has against nuclear armed despots. If you're really interested in the questions you ask, I would start here: https://nymag.com/strategist/2018/03/the-10-best-books-about-north-korea.html https://nymag.com/strategist/2018/03/the-10-best-books-about...
- light_hue_1 5y ago
  The same way that the West won the cold war and liberated Eastern Europe: information. My parents and grandparents would sit and listen to Radio Free Europe at night, at low volume, so the neighbors couldn't hear and turn them in (years later we found out which neighbors told on them, it was.. interesting). That's how people in communist countries heard the truth and why they eventually overthrew their governments. If you listen to defectors what made a huge difference for them is just seeing normal life in smuggled tv shows and soap operas. Seeing hard evidence for the fact that other people live far better than they do. The government of North Korea tells people they live a great life and everywhere else is miserable. The problem is that today, the West has a huge disinformation problem. News networks like Fox routinely lie, politicians like Trump convince their people of things that are obviously false, etc. The truth simply doesn't play as much of a role. Russia learned this lesson too. There are fervent pro-Putin supporters out there now. This wasn't the case under communism. People generally understood that the system was garbage.
endisneigh 5y ago
Agreed. And once we finish with North Korea we should turn our eyes to the United States, the country that developed and currently only user of nuclear weapons in combat. No sympathy for users of nuclear weapons or any country who threatens its use!
- egberts1 5y ago
  … only user …? Clearly, you are qualified to comment on world affair. /sarcasm
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    Assuming you didn't miss the "in combat" part, this may be an English issue: To be a "user" of nukes here means "has used nukes in combat", not "has nukes for use in combat".
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    What other countries have used nuclear weapons in combat?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    That statement is entirely correct; the US is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in combat. Everyone else has only ever tested them, or used them as threats/deterrence.
  - garbagetime 5y ago
    Did a whole nuclear war go by without my noticing?
    - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
      Not an entire nuclear war, but you may remember the end of the second world war.
      - egberts1 5y ago
etherael 5y ago
Giving North Korean citizens access to an economy outside their locked down one where they can engage in trade may well be the exact opposite of collaborating with the North Korean regime. This could easily be the most practical and realistic way to destroy North Korean control over its economy. If those citizens are no longer beholden to the regime for their economic livelihood and that encourages internal organisation as well as more people seeing they have other options, sooner or later that's going to have a corrosive effect on state control of the economic affairs of North Korean citizens. Frankly the US should be all over encouraging this activity, but given how stupid they have been for all modern history I can't say I'm surprised they're not.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  How many times do we have to try this "stronger economic ties will encourage freedom/peace/democracy" theory before we accept that it only serves to enrich those who are already wealthy and doesn't do a thing to preserve peace. It perhaps even does the opposite: becomes a tool of coercion the bad actor can use to manipulate the free economies with which they trade. The free markets get hooked on the cheap $thing provided by the authoritarian government and then we're stuck. Our consumers are fat and happy with the cheap $thing so our politicians look the other way as the evil regime does more and more overtly evil things. Trade makes us more tolerant of the authoritarians' bad behavior. It doesn't encourage the authoritarians to behave better. See, e.g., Russia's sale of natural gas to Europe, China's sale of labor/consumer products to the West, KSA's sale of petrol to the States. Time and again we do business with evil regimes and pretend it might result in some good. It doesn't. It won't. Let's not keep repeating the same failed experiment.
  - etherael 5y ago
    I didn't claim anything about stronger economic ties between the organisational units of the States in question. I was making the exact opposite claim, that you weaken a closed state proportional to the degree of its closure by using countereconomics to erode the control it can directly exert upon its citizenry. I absolutely agree with you that trade with dystopian hellholes that provide economic resources the rulers of those dystopian hellholes can use to continue with their strategies is counter-productive and that all trade of that kind should to the maximum degree possible, be stopped. The kind of trade however that is enabled by peer to peer participants all over the world being directly able to trade with each other for goods and services to the extent the rulers of those dystopian hellholes cannot profit from is another thing entirely, and that is the kind of trade that blockchains can enable. That black market trade sets up competitive and progressively independent organisational units not beholden to the dystopian rulers they would otherwise be and directly compromises their economic power. Ask a soldier in the Venezuelan army what he thinks of the regime, and then ask a Venezuelan software engineer with the skills and experience in demand that would enable him to work remotely for dozens of well paid jobs transacting in crypto all over the world the same question. I guarantee the responses you get will illustrate my point very clearly.
garbagetime 5y ago
Why do you think it is that the DPRK places such a priority on emphasizing its nuclear capabilities?
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Because the civilized world would bring down the Kim regime, as we certainly should, if we could. Because they have nukes, we can't. This is getting to be a real problem as 21st-century history continues to unfold.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    This sounds like a catch-22/ circular logic. We would invade and topple the government if they didn't have those pesky nukes. The government needs to be toppled because they are developing nukes and we don't want them to.
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    The "civilized" world had plenty of time to do that before NK got nukes, and it didn't. War in Korea would be far worse than peace.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      War in Korea would be far worse than peace. The Korean War saw about 1.5 million civlian deaths, according to [1]. It's impossible to say how many died in the 1994-1998 famine alone, but [2] puts it at "240,000 to 3.5 million" and [3] cites figures of "up to 3 million." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine [3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-kim-jong-il-starved-north-korea/250244/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-kim... So, no. There are worse things than war. For allowing this situation to fester for multiple generations, history will judge us the way we talk about the "good Germans" who didn't lay a hand on anyone but who also did nothing to stop Hitler. You're correct, though, in that the North Korean nuclear program is now an ideal excuse for continuing to do what we did before, which was nothing.
dirtyid 5y ago
"actively threatens the use of nuclear weapons, offensively, against its neighbors and enemie" Citation needed. NK nuclear policy is No Preemption understood to be borderline No First Use. Until last month when Japan and South Korea were threatening base strike capabilities in which case NK turned into only retaliation strikes against military targets if attacked first.

North Korea actively threatens the use of nuclear weapons, offensively, against its neighbors and enemies. There should be no sympathy for this regime or anyone who collaborates with it.

ricochet11 5y ago

How do we go about improving relations? How do we improve the lives of the people living under that awful regime? How do we give people ways to exit and escape, and have access to the freedoms we have?

mdanger007 5y ago
Sanctions are one of the few tools the world has against nuclear armed despots. If you're really interested in the questions you ask, I would start here: https://nymag.com/strategist/2018/03/the-10-best-books-about-north-korea.html https://nymag.com/strategist/2018/03/the-10-best-books-about...
light_hue_1 5y ago
The same way that the West won the cold war and liberated Eastern Europe: information. My parents and grandparents would sit and listen to Radio Free Europe at night, at low volume, so the neighbors couldn't hear and turn them in (years later we found out which neighbors told on them, it was.. interesting). That's how people in communist countries heard the truth and why they eventually overthrew their governments. If you listen to defectors what made a huge difference for them is just seeing normal life in smuggled tv shows and soap operas. Seeing hard evidence for the fact that other people live far better than they do. The government of North Korea tells people they live a great life and everywhere else is miserable. The problem is that today, the West has a huge disinformation problem. News networks like Fox routinely lie, politicians like Trump convince their people of things that are obviously false, etc. The truth simply doesn't play as much of a role. Russia learned this lesson too. There are fervent pro-Putin supporters out there now. This wasn't the case under communism. People generally understood that the system was garbage.

endisneigh 5y ago

Agreed. And once we finish with North Korea we should turn our eyes to the United States, the country that developed and currently only user of nuclear weapons in combat. No sympathy for users of nuclear weapons or any country who threatens its use!

egberts1 5y ago
… only user …? Clearly, you are qualified to comment on world affair. /sarcasm
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Assuming you didn't miss the "in combat" part, this may be an English issue: To be a "user" of nukes here means "has used nukes in combat", not "has nukes for use in combat".
- endisneigh 5y ago
  What other countries have used nuclear weapons in combat?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  That statement is entirely correct; the US is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in combat. Everyone else has only ever tested them, or used them as threats/deterrence.
- garbagetime 5y ago
  Did a whole nuclear war go by without my noticing?
  - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    Not an entire nuclear war, but you may remember the end of the second world war.
    - egberts1 5y ago

etherael 5y ago

Giving North Korean citizens access to an economy outside their locked down one where they can engage in trade may well be the exact opposite of collaborating with the North Korean regime. This could easily be the most practical and realistic way to destroy North Korean control over its economy. If those citizens are no longer beholden to the regime for their economic livelihood and that encourages internal organisation as well as more people seeing they have other options, sooner or later that's going to have a corrosive effect on state control of the economic affairs of North Korean citizens. Frankly the US should be all over encouraging this activity, but given how stupid they have been for all modern history I can't say I'm surprised they're not.

elliekelly 5y ago
How many times do we have to try this "stronger economic ties will encourage freedom/peace/democracy" theory before we accept that it only serves to enrich those who are already wealthy and doesn't do a thing to preserve peace. It perhaps even does the opposite: becomes a tool of coercion the bad actor can use to manipulate the free economies with which they trade. The free markets get hooked on the cheap $thing provided by the authoritarian government and then we're stuck. Our consumers are fat and happy with the cheap $thing so our politicians look the other way as the evil regime does more and more overtly evil things. Trade makes us more tolerant of the authoritarians' bad behavior. It doesn't encourage the authoritarians to behave better. See, e.g., Russia's sale of natural gas to Europe, China's sale of labor/consumer products to the West, KSA's sale of petrol to the States. Time and again we do business with evil regimes and pretend it might result in some good. It doesn't. It won't. Let's not keep repeating the same failed experiment.
- etherael 5y ago
  I didn't claim anything about stronger economic ties between the organisational units of the States in question. I was making the exact opposite claim, that you weaken a closed state proportional to the degree of its closure by using countereconomics to erode the control it can directly exert upon its citizenry. I absolutely agree with you that trade with dystopian hellholes that provide economic resources the rulers of those dystopian hellholes can use to continue with their strategies is counter-productive and that all trade of that kind should to the maximum degree possible, be stopped. The kind of trade however that is enabled by peer to peer participants all over the world being directly able to trade with each other for goods and services to the extent the rulers of those dystopian hellholes cannot profit from is another thing entirely, and that is the kind of trade that blockchains can enable. That black market trade sets up competitive and progressively independent organisational units not beholden to the dystopian rulers they would otherwise be and directly compromises their economic power. Ask a soldier in the Venezuelan army what he thinks of the regime, and then ask a Venezuelan software engineer with the skills and experience in demand that would enable him to work remotely for dozens of well paid jobs transacting in crypto all over the world the same question. I guarantee the responses you get will illustrate my point very clearly.

garbagetime 5y ago

Why do you think it is that the DPRK places such a priority on emphasizing its nuclear capabilities?

CamperBob2 5y ago
Because the civilized world would bring down the Kim regime, as we certainly should, if we could. Because they have nukes, we can't. This is getting to be a real problem as 21st-century history continues to unfold.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  This sounds like a catch-22/ circular logic. We would invade and topple the government if they didn't have those pesky nukes. The government needs to be toppled because they are developing nukes and we don't want them to.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  The "civilized" world had plenty of time to do that before NK got nukes, and it didn't. War in Korea would be far worse than peace.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    War in Korea would be far worse than peace. The Korean War saw about 1.5 million civlian deaths, according to [1]. It's impossible to say how many died in the 1994-1998 famine alone, but [2] puts it at "240,000 to 3.5 million" and [3] cites figures of "up to 3 million." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine [3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-kim-jong-il-starved-north-korea/250244/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-kim... So, no. There are worse things than war. For allowing this situation to fester for multiple generations, history will judge us the way we talk about the "good Germans" who didn't lay a hand on anyone but who also did nothing to stop Hitler. You're correct, though, in that the North Korean nuclear program is now an ideal excuse for continuing to do what we did before, which was nothing.

dirtyid 5y ago

"actively threatens the use of nuclear weapons, offensively, against its neighbors and enemie" Citation needed. NK nuclear policy is No Preemption understood to be borderline No First Use. Until last month when Japan and South Korea were threatening base strike capabilities in which case NK turned into only retaliation strikes against military targets if attacked first.