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I can't help but wonder if the world will look back on the situation in North Korea the same way it does the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust. The conditions

• fatbird 14y ago
  In the case of Rwanda, a great deal of the breast-beating that followed had to do with the fact that Western nations could have done much more to prevent the genocide than they did (at least on paper). The strategic situation with North Korea mandates that the only thing to be done to relieve the suffering of North Koreans would be to restart and win the Korean War. China likes having North Korea as a buffer state on that border (which is why they intervened the first time), and at least in decades past, Russia and China had ideological reasons to prop up the regime. More immediately, Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. In the renewal of hostilities, Seoul would be flattened within hours, and Seoul has 15 million people living in it. More than Russia and China, that gun pointed at South Korea's head has always mandated extreme caution when dealing with the North (and allowed the North to get away with provocations that would have been crazy anywhere else).
  • mahyarm 14y ago
    So to break the stalemate, china would have to invade north korea?
  • speeder 14y ago
    Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either. Koreans have shown already that they sometimes still think of themselves as one people, with north and south koreans being friendly toward each other and wanting a reunion of the country (the way of the reunion that is the disagreement). North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world. South Korea also has a huge army. Also both of them have huge amounts of military equipment. And finally, Korea in general (both from north and south) and very belligerant, or was at least, in the past, Korea history is filled with wars that they caused, and crazy conquest attempts. Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship. The united Koreas, maybe will just awesomely advance the world technology... Or maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China. There are several countries that don't want to risk the second option, and thus every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself. I am not saying I agree or condone that, but this is how it works.
    • guard-of-terra 14y ago
      I think South Koreans don't want the united Korea either (not on the words but in practice). It will pose a huge burden of organizing and assimilating a huge and a very strange country. Regular North Koreans will be eager to join but then they won't be so happy in fifteen years seeing how their life quality won't nearly match the "historical south" and only jobs available to most of them will be of low prestige and pay.
      • gosukiwi 14y ago
        South Koreans just want to keep playing Starcraft and League of Legends.
        • guard-of-terra 14y ago
          I can't blame them for that. I'm sitting on the couch in a warm room with new year tree and 47" TV right now and I certainly won't want to go outside in the snow and cold to fix the agriculture or restore the order of some remote and unhospitable land. Also won't want to have my lifestyle degrade because my country suddently have 20 million unproductive mouths to feed.
      • silencio 14y ago
        South Korea has already sunk billions of dollars into trying to help the people of the DPRK without even considering unification, and is promising even more than that in exchange for certain concessions from the government. There are still many families that have yet to be reunited with each other across the border, including parts of my extended family. The Korean War hasn't ended so long ago that there aren't still plenty of people that remember what it was like before this split, or even back to WW2 and earlier. Nobody is saying unification will be easy for anyone, but they're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers just because the burden is a lot to shoulder. Not to mention it's not South Korea blocking the development of North Korean workers at the moment.. there have been attempts to work together (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region) but between the batshit crazy government up north and everyone else scared shitless of what they can do it's not possible to manufacture and import/export a lot of technology instead of just mass-manufacturing clothing with cheap labor. Pretty frustrating.
  • cabalamat 14y ago
    > Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. Why didn't South Korea start, decades ago, relocating its capital to somewhere out of artillery fire, i.e. end all development in Seoul and build a new city in the south. It seems to be a bit thoughtless to build a major city where it is a hostage to the brutal and aggressive dictatorship next door.
    • fatbird 14y ago
      They didn't build it after the Korean War, it's been there for 2,000 years. While they could relocate the government to Pusan, the millions living there would likely have stayed, resulting in the same situation.
      • cabalamat 14y ago
        What was the population of Seoul just after the war ended? Would I be right in guessing it was a lot less than it is now, and that most buildings in modern Seoul post-date the war?
        • guard-of-terra 14y ago
          Seoul means very much for them. If I understand right, "Seoul" is a word for capital. They took traditions seriously and traditionally it's THE capital. Even North Korea considered Seoul the capital for decades, calling Pyongyang "the capital of revolution" or something like that. Also, it was a very poor and unstable country post-war and didn't feature much strategic thinking. And obviously USA wanted their military bases near the border, i.e. in Seoul.
    • brown9-2 14y ago
      Would relocating the capital really change the strategic situation much? North Korea possesses missiles whose range could (supposedly) hit any other piece of ground in South Korea.
      • InclinedPlane 14y ago
  • jlgreco 14y ago
    > China likes having North Korea as a buffer state on that border (which is why they intervened the first time) That seems somewhat similar to the logic that the US used to decide that Vietnam was strategically important; some sort of minor variation on the domino theory. Interesting to consider it like that.
    • tptacek 14y ago
      As I understand it (I could definitely be wrong) China's concern isn't geopolitical but pragmatic: the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the DPRK would be a gigantic flood of refugees into China.
      • jlgreco 14y ago
        That is how I also understand their position currently, but I'm not sure that makes sense as their reasoning initially before the situation was so extreme (I'm assuming it wasn't, though I suppose war refugees of any sort can present an issue).
      • pekk 14y ago
        It would be easy to underestimate the importance of "sphere of influence" doctrine to (post) Communist states
      • rexreed 14y ago
        Why would it not result in a flood of refugees to S. Korea (ROK)? Unless you're saying that the indoctrination is such that they would rather flee to another (more moderately) centrally-controlled regime versus a free democracy - one that shares their culture (ignoring the most recent 60+ years) and language?
    • Volpe 14y ago
      Except that North Korea is a bordering country to China (by a land border no less). A little different to Vietnam, not very close to the US. From my own reading, it seemed that China's involvement was largely due to the Russian, and Chinese push for more "Red States" (which is why they were also involved in Vietnam). There was the notion that Capitalism would fall by the hand of "Global Revolution"...
  • tomjen3 14y ago
    If Seoul is within range of the DMZ, wouldn't that mean that a first air strike with very heavy gas bombardment would be relatively easy? After all the planes wouldn't have to fly very far and whatever radar NK has is properly a joke, or nonexisting.
    • fatjokes 14y ago
      The problem with nukes is that it only takes one. One that SK/US intelligence didn't know about and bomb in the first strike.
  • csense 14y ago
    If a war opened with a surprise attack against that artillery position, could the attack be strong enough to save Seoul? Does this change if the attackers are allowed to use nuclear weapons? (This is a strictly academic question. Nuking North Korea seems like a move that'll likely start a war that will end civilization.)
    • troutwine 14y ago
      As I understand--and please be aware I'm only working off public information here--no. North Korea is well aware they cannot wage a war of aggression nor can they sustain a defensive posture. They've been aware of this for 40+ years and have had time to prepare. Their only effective military option is to make the cost of defeating them so prohibitively high that no nation will dare. To this end they've riddled the mountains near the DMZ with tunnels for logistic resupply and as firing positions. These tunnels admit the movement of men and material out of sight of overhead spy planes and, now, satellites. The DPKR easily has thousands of tunnels at its disposal. It's entirely possible that the US and its allies have mapped the endpoints of these tunnels and _could_ simultaneously bombard them all, but if even 10% were missed Seoul could be absolutely decimated. (There are reports that South Korean and US special forces make incursions into the North to discover and map tunnels, so I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of unknowns is much higher than 10%.) Interestingly, if Seoul and other populated areas were to be moved--that is, its 15 million citizens collectively abandoned the city and rebuilt, say, 100 miles away from the DMZ--this strategic advantage of the DPRK would be voided. Ignoring the staggering cost of this, it's probable that the North would view such action as provocation to war and act accordingly. From the field of possible responses to North Korea it's entirely possible that waiting for it to burn itself out may well be the least costly tactic, measured by unnatural human deaths. That means, of course, that the DPRK's concentration camps and system of repression must be tolerated until such horrors lead to the destruction of the government from internal forces. Personally, I find this morally repugnant and I pity any world leaders that must choose the waiting game.
      • dsl 14y ago
        The Imnam Dam on the Bukhan River is North Korea's "I win" button. It's holding back roughly 3 BILLION gallons of water and wired with explosives that can be remotely detonated from Pyongyang. If it were to fail or be destroyed Seoul would look like New Orleans within the hour. The south spent $500 million dollars building the Peace Dam downstream in an attempt to defend against flooding, but it is still a very credible threat. General consensus of American boots on the ground in South Korea is that the North Koreans will be in Seoul (or what is left of it) within 48 hours. Everyone drills for rapid evac. The picture we like to paint is that they are inept starving fools, but they have been planning and drilling non-stop longer than some other countries have even existed.
  • csense 14y ago
    If the West really cares that much about South Korean civlians, why doesn't North Korea use their threat to extort stuff from the West? Say things like the following: "Lift the US embargo or we'll kill 15 million South Korean civilians." "Give us $10 billion a year or we'll kill 15 million people." "Give us an aircraft carrier or we'll kill 15 million people." "Give us some better technology or we'll kill 15 million people." "Give us 10,000 South Koreans to us as slaves every year or we'll kill 15 million of them." What's stopping North Korea from making these demands?
    • PeterisP 14y ago
      Well, it has been doing essentially that for decades, and they are getting food and oil 'gifts'. There is a lot of negotiation by South Korea and USA with North Korea all the time about where exactly the line will be drawn, with all kinds of negotiation chips.
    • pretoriusB 14y ago
      >What's stopping North Korea from making these demands? That they are an actual country, and not some comic book villain's brotherhood? I mean, WTF? People in the West really believe those kind of things can be demands or that those kind of BS passes through North Korean people's minds?
    • guard-of-terra 14y ago
      They don't have N * 15 million people. But they did use the "give us a hundred thousand tons of grain or 100,000 people will starve" tactic pretty effectively thru all the 90-s
• oleganza 14y ago
  Isn't it horrible to be surrounded by people who do not notice the evil that goes around them? I mean, the problem is not in the disgusting conditions of the camps, but in the belief that there is a justification to put people in camps anywhere in the world. It is absolutely disgusting that the worse examples of institutionalized violence do not ring any bell in the heads of western people when they have to solve their own problems of violence. Consider: why is that when we talk about P != NP, everybody needs a super-strong proof on 200 pages, but when it comes to pushing and killing people, it is enough to believe a word of a bunch of random people regarding ethics, democracies, laws etc.
  • lostlogin 14y ago
    Some problems are hard to solve and some are too hard to solve. It's depressing.
• wdr1 14y ago
  > I don't know what the answer is, but I think hindsight will lead future generations to condemn perceived inaction on our part. If only. The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rowanda, North Korea... History is replete with examples were the current generation know the consequences of inaction of the prior generation, yet did nothing to stop genocide in their generation. I don't know what would change things, but I have little hope for future generations being motivated by condemning our inaction.
• meaty 14y ago
  I'm all for action but I think people are cautious for a reason. There are approximately 20 million brainwashed individuals, a lot of whom have absolutely no idea what the rest of the world is like. They will defend NK to the death if they think they'll be killed not doing it. If you go there and start a war, which is the only likely way to stop the oppression, do you think we can actually win it? Incremental political change is the only way to go and the current leadership realise that, but if they change it suddenly, they'll all hang as well. Don't forget the last Korean war killed a LOT of people.