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>Someday these people are going to be free of oppression. If only they had some natural resources, then the state of their government would be a massive moral

>Someday these people are going to be free of oppression. If only they had some natural resources, then the state of their government would be a massive moral issue for the world. Unfortunately until they strike oil they're just gonna have to rot.

wil421 13y ago
Yea its like nations say Russia cant take Crimea. Yet NK can slaughter and oppress an entire nation and no one flinches.
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  To be fair, russia can take crimea because nobody can stop them. NK can oppress because nobody gives a shit. (Also IIRC china protects them in order to irritate the west and to use as a bargaining chip.)
  - wj 13y ago
    China also props them up to avoid the NK government collapsing thus sending millions of North Korean refugees across the border.
  - BugBrother 13y ago
    >> NK can oppress because nobody gives a shit. Am I missing something? Are you judging people morally for not doing the impossible? Or are you just generally outraged by dirty realpolitik? I just can't see a third alternative to these non-starters: - China could stop the regime, maybe even without a catastrophe. How would you motivate China to do that, when the West today is as dependent on China as China is on the West? - The military way to help the NK population would be an economic and humanitarian catastrophe, not only in NK. Edit: I could agree with that position on e.g. Zimbabwe, but NK seems carefully designed by the junta to keep them safe by using their own population as hostages (as long as China don't sell them down the river). Edit 2: A third possibility is to offer the junta a better deal than to control the lives of many millions of slaves. But they are obviously happy as it is.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  Russia has taken Crimea and nothing has been done about it. The sanctions were useless.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
peteretep 13y ago
What do you expect the world to do exactly? Military intervention? They'll lay waste to Seoul. Sanctions? Already there, and, generally they hurt the people rather than the leader. What's your solution?
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  Stop using the removal of dictators as a justification for invading countries you're strategically interested in, because it looks really fucking stupid when NK is allowed to ban haircuts and starve people. Similar things apply to zimbabwe etc. EDIT: "you" used here in a general sense.
  - peteretep 13y ago
    > because it looks really fucking stupid when NK is > allowed to ban haircuts and starve people. So don't do the things you can do, because there are some things you can't?
  - Touche 13y ago
    Just because you can't remove all dictators doesn't mean you shouldn't try to remove those you can. Any country with a built up military is probably not going to be invaded; the possibility of a world war is not something we can risk in the nuclear age.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Such salient wisdom. The fact is that the west has been dealing with North Korea for decades. The US, for example, has had huge numbers of military forces staged in South Korea for decades. The US and others have continuously worked toward keeping North Korea in check, also for decades. That's not easy, nor is it cheap. But there are no quick and easy solutions to the problem of the North Korean totalitarian regime, especially not military ones. Starting a war in the Korean peninsula is a recipe for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, in South Korea as well as in the North. And that's just from conventional weapons without getting into chemical weapons (which North Korea is known to have) and nuclear weapons (which they also are known to have). The problem of North Korea is that it's a hostage crisis that continues to unfold in slow motion. The fact that there are incredibly terrible conditions inside North Korea doesn't make it any easier to decide to pull the trigger and doom perhaps millions of civilians to die just to get rid of the regime.
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  >But there are no quick and easy solutions to the problem of the North Korean totalitarian regime, especially not military ones. Starting a war in the Korean peninsula is a recipe for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, in South Korea as well as in the North. My point is, sometimes, that's not considered a barrier to regime change. Mass civilian deaths were apparently worth it in the cases of iraq and afghanistan. Those deaths were, and are, "justified" by the moral good of the removal of evil dictators. So no, I don't think we should invade NK, for the obvious reasons you state. I'm saying that the impunity with which NK oppresses its people exposes the nonsense that is the "liberal intervention" narrative of recent geopolitics.

wil421 13y ago

Yea its like nations say Russia cant take Crimea. Yet NK can slaughter and oppress an entire nation and no one flinches.

JonnieCache 13y ago
To be fair, russia can take crimea because nobody can stop them. NK can oppress because nobody gives a shit. (Also IIRC china protects them in order to irritate the west and to use as a bargaining chip.)
- wj 13y ago
  China also props them up to avoid the NK government collapsing thus sending millions of North Korean refugees across the border.
- BugBrother 13y ago
  >> NK can oppress because nobody gives a shit. Am I missing something? Are you judging people morally for not doing the impossible? Or are you just generally outraged by dirty realpolitik? I just can't see a third alternative to these non-starters: - China could stop the regime, maybe even without a catastrophe. How would you motivate China to do that, when the West today is as dependent on China as China is on the West? - The military way to help the NK population would be an economic and humanitarian catastrophe, not only in NK. Edit: I could agree with that position on e.g. Zimbabwe, but NK seems carefully designed by the junta to keep them safe by using their own population as hostages (as long as China don't sell them down the river). Edit 2: A third possibility is to offer the junta a better deal than to control the lives of many millions of slaves. But they are obviously happy as it is.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
Russia has taken Crimea and nothing has been done about it. The sanctions were useless.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

peteretep 13y ago

What do you expect the world to do exactly? Military intervention? They'll lay waste to Seoul. Sanctions? Already there, and, generally they hurt the people rather than the leader. What's your solution?

JonnieCache 13y ago
Stop using the removal of dictators as a justification for invading countries you're strategically interested in, because it looks really fucking stupid when NK is allowed to ban haircuts and starve people. Similar things apply to zimbabwe etc. EDIT: "you" used here in a general sense.
- peteretep 13y ago
  > because it looks really fucking stupid when NK is > allowed to ban haircuts and starve people. So don't do the things you can do, because there are some things you can't?
- Touche 13y ago
  Just because you can't remove all dictators doesn't mean you shouldn't try to remove those you can. Any country with a built up military is probably not going to be invaded; the possibility of a world war is not something we can risk in the nuclear age.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Such salient wisdom. The fact is that the west has been dealing with North Korea for decades. The US, for example, has had huge numbers of military forces staged in South Korea for decades. The US and others have continuously worked toward keeping North Korea in check, also for decades. That's not easy, nor is it cheap. But there are no quick and easy solutions to the problem of the North Korean totalitarian regime, especially not military ones. Starting a war in the Korean peninsula is a recipe for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, in South Korea as well as in the North. And that's just from conventional weapons without getting into chemical weapons (which North Korea is known to have) and nuclear weapons (which they also are known to have). The problem of North Korea is that it's a hostage crisis that continues to unfold in slow motion. The fact that there are incredibly terrible conditions inside North Korea doesn't make it any easier to decide to pull the trigger and doom perhaps millions of civilians to die just to get rid of the regime.

JonnieCache 13y ago
>But there are no quick and easy solutions to the problem of the North Korean totalitarian regime, especially not military ones. Starting a war in the Korean peninsula is a recipe for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, in South Korea as well as in the North. My point is, sometimes, that's not considered a barrier to regime change. Mass civilian deaths were apparently worth it in the cases of iraq and afghanistan. Those deaths were, and are, "justified" by the moral good of the removal of evil dictators. So no, I don't think we should invade NK, for the obvious reasons you state. I'm saying that the impunity with which NK oppresses its people exposes the nonsense that is the "liberal intervention" narrative of recent geopolitics.