How come nobody does anything about North Korea?
How come nobody does anything about North Korea?
We all see and hear what goes on over there. Kim will execute kids if they don’t cheer hard enough at his birthday party or something? He’s always threatening to nuke countries and is probably has the highest domestic kill count out of any world leader today.
So I ask? Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people. I saw a survey asking Americans and Escaped North Koreans would they migrate to North Korea and to the US if given the chance (hypothetical for the refugees). And it was like <0.1% to 95%. Obviously those people live in terror.
Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization? Nukes on South Korea? Is just not lucrative to step in? SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME PLEASE!?
We all see and hear what goes on over there.
Do we? We only get a little bit of news from there, and I wouldn't be sure how reliable it is.
Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people.
Help how? Go to war and slaughter most of their population? They are already heavily mobilized, and no doubt they'd conscript a lot more in case of a conflict. Not to mention they have nukes.
Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization?
Who is 'we'? No offence, but this sounds like some oblivious American patriot asking why America hasn't saved the world yet.
Is just not lucrative to step in?
Most countries don't have their own nukes, so they will never even consider getting into a conflict with a country that does have them. Most countries don't have even a fraction of the resources needed for any sort of operation.
Plus, North Korea has powerful allies (like China) and is technically a member of the UN, so you can't just disregard everything and conquer it.
We see and hear what the US state dept wants us to hear. And nothing more.
As to the core of your question. The answer is nukes. Nukes are the only way to fend off the imperial aggression of the United States and its imperialist partners.
The short answer is that they have nukes.
Can't do anything as long as China wants the situation to stay like this.
Why should we, as the collective west, spend soldiers lifes and money on "liberating" a population that hates us? Oh, and please mind: "Liberating" a country normally also includes killing a shitton of civilians in this process.
One thing I have not seen brought up yet is that Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea. Even if North Korea didn't have nukes they could bombard the city with conventional arms or even chemical weapons and kill hundreds of thousands in the first day or two.
What do you wanna do? Bomb people?
Invading Korea is the reason why north Korea is like that in the first place, idiot
Bloodthirthy jingoists really think war is always the answer lmao gtfo
We all see and hear what goes on over there
No, you don't.
Kim will execute kids if they don’t cheer hard enough at his birthday party or something
Yeah, and then a year later those same kids appear in public alive and well, as it's happened again and again.
"In nk people have to push the trains and they kill your family if you don't whistle merrily while doing it".
NK could not defeat the US or China militarily but it could do quite a bit of damage to SK before anyone could stop them. This is a big reason the US doesn’t intervene.
China is concerned about the population of NK suddenly becoming millions of refugees they’ll need to recuse and deal with. So they would rather the regime not collapse.
Not quite answering your question, but I highly recommend reading Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demrick. It's a really interesting book about daily north Korean life based on accounts of defectors. It does a really good job at humanizing North Koreans and understanding how the country works for day to day life.
Oh absolutely the west would love to effect regime change in North Korea. Morale win, keep the military industrial complex going, grow the economy, get rid of some pesky poors in combat, maybe hoover up some natural resources.
The problem is China, NK is strategically important to them as a source of said natural resources and as a buffer zone against South Korea. Plus lots of slave labour, global economies can never have enough of that.
So yeah, messing with North Korea means messing with China. Despite some real grade A morons in power nobody has been that stupid yet.
It's a whole ocean away which means you are not allowed to invade. And decades of sanctions make it hard for diplomacy.
America was never about helping the people of the world. Many who believe that are mostly victims of propaganda. It’s all about American interests. If it’s in their interest they will give some reason like liberating a people as a pretence to enable military action.
Also to directly answer the question, they have nukes trained on Seoul, have the backing of China which considers it a buffer against western influenced south kr
Jesus Fucking Christ. Stop trying to "liberate" other countries. Don't you understand what that entails? Rampant slaughter of civilians followed by propping up a colonial regime. How many times are you gonna try this shit before you learn? When has it ever worked?
At least DPRK minds it's own business. Imo, the country most in need of a war of liberation is the United States, which not only has a backwards, oppressive regime that's disappearing people off the streets, but also has been directly involved in multiple wars of conquest and aggression, and indirectly involved in more. Whatever you wish upon Korea, let it happen here, let's let China or someone bomb our cities and set up a government they like. Will you be greeting them as liberators? Not so fun when the shoe's on the other foot, is it?
Someday I hope y'all are able to see yourselves for the warmongers you are. I have no idea how liberals are able to convince of themselves as "peace-loving" while saying shit like this.
Nobody wants to do that. North Korea is a shithole-class country that hates SK, is propped up by China, and to a lesser extent, Russia, who basically use them as slave labor and cannon fodder for their illegal war in Ukraine.
While NATO could easily steamroll NK, SK is right there and would get heavily damaged in a war. And then SK would probably have to take care of a ton of starving, brainwashed, uneducated people and a bombed flat country. Nobody wants to fix them, and superpowers like China are actively working against peaceful initiatives like reunification.
It's an injustice for the world, but there's much bigger fish to fry on the world stage right now. Existential, extinction-class threats like climate change and nuclear war. Democracies fighting tooth and nail against totalitarianism, like Ukraine. And western countries in various fights against the predictable but extremely annoying rise in fascism.
Short answer is that NK is pretty much self-contained. Occasional Kim might rattle his sabre but no one is too worried about it. Until they start making serious threats to the stability of other countries it's just a case of leave well enough alone.
Sure it sucks what the people of NK have to endure but it's not for other countries to tell them how they should live unless they directly ask for help or start threatening the sovereignty of other countries.
As someone else in the comments mentioned, WW2 wasn't an intervention to protect the German citizens that were being persecuted, it was a reaction to German invasion of other nations.
Generally countries in the west only get involved in conflicts if they get something out of it, be it directly via getting wealth from the country, or indirectly like curbing successful non-capitalistic economies before they catch on and their own people start questioning the billionaires. The "we're there to liberate people" is just marketing speech.
No one does anything, because it’s not actually that bad. Most of the quality of life issues are due to western imposed (illegal) sanctions, and not the authoritarian leadership.
You’re sensing the cognitive dissonance between western propaganda vs western actions. Keep going in that direction. You’re close to getting it. Most of what you’ve been told about North Korea is made up bullshit.
Because China doesn't want anyone to.
America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the "Korean War".
We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.
Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime's propaganda will make sure they never forget.
If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the "Arab Spring" model is much more effective and humane than the "Afghanistan War" model.
Generally frowned upon to invade countries.
Ludicrously costly. Your tax payers will want to know why it's more important than everything else you do with their money.
Immense suffering. Mostly by the people you're trying to liberate but also your own troops and their families.
They have nukes and could probably blow up at least a few regional cities. If the regime is threatened they will most likely use them.
South Korea or China or Russia are the only countries with land borders. China and Russia find NK useful to have arround to annoy US. Seoul is within artillerty range of the border.
Building up a new state in it's place is very difficult. Remember how the Taliban took back power about 15 minutes after the US left Afghanistan?
Feel free to pitch the idea to congress. It will cost somewhere in the realm of trillions of dollars to invade, occupy, and rebuild North Korea. We're talking an occupation lasting decades. A full time military presence for the foreseeable future as North Korea rebuilds something resembling a functional democratic society.
Don't get me wrong, their military would get absolutely bodied in a full on shooting war with any sort of NATO-esque military coalition. But they have a sizable entrenched force with more than a few functional nuclear weapons. It would cost A LOT of lives.
So, that's the bill. If you think you can convince congress to go for it, go nuts.
We all see and hear what goes on over there
First, the ROK unfiltered propaganda on DPRK is as believable as Ukrainian propaganda. We all know "the pure unvarnished truth" as the complete trust in that propaganda.
The US's unjustified war on Korea was to overthrow a democratic unification election in which the less corrupt North party won. Ever since, an oligarchist duopoly has been propped up by the US, and standard of living is determined by the isolationism imposed by US/ROK alliance.
DPRK is aligned with winning future alliance, and ROK is being canibalized, like other colonies, by its master. DPRK has always been the stronger military side, by necessity, and the future is likely better for them. In your example, "why not do something about the US for actual verified first hand threats to citizens not cheering enough for Trump"?
Because that roads leads to war. The moment one country decides it has the authority to overule another's sovereignity because they disagree with what's going on there, it becomes a free for all.
This line of thinking is the very reason why there are two Koreas today, because of two superpowers who thought they knew better and could make a nice profit in the process.
We have a word for this: Colonialism.
Also there’s a city of 20 million people like 10 miles from the border that could get nuked just by conventional weapons. Adds complications
Nukes. We know they have them and missiles to deliver them. Any situation where a wildcard like North Korea uses nukes in any offensive capacity is terrifying. "Nuclear War: A Scenario" is a great modern book on how things could go to hell if one single North Korean nuclear missile is launched towards the United States.
Artillery. In any case of open war on North Korea anyone within artillery range of the NK border will be bombarded with heavy shelling. Even if it lasted for just an hour or two before the batteries were eliminated the civilian casualties and destruction would be like a large natural disaster. Now imagine if chemical shells were added to the mix, because they have those too.
China has the most leverage to help North Korea on a humanitarian and diplomatic level without risking war, so if it could be done the best chance is through them.
Seoul is so close to the border, it’s within artillery range of NK. Kim can cause all kinds of havoc without resorting to nukes. If provoked enough, he could put one (or more) craters in South Korea’s largest city, without even playing his scariest card.
Then there’s the possibility of a military response from China. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that.
Lastly, NK has been under all kinds of sanctions for years. It might not be the “anything” you have in mind, but many nations seem to be doing about as much as they can without risking all-out war.
The same reason you never hear from what happens inside abusive households until someone from within speaks up (aka: a "defector")
Edit: As for the follow up questions:
Imagine you live in the "hood" where the authorities doesn't do shit, and you see someone who's part of a gang abuse their child, are you gonna go confront them at the risk of getting your whole family shot to death? That's what MAD is like on the world stage. North Korea has China as an ally, don't forget about that.
Countries are not good or bad they don't have friends they have interests. Is always a good rule of thumb when thinking about Geopolitics.
We live in a sad world, western democracy with high standard regarding human right are the exception, not the norm.
So are we gonna start war against every dictatorship? Look at the results in Afghanistan instead of freeing them, they now rank worse than North Korea in the economist democracy index not only they got a 20 year long war, but in the end stayed one one of the worst dictatorship in the planet, not really a success
There’s a novella by Ursula K Leguin called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas wherein there is a utopian society that is able to exist because of the misery of one child who endures all of the hardship and sadness of the society. NK is that child for the world. They are kept like a specimen in a cabinet of curiosities warning everyone against communism, making the “free” in the West thankful for what modicum of freedom they’ve managed to preserve.
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China would be really pissed off about that.
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The major problem is what do you do with the massive humanitarian crises you after you remove the regime?You will have to care for millions of people who have had everything given to them.
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Tthis is really messed up, what is the economic interest in doing something about it?
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It's the same reason why the world is leting Israel commit genocide, or not get involved in the Yemen Civil War, or ongoing genocide in Maynamer, or the dozens of current active war zones.
The world simply doesn't care. The wold only cares when the global economy is being threatened.
You can't treat governments like they're people. The same detachment from the human spirit applies as it does to any sufficiently large corporation, multinational, politburo, royal court, whatever.
Even if your specific nation holds your specific code of ethics and standards, there can be severe consequences to holding all other nations to the same standard.
Unless you're a superpower, in which case you're the oppressor, simply by engaging in diplomacy.
Given all of this, what you're asking for is for one nation to have perfect foreign policy that would compel change in North Korea. Then, all other nations would need to adopt and extend the same policy, but independently and without external pressure.
He’s always threatening to nuke countries
Empty threats and geopolitics. It's also complicated because the guy is crazy. What would you do? Also there are a lot of dictatorships that are more dangerous for us. Remember Irak?
Anyway the whole thing is philosophical. Do you want to bomb everyone because they are the bad guys? Nowadays the bad guys are the USA, would you agree if Europe invaded the USA because they elected the ultimate dictator?
There is no answer.
Kim will execute kids if they don’t cheer hard enough at his birthday party or something?
Rosie O'Donnell?
He’s always threatening to nuke countries and is probably has the highest domestic kill count out of any world leader today.
Again, Trump.
No one wants the ugliness of a war over NK, but everyone wants their natural resources, estimated to be one of the largest deposit of minerals in the world.
First of all, there are a lot of people willing to die for their country as it is. As soon as people are willing to give up their lives, you're not changing shit. These people didn't grow up like you and me.
Secondly, there is a world of difference between stepping in and stepping in. One of the main reasons that North Korea is so isolated is because of sanctions. That is also a form of stepping in.
Thirdly, we already saw war and foreign meddling in that area. That's exactly why America is the great evil opponent of North Korea. That's not a coincidence or just because Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il or Kim Jung Un hated "freedom".
Now you ask, what other solution is there?!
Well, a lot of people are actually working on that. By launching information campaigns and spreading Western/foreign music into the country. Real change comes from within. But please remember that this country is now lead by the third generation of absolute leader.
Not really an answer, but I think this Laibach song vibes well with your question - How do you solve a problem like Korea?
Watch Time Ghost's series on the Korean War.
