Comment on How come nobody does anything about North Korea?
stoy@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Ah, the old question about what to do about North Korea, it occupies the minds of many, there are some answers, many lead to more questions, and so on.
The stakes are increadibly high, so we have to tread very carefully.
Let’s bring up a few key facts.
- NK is a totalitarian state with a huge personality cult surrounding the Kim family.
- NK is supported by both China and Russia, they both have a highly vested interest in keeping the status quo.
- NK is located within artillery range of SK’s capital city, Seoul.
- NK’s society is vastly different from all of it’s neighbours, even the language used in NK is noticably different from the language spoken in SK.
- NK has nuclear weapons.
- NK does not have a problem ignoring the normal rules of diplomacy.
Now, you ask what other countries can do to help the people of NK, that is a hugely complicated question, which in general is mostly answered with an answer no one really wants to hear:
Support the current regime
For any proper aid to get into NK you need the support of the regime, and they will take the credit for the aid.
I saw a documentary of a film crew following a team of surgeons travelling to NK to help people who had lost their sight, it was a simple operation, preformed and funded by foreign organizations, the regime had only allowed the team access.
The operation took maybe a few min per patient, they replaced a lens in the eyes of the patient, and as soon as the patient was done, they rushed to the portraits of the leaders of NK, got on their knees and thanked them deeply for their graciousness of restoring their eyesight.
This is the kind of society NK is, everything is tied to the leader.
This is the starting point, and you have 26 million people to deal with…
Ok, say that a world power decide that they have had enough with the Kim family and this is worth going to war over.
What can we expect?
Regardless of what countries are involved, Seoul WILL be bombarded.
So now the attacker is hated both in NK and SK as well as probably a lot of other countries.
NK will use their nukes, and possibly other WMD they have.
Then comes China…
China loves NK as a buffer against the west, so they would and have deployed the PLA to save NK.
stoy@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I fell asleep a few times while writing the pervious comment, so if it seems cut off, that is why.
Now, there are a few more things to talk about.
Lets start with 1 first:
I think we can rule out direct military action by a foreign power, any action will see Seoul in SK destroyed within a day, and even Japan is at a high risk here.
Political collapse is possible, but not realistic to happen in the current situation, remember that the government has an extreme level of control over the media in NK, this includes extreme control over the smartphones sold in NK, everything you do is monitored, any photo you take with the camera is cryptographically signed on the device so the government knows the origin of any photo spread around in NK, you can see more here: youtu.be/czJaA0S2AjE . With this level of control of the media, the regime will probably not fall soon.
Gradual change is the most probable, but will take a long time, people in SK do send baloons with USB sticks containing SK media, so people in NK are somewhat aware of life in SK. But as I noted earlier this will take a long time.
Ok lets move on to number 2, what would happen after a collapse of the NK government.
The most probable thing is that China will come and run NK as a kind of colony, NK lacks a LOT of modern infrastructure, and the citizens will be at extreme risk of exploitation.
Whoever colonized NK would face the daunting challenge of integrating 26 million people into a modern society, meanwhile other groups will try to exploit the cheap labour NK citizens can provide.
Bringing NK citizens into modern society with zero oversight will end in disaster, look at Albania as a warning, there was little knowledge of financial scams in the times after communism and several pyramid schemes was established and later collapsed, wiping out 50% of the GDP of Albania at the time and contributed in large parts to the 1997 Albanian rebellion.
Teaching the NK citizens about the dangers and advantages of modern society will take a long time, it will involve a lot of shattered illusions, plenty of people will want to go back their old ways, other’s will want to go full steam ahead, making their own paths without help.
This is just a small taste of the issues to come…
BadmanDan@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Great clarification. Do you think lifting sanctions and creating Pro-NK surpluses would help? Would Kim even do that?
stoy@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
The main problem with NK is the lack of trust and respect between them and the rest of the world, they don’t respect the rules of other nations (look at the NK kidnappings of Japanese citizens), this makes it very difficult to deal with them.
So trust and respect needs to be built up from the ground up.
As it stands now, even small lifted sanctions should be expected to be exploited by NK.
To start work to handle NK, the world could start by involving NK in talks, generic talks, acknowledging their existence outside of just conflicts and mandatory communications.
Talking will lead to better understanding which we can use to slowly try and lift some sanctions, and working from that angle.