For one thing, Seoul would be reduced to ruins by NK’s massed artillery.
Not anymore I understand; the people who remember having family on the other side of the border are really old or dead. It’s quite possible that after a collapse of NK, SK will just keep its border sealed. And any attempt to raise up NK would be a much bigger endeavor, much more expensive than West Germany integrating with East Germany. NK is IIRC bigger relative to SK than EG was to WG, they’ve been separate longer with less communication, and conditions in East Germany weren’t anywhere near as bad as they are in NK. You never had mass famines with cannibalism and brain damage from malnutrition in East Germany.
Hmm. I’m wondering if there are any stories that come directly from current/former N. Koreans. So far, I’m seeing a lot of opinions about the country but nothing concrete about what’s really going on there. Does anyone know or have you met any refugees?
I guess the reason I’m questioning this is that (thanks to the Dope) I know more about the workings of politics than I ever have before. I can see the signs of another war/ military action whatever, brewing. Western news media has spent the last couple of years building up the idea of N. Korea as a “threat to our interests and values”. They’ve had the interests part covered with the missile launches and tests. I’ve been waiting for the values bit to come into play and sure enough, here’s a story about something your average American finds horrifying. Cannibalism is one thing but throwing in the angle of parents murdering their own children for food? It just seems designed to provoke. That’s why I asked about propaganda. It’s not the in-your-face giant poster or billboard of yesteryear but I still get the feeling that I’m being led in a certain direction. Since joining this board and watching the way that other people puzzle things out and pick them apart I can’t just take what the media tells me at face value anymore.
If this is really true I know there isn’t jack I can do about it. I feel bad for the people involved but I’m not responsible for their well being. I used to worry myself sick over things like this. As a kid, I would cry myself to sleep all the time at the thought of all the people who didn’t have beds. As a cancer survivor, I would cry for days on end wondering why I lived and others didn’t. Why do I have what I have and other people don’t? It still gets to me now and then but as an adult, I know that I can’t be the world’s mommy. The fact that I can’t fix all of society’s ills is not a personal failing (much as some folks may try to convince me otherwise). It took a long time to work past all of that. This article and the others brought all of that up for me again. That old feeling of being manipulated, being made to dance to the tune they’re playing, really burns. So that’s my overlong explanation of why I’m even asking. Is this the truth being put out there by brave souls who want justice for the weak and downtrodden or is it just the sound of the war machine gearing up?
I highly, highly recommend Barbara Demick’s book on North Korea, Nothing to Envy. I don’t remember anything in there specifically about cannibalism, but I seem to recall people starving to death, and I specifically remember one woman who escaped across the border into China and was so famished and unused to the sight of food that she was stunned at the quality of food that was left out for dogs. So yeah, I can believe that people have been driven to cannibalism there.
a) Starving people will do just about anything to survive.
b) Enemy nations will say just about anything about each other as propaganda, and ‘They eat babies!!!’ is one of the oldest and most common accusations.
I doubt there’s any way to know if this one is true. If I had to guess, I’d say there have probably been isolated instances of cannibalism but it’s not a standard practice or anything - but that’s just a guess, based on bugger-all.
Of course, if that happened, the US would rush medical supplies to NK, cure the plague, and we’d be back where we are, with their great leader taking the credit for the cure.
And the Great Leader (is that what the current one is called?) will also blame the USA for causing the plague in the first place. Heck, we all know that Americans created the plague because they are evil and hate Asians.
Right now, that’s probably true. At some point it will probably be possible to document these kinds of things to some extent. That’s what happened with China, for example.
Yeah, I recall reading about cannibalism occurring during the Cultural Revolution - ideologically motivated in that case, part of dehumanizing the enemy. I recall it being compared to how some Crusaders ate Muslims.