# I'm tired of hearing about North Korea, the regime needs to be obliterated **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 19, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402 "2017-06-19T22:33:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/61 "2017-06-21T21:00:28Z")
From some books/sources I’ve read: 1. North Koreans are indeed more aware of what is going on in the outside world than the outside world gives them credit for. Indeed, it is apparently common knowledge in the North that the South is far more affluent, etc. 2. Many North Koreans don’t genuinely hate the USA. 3. Nevertheless, if push came to shove, North Koreans would fight, and fight _hard_. They would be no pushovers, no slouches. Sure, technology-wise they’d be slaughtered en masse, but psychologically they’d be tough to the bone. The three things may seem mutually contradictory, but people are contradictory beings. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/62 "2017-06-21T21:08:45Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Unless every North Korean fought to the death for their Pillsbury Dictator, I think\*\* they would quickly embrace us\*\* the moment they get a quality meal. My bold. It’s bound to happen one of these times, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/63 "2017-06-21T21:13:41Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > If you and I know those exist, so does the DOD and I imagine with considerable certainty of where. > > Again, we deposed Saddam within weeks. His military capability was greater than anything North Korea can effect. > > Finally, with regard to America’s moral standing, deposing a ruthless dictator and installing a democracy doesn’t do us harm. Unless every North Korean fought to the death for their Pillsbury Dictator, I think they would quickly embrace us the moment they get a quality meal. > > Call me naive I suppose, but do so at the risk of vastly underestimating how much the people of North Korea suffer due to lack of basic sustenance. I don’t see them devolving into sectarian war as we all saw coming with Iraq. If we give them food and built their infrastructure, I doubt they see us as the invading hordes. If nothing else, the revelation of how the Chinese and South Koreans live right next door will open their eyes. I’m not going to call you naive, I’m going to call you a complete fucking moron. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/64 "2017-06-21T21:14:13Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > If you and I know those exist, so does the DOD and I imagine with considerable certainty of where. > > Again, we deposed Saddam within weeks. His military capability was greater than anything North Korea can effect. I think you vastly overestimate our ability to destroy embedded artillery where they’ve had 40 years to harden the area. The simple truth is that no matter how much we throw at them, millions of South Koreans are going to die. Yes, we’d wipe out the NK regime but it wouldn’t be instantaneous and lots of people would be killed before the danger was neutralized. > **[North Korea's Simple But Deadly Artillery Holds Seoul And U.S. Hostage](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/north-korea-artillery_n_58f631a4e4b0b9e9848eb990)** > > “These perfectly positioned offensive artillery firing positions are virtually impenetrable, extremely difficult to take out by counterfire." > [@](#): > > “These perfectly positioned offensive artillery firing positions are virtually impenetrable, extremely difficult to take out by counterfire,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales. “The terrain greatly favors the North, this arc of south-facing granite mountainsides just over the [Demilitarized Zone], in a position to pummel Seoul for weeks on end.” This leaves South Korea and the U.S. “with very little real capability to respond.” > **[What War With North Korea Looks Like](https://www.newsweek.com/2017/05/05/what-war-north-korea-looks-588861.html)** > > Taking out North Korea's nuclear weapons won't be quick, and it won't be easy > [@](#): > > But this would not be a one-week walkover, like the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, when his forces were arrayed like clay pigeons in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti deserts, where they were easily destroyed by U.S. air power. Conventional thinking in the Pentagon is that it would be a four- to six-month conflict with high-intensity combat and many dead. In 1994, when President Bill Clinton contemplated the use of force to knock out the North’s nuclear weapons program, the then commander of U.S.-Republic of Korea forces, Gary Luck, told his commander in chief that a war on the peninsula would likely result in 1 million dead, and nearly $1 trillion of economic damage. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/65 "2017-06-21T21:15:01Z")
They grow up learning that no one is to be trusted, and the only way to get ahead is to look out for themselves. Now, between the fake news told about us by their own government and the real news about us they get smatterings of, why the hell would anyone assume they would believe anything _we_ say, let alone embrace us? ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/66 "2017-06-21T21:20:51Z")
An empty stomach needs little convincing. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/67 "2017-06-21T21:24:44Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > An empty stomach needs little convincing. Lifetimes of indoctrination aren’t going to be undone by bowls of rice. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/68 "2017-06-21T22:37:52Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Finally, with regard to America’s moral standing, deposing a ruthless dictator A comparatively easy task when dealing with a military much weaker than our own. [QUOTE=Stringbean] and installing a democracy [/quote] Oh right, that part. The notoriously-difficult-to-the-point-of-repeated-catastrophic-failure part. [QUOTE=Stringbean] doesn’t do us harm. [/quote] Well, it might not do us harm image-wise or interests-wise if we could ever, you know, **get it to actually work**. There is no reason to suppose we’d be any more successful at such a quixotic program in North Korea than we’ve been in Iraq or Afghanistan (or Vietnam before them). And if we’re talking moral standing, I think the salient question is not how much harm such an attempt would do to us, but how much it would do to the people of North Korea. Taking out a tyrannical leader and leaving a nation (and many of their neighbors) in a state of chaotic endemic bloodshed is not much of a moral accomplishment (which you think we’d have figured out the first few times we tried it). [QUOTE=Stringbean] Call me naive I suppose [/QUOTE] You suppose correctly, for a change. You are indeed appallingly naive about realistic prospects for the outcome of attempting to reshape another country’s entire system of government via military aggression. While Otto Warmbier’s harsh treatment and untimely death are a tragedy, and the North Korean regime is unspeakably and barbarically despotic, none of that is a legitimate _casus belli_ for violently overthrowing another nation’s government. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2017, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/69 "2017-06-21T23:25:17Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > It wasn’t even a flag. It was a propoganda poster with Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il with some communist slogan. There was some grainy security video footage that probably wouldn’t hold up in court here because the quality is so bad. No doubt it was put up specifically for the staged video. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/70 "2017-06-22T15:38:27Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Lifetimes of indoctrination aren’t going to be undone by bowls of rice. Probably true, but one of the lessons from WW2 which came out of how we treated POWs (compared to how the Russians or Axis did) was, If you treat them humanely they will be forced to question all the propaganda they were told about US being the monsters. In fact after WW2 many German POWs chose to stay here and became citizens. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/71 "2017-06-22T15:42:46Z")
Not just prisoners, either. You could add the entire population of occupied West Germany, especially West Berlin during and after the Airlift, to that assessment. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/72 "2017-06-22T15:49:01Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Again, we deposed Saddam within weeks. His military capability was greater than anything North Korea can effect. I was unaware the Saddam had nuclear weapons. Perhaps you should take this information to Fox News I am sure that after all these years they would be interested to know that he did indeed have weapons of mass destruction. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/73 "2017-06-22T15:54:30Z")
To be fair, it isn’t clear that Kim has any that _work_. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/74 "2017-06-22T17:47:53Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > To be fair, it isn’t clear that Kim has any that _work_. They might not be able to deliver them via missile but they’ve gotten the bombs themselves to work. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/75 "2017-06-22T17:57:48Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > To be fair, it isn’t clear that Kim has any that _work_. I think forcing Kim’s hand is a very bad way to find out, don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/76 "2017-06-22T23:28:19Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 1. Nevertheless, if push came to shove, North Koreans would fight, and fight _hard_. They would be no pushovers, no slouches. Sure, technology-wise they’d be slaughtered en masse, but psychologically they’d be tough to the bone. Would they? The Iraqi army didn’t fight to the death, either under Saddam Hussein or under the provincial government. They gave up en masse against the US and against ISIS. I don’t understand the psychology of soldiers, but I don’t think NK has very good military training. They don’t have western levels at least, and I don’t know how the soldiers would react to a true war. Would a bunch of starving soldiers who know they are fighting a losing war to defend an evil government really fight to the death? Who knows. But just because the government is brutal doesn’t mean soldiers will obey it in an all out war. That didn’t work in Iraq. Then again, Iraq had issues with religious and ethnic sectarianism, that wouldn’t be an issue in North Korea. Also just because the official Iraqi military lost pretty quick, a lot of veterans ended up joining the insurgency. I don’t know how much that’d be a problem in NK. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2017, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/77 "2017-06-23T02:08:41Z")
Yes, the North Korean soldiers would fight. While they are not as well-trained or even as well-fed as their counterparts in the South, the NK army has one thing going for them: the soldiers are not really aware that their government is evil. Another thing going for them is that, for most of those in the military, their understanding of the US and ROK is what propaganda the NK regime has taught them their entire lives. Consider the civilian casualties during [the Battle of Okinawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_losses.2C_suicides_and_atrocities). While the indigenous population of Okinawa had no love for the IJA, they only knew what they were taught. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2017, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/78 "2017-06-23T02:15:08Z")
Another thing to consider about regime change in NK: What do you think is going to happen to all the prisoners in the life-time concentration camps? My South Korean friends agree with me; the guards will flat-out murder the entire prison population and then either kill themselves or try to “blend in” with the civilian population to avoid the trials the government of re-unified Korea will certainly hold. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2017, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/79 "2017-06-23T03:15:55Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Yes, the North Korean soldiers would fight. While they are not as well-trained or even as well-fed as their counterparts in the South, the NK army has one thing going for them: the soldiers are not really aware that their government is evil. Another thing going for them is that, for most of those in the military, their understanding of the US and ROK is what propaganda the NK regime has taught them their entire lives. Consider the civilian casualties during [the Battle of Okinawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_losses.2C_suicides_and_atrocities). While the indigenous population of Okinawa had no love for the IJA, they only knew what they were taught. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago. But a lot has happened since then. The great famine of the 1990s made a lot of people lose faith in the state. Plus when China industrialized, a lot of their old technology ended up in North Korea so now the nation is full of DVD players, VHS players, etc. that the Chinese didn’t want. Supposedly a lot of North Koreans have access to western media now, and (as I once read) if they send the military or secret police to confiscate the media, then they just watch it instead. > **[North Koreans 'secretly watching foreign media'](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9258974/North-Koreans-secretly-watching-foreign-media.html)** > > North Koreans are secretly enjoying access to foreign DVDs and radio, shaping the views of a people cut off for decades from the outside world, according to a new study. > [@](#): > > In a survey of 250 North Korean refugees and overseas travelers in 2010, 48 percent said they had watched foreign DVDs while inside the country, up from just 20 percent two years earlier, the study said. If half of North Koreans (at least the ones who escaped) were watching foreign DVDs in 2010, the number is likely higher for the general population too as of 2017. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2017, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402/80 "2017-06-23T16:03:33Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > To be fair, it isn’t clear that Kim has any that _work_. I keep hoping one of his missiles will land on his own house 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-hearing-about-north-korea-the-regime-needs-to-be-obliterated/789402.md?page=3)