# The morality of allowing North Korea to continue **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 25, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118 "2017-07-25T23:46:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/1 "2017-07-25T23:46:56Z")
So today in North Korea there are millions of people starving. Trying to leave the country without permission will result in execution. If discovered in China North Koreans will be turned over to the NK government to be tortured and killed. Their family will also be killed or put into reeducation camps. Government officials who work outside the country are required to have families which are then held hostage to ensure their return. Children are born in these reeducation camps and are trained from a young age to turn in their families and anyone else who attempts to escape for, you guessed it, execution. An underground railroad has developed to get NK refugees to safety. Listen to some of the stories from escapees and you’ll see what people there live with day in and day out. On top of all that they are aggressively perusing nuclear weapons and missiles. How can we as a moral people condemn these people to their lives of quiet desperation? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/2 "2017-07-25T23:50:26Z")
Pursuing. So what’s your solution? ---
**Author:** ![greenmario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/97f17d/32.png) [@greenmario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greenmario)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/3 "2017-07-26T00:34:59Z")
I think most people are in in agreement regarding North Korea. Someone _else_ should really end the injustice. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/4 "2017-07-26T00:45:15Z")
We are a “moral people”? I disagree. In the US especially, the current ruling party (Republicans) doesn’t want morality to have anything at all to do with government policy. They’ve made that very clear. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/5 "2017-07-26T01:19:57Z")
North Korea is a difficult problem. I think everyone agrees Kim Jong Un is a danger to society and a menace to mankind. And if a coup were to happen tomorrow, we’d all be ecstatic to lend a hand, albeit a surreptitious hand. But what to do? If you attack him, you risk opening Pandora’s Box, which is probably worse in our imagination than in reality because we know so little about their true capabilities. I do feel very badly for the poor North Koreans who have suffered for years under this despot. ---
**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:** [July 26, 2017, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/6 "2017-07-26T01:32:53Z")
No one knows how to fix it. Any attempt to overthrow the regime will result in thousands, possibly millions of deaths. It’s a hostage situation on a national scale. There is no easy answer. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/7 "2017-07-26T02:15:04Z")
It seems to me the key is China. We need to put pressure on them to allow the regime to fall. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/8 "2017-07-26T02:21:37Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > It seems to me the key is China. We need to put pressure on them to allow the regime to fall. You make it sound so easy. What kind of pressure? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/9 "2017-07-26T03:04:37Z")
You just have to accept that you can’t fix some problems. North Koreans are thoroughly brain-washed. They aren’t East Germans that know better and want to escape over the Berlin Wall. They have been raised since birth to believe that the Ung family is divine and any symbolic wall they have is to keep everyone else out. Given no constraints by anyone else, I am certain that the U.S. military could topple North Korea in a few days but then what? Powerful militaries like the U.S. are great at destroying things but terrible at nation building. We can’t even get Afghanistan completely under control after about a decade and a half of occupation with no end in sight. You also run the very real risk that Kim Jung Un has more nuclear capability than we think and would nuke Seoul, South Korea out of spite once he felt his power was truly threatened. The crazy, fat shit gives no indication that he is a stable person. He probably had his brother and other family members killed because they simply ticked him off. There is no reason to think he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy a major world city on a whim. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/10 "2017-07-26T03:06:25Z")
Seems like assassinating kim jung un and the rest of his family would be a great start. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/11 "2017-07-26T03:09:58Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Seems like assassinating kim jung un and the rest of his family would be a great start. You _really_ don’t understand how the world works. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/12 "2017-07-26T03:11:53Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Seems like assassinating kim jung un and the rest of his family would be a great start. Huh, I bet no one’s thought of that before. You just go right ahead. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/13 "2017-07-26T03:26:16Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > You _really_ don’t understand how the world works. I think he’s picturing something from a movie, you know, a black silent helicopter drops in on Kim’s headquarters, elite ninja troops rappel down and silently comb through the building, silently shooting everyone whom they meet. Kim comes out of a room where he’s been having drunken sex with a dozen blondes, stumbles bleary-eyed into the hall where he’s met by several of our elite troops who then cut him (silently) to pieces with their guns. Then they fan out to make sure they got everyone in the building. In the meanwhile, using super secret intelligence that told us their locations, all the Kim relatives and the rest of the top echelon of the government are also assassinated. Silently. You know, that would be a good start. It would be funny if there were some sort of deadman switch built into their military such that, if the top brass doesn’t check in with the ground troops and the missile launchers every couple of hours, they have instructions to immediately attack South Korea, and then all hell breaks loose. Good start, yup, that’s what that is. ---
**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:** [July 26, 2017, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/14 "2017-07-26T03:56:17Z")
There are plenty of immoral things that exist, not because people like injustice, but because righting the wrongs would cause immense damage and mayhem. North Korea is a prime example. Also, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many people said: “So many Iraqis are suffering under the Saddam regime, we must liberate them!” After the invasion: “Why did we invade? It led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. SHAME on America for invading!” We can expect to see that about-face happen again, if the US tries to liberate North Korea. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/15 "2017-07-26T05:06:34Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Seems like assassinating kim jung un and the rest of his family would be a great start. Yes, look how well that worked for us in Cuba. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/16 "2017-07-26T05:22:01Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Seems like assassinating kim jung un and the rest of his family would be a great start. Mmm. Perhaps we should reflect whether attitudes like this - confrontation, polarisation, us-and-them, are perhaps the cause of the problem, rather than its solution? If the current situtuation is intolerable, “What do we do about it?” is a perfectly valid question. But an equally obvious question is “How did we get here?”, and it doesn’t take a genius to realise that some time spent considering that question may be profitable, since it may inform the answer to the “What do we do about it?” question. If a war, followed by five decades of armed confrontation and mutual imcomprehension, has brought us to the present pass, the notion that we can fix the problem by intensifying the attitudes and policies that have brought us to this point is not intuitively appealing. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/17 "2017-07-26T08:06:11Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > They have been raised since birth to believe that the Ung family is divine and any symbolic wall they have is to keep everyone else out. That’s “the Kim family”. Kim is the family name, Jong-Un is the personal name. To put it in the western sense, Jong-Un Kim is the son of Jong-Il Kim and the grandson of Il-Sung Kim. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/18 "2017-07-26T12:14:30Z")
What is the morality of deciding that the USA has the right to interfere with and overthrow any other government in the world that it doesn’t like? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/19 "2017-07-26T12:47:20Z")
On the list of countries capable of doing something about North Korea, the US is at best #4. And the options of #2 and #3 are seriously limited, too. Really, all we can do is to continue to smuggle as much food and radios into North Korea as we can, and to keep missiles aimed at as many artillery sites as we know of. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/20 "2017-07-26T13:11:06Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Seems like assassinating kim jung un and the rest of his family would be a great start. What do you think would happen after that? Reminder that in 2003, we were told that after that horrible Saddam was out, we would be welcomed as liberators. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118.md?page=2)