# 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:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/41 "2017-07-26T20:18:57Z")
> [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](#): > > The closest analogue I can think of to the isolation of North Korea today would be Albania under socialism. It was pretty much impenetrable, politically, culturally and geographically speaking, for almost half a century. Things changed there largely for two reasons. First, the people there were not down with the brutal suppression of religion and the creation of an atheist state. Second, the entire country went bust in a series of government-endorsed Ponzi schemes. The Communist dictatorship in Albania lost in elections in 1992 after calling and actually winning the first real elections there in 1991. The Ponzi schemes led to the electoral defeat of a post Communist elected govt in 1997, returning the (by then) ex-Communists to elected power. The sort of instability Albania and other ex-Communist countries experienced to varying degrees (including Russia) are likely for the DPRK once the dam breaks and Kims are ousted, that I’d agree with. Probably worse if some kind of stand alone non-Kim dynasty NK is engineered to avoid Chinese fear of US influence on its borders via the ROK. It _might_ be less bad in a situation where instead a post Kim NK is part of a greater ROK, like the stabilizing influence of German unification on the former East Germany. Except as we all know the NK population is much larger relative to the ROK’s than E was to W Germany’s, much poorer relatively, and much more screwed up by generations of a regime that really is _not_ comparable to almost any other. Indonesia? Even in the '60’s Indonesia wasn’t anywhere near as screwed up as NK. A lot of people died in a quasi civil war there, but what the Kim’s have done has little direct parallel anywhere else. Anyway Albania offers little IMO of a model of how the Korean (dynastic) Communists would fall in the first place. As John Mace mentioned, Albania was a part of a whole E European ‘contagion’ of overthrowing Communists, and repeated examples where the Communists weren’t willing to kill people in large numbers (or at least couldn’t get security forces to do so) to preserve themselves. That’s a key condition not applying to NK, or we have no way of knowing it would apply, and it’s also hard to imagine the Kim dynasty calling real elections like the Albanian Communist reformers did. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/42 "2017-07-26T20:50:16Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > China does not want a western-friendly state on its border on the Korean Peninsula … But they do have to power to put pressure on NK-- they just don’t want to for their own interests. Put pressure on NK to do what, exactly? Regime change? Why would any regime accept that? ---
**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, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/43 "2017-07-26T22:39:26Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > Put pressure on NK to do what, exactly? Regime change? Why would any regime accept that? This. The most China can pressure NK into doing, is to de-nuclearize, and that’s if China REALLY turned the screws. You can’t “pressure” a dictator into abdicating. ---
**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 27, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/44 "2017-07-27T01:30:35Z")
> [@Clark\_Cello](#): > > If you have a hard time seeing a difference between the rulers of NK and the Republican party, I would submit that you are not a real objective observer. > > And before anyone makes any assumptions, I support almost nothing that Trump or the other Republicans are doing right now. > > On the one hand, I find the argument that “we can’t do anything because we have problems too” completely wrong-headed. Countering that, though, are a few rather major issues: > > 1. If there is anything that the last 15 years has taught us, it is that nation destroying and invading is a whole lot easier than nation building. > > 2. While NK is a terrible place, any decision to interfere with a sovereign state is a slippery slope, and runs huge risks of unintended consequences. > > 3. We in the US these days has a military that is unquestionably the most powerful in the world. That leads a whole lot of people to think that the solution to any world problem is through a military solution. I personally find this very dangerous and worrisome. > > As a lot of folks have said already, there are no good and easy solutions here. Anything we do to intercede in a major way is likely to have severe negative repercussions. You are being self-righteously absurd. Not to mention, that you utterly failed to read what I actually WROTE, and instead made up what you wanted to PRETEND I wrote, in typical bombastic nonsense fashion that self-righteousness always falls into. Go back and try again, please. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/45 "2017-07-27T01:47:16Z")
As many others have mentioned, there is no practical way to free them. Our goal should be to do our best to prevent the deaths of millions of South Koreans that would likely die if the US military intervened in any way. My guess is that the people of Seoul would still be attacked by NK even if it was the Chinese doing the invading. Best case scenario (which I admit is highly unlikely) is that eventually one of Kim Jong Un’s successors sees the error of his ways and decides to surrender peacefully. I don’t think there is anything any outside actors can do that would have any positive effects, not even the Chinese. Let’s imagine that China closes the border completely, not allowing even basic goods to cross. All that would do is make Kim feel like he’s backed into a corner and probably cause him to launch attacks. And short of closing the border or outright invasion, I don’t see what China can do. The US, obviously, has even less influence or ability to change the situation. ---
**Author:** ![Clark\_Cello](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58f4c7/32.png) [@Clark\_Cello](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clark_Cello)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2017, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118/46 "2017-07-27T13:49:09Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > You are being self-righteously absurd. Not to mention, that you utterly failed to read what I actually WROTE, and instead made up what you wanted to PRETEND I wrote, in typical bombastic nonsense fashion that self-righteousness always falls into. > > Go back and try again, please. lol. No thanks. I think you are already worked up enough in your little frenzy of persecution and righteousness. I’ll pass. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-morality-of-allowing-north-korea-to-continue/792118.md?page=2)