One thing I would like is to avoid an invasion. I’ve been in the Army and fought in a war and am tired of seeing men die while the true evil leadership is allowed to live.
Bolding mine. Yes radios, cell phones and as much print and video as possible. It needs to topple from within.
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
Theres your problem. First you have to find some of these mythical “moral people” and ask them.
There is a seemingly infinite list of people throughout history with bigger problems than the N. Koreans where the solutions are/were far simpler where there is no one to come to their rescue. Why single out the N. Koreans?
You’re not answering the question. What do you think would happen in North Korea if the Kim family were all assassinated?
No, I would not put the Republican party in the same class as the NK leaders. But any connection between them and any idea of moral is purely coincidental. And I am not convinced that DJT is not as bad as Kim, but with less law-making power. Both unstable egotists with nuclear weapons.
As for the rest of the Republicans, I just offer the spectacle of a dying McCain flying 2000 miles for the purpose of killing a couple tens of thousands of Americans a year for the purpose of putting another few billion into the Koch bank account.
As many as a few million, though perhaps more like several 100k, apparently did starve in NK around 20 yrs ago. It’s not true now. This cuts both ways though. On one hand it means there’s less justification to lose US/Allied lives, plus other unknowable but probably serious negative side effects beyond that, to put an immediate end to the Kim dynasty by direct military means. OTOH it weakens the argument that the Kim dynasty will fall on its own soon enough, so just wait. The DPRK economy has also gotten somewhat better in recent years, beyond just avoiding mass starvation, which again is good news from POV of human suffering there, but bad news for a strategy of just waiting it out till the Kim’s fall on their own.
Same issue here as starvation in being somewhat out of date. By all accounts South Korean DVD’s and means to play them are virtually universal in the DPRK now. There are also now lots of cell phones in the Pyongyang area but without overseas capability and people assume they are being listened to.
IOW just telling the DPRK people how far behind the ROK they are is an experiment already conducted, or already underway for some years anyway. It hasn’t produced a revolution. The knowledge might gradually be rusting through the structure of the Kim dynasty and we’ll only realize that after it snaps. But there’s no assurance it will snap anytime soon without outside action (as to seriously harming the DPRK economy for example, besides military action, but one could lead to another via NK’s reaction).
It’s going to be difficult and messy to do anything. It would be nice if complete lack of knowledge of the DPRK people of the situation in the ROK were the key factor in sustaining the Kim regime, since injecting true information is relatively easy and morally clean. But the results of recent years call that into doubt, the timeline anyway for this knowledge to have the desired effect.
While the scale of destruction that the DPRK could rain in response to a US incursion is limited (and would probably affect South Korea, Japan, or at most distant, Hawaii), there is a larger and looming issue: The Peoples Republic of China. While China does not want a war with the US, it also does not want US or UN troops stationed at its border with the Korean Peninsula (which is what originally started the Korean War), nor does it want a power vacuum into which some other power could hypothetically enter (e.g. Russia or Japan). China wants to be the regional superpower in all aspects, particularly military, and an act upon North Korea could be seen as a precursor to a serious military challenge, particularly given the volatility of the current US administration. In the geopolitical context, the suffering of the North Koreans is tragic, but in comparison to brutality of regimes we’ve allowed to exist in, say, Africa or Indonesia, which did not hold a sword over their neighbors, it is not extraordinary.
Nicolas Cage wants to make this movie, and star in it as both the lead commando and his twin ninja assissain who is the product of a top secret North Korean cloning project run by a rogue Belgian biochemist played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. Also, there are a lot of robots so that director Michael Bay can reuse footage from Transformers movies.
Stranger
You personally can start by writing letters to every Chinese Embassy in your country, to the CCP itself, and by tackling anyone you know to be Chinese about this, urging action and demanding their troops move.
You could emphasize the imperative nature of this request by threatening them that China will be next if they don’t snap to it.
There is one, and only one, country that is morally in the wrong here (other than NK itself, of course). China.
China does not want a western-friendly state on its border on the Korean Peninsula, and they are willing to let the North Korean people live in deplorable conditions in order to maintain that status. Even if there was a plan that could work, China would block it. But they do have to power to put pressure on NK-- they just don’t want to for their own interests.
Well there you go. How exactly are we supposed to stop North Korea from continuing to exist without invasion and occupation?
Like maybe we just politely and humbly ask the North Korean regime to stop existing, and they’ll just slink away into retirement out of shame?
Or we assassinate their “leader”, and the next thing you know the North Korean generals are wearing blue jeans and listening to Bruce Springsteen on their Sony Walkmen?
From what I understand, there has also been an influx of SK and other outside information making its way into the North in that time period? In other words, the informational stranglehold the Kim regime exercises has developed some serious holes?
As odious as the regime is, I don’t see a better realistic option for change in NK than something analogous to glasnost/perestroika. A carrot of diplomatic/economic rapprochement and a stick of credible missile defense (to destabilize their nuclear deterrent) and probably increased military presence in the region.
Might well not work until the current Kim is gone, though.
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. After that, there was little hope for the government. It’s important to note that even in this instance a lot of innocent people suffered and died. It’s also important to note that these same pressures aren’t likely to work in North Korea. The population doesn’t seem to have the same resentment over the suppression of religion, and they don’t have any money to begin with.
I’m not moral enough to consider war and assassination as useful options. Which means that my best idea is to bribe the Chinese to facilitate illegal immigration and the South Koreans to repatriate as many refugees as possible and take a lot ourselves. It’s slow and problematic (for example, there are lots of potential Chinese hostages in North Korea at any given time), but the hope is, eventually, that the state will evaporate below a certain level of effectiveness, and that many of its citizen-hostages can be saved, and that those who remain develop a consciousness that the inimical “outside” includes many of their friends and relatives.
Isn’t there’s only one embassy per country? The other offices are consulates.
I think you’re forgetting the main reason-- Communist governments were being overthrown all over Eastern Europe so fast that it made your head spin. Without that environment to bolster the protesters’ nerve, it would likely have not happened at all.
Well, he can write to them all ! And to each Chinese investor in America, and to each Chinese Restaurant, until every Chinese person is fully seized of his determination !
I think you’re forgetting the distinction between having the nerve to do something and having a reason to do something. I was speaking to the latter. If you like, we can agree that the collapse of communism in the late eighties and nineties also does not seem to have emboldened the North Koreans to overthrow the regime, but in 2017 I really didn’t think it was necessary.
I didn’t know the Albanians were more resentful than other communist citizenries over religion. Most people go along with whatever the contemporaneous zeitgeist demands — the fact it holds the power means to them that it is right, whether in Russia, America or Old Baghdad.
Then again the nearest I have come to Albania is watching Jim Belushi.
*Petitioning *China to change course is like bailing out a flooding ship with an eyedropper.