We all see and hear what goes on over there. Kim will execute kids if they don’t cheer hard enough at his birthday party or something? He’s always threatening to nuke countries and is probably has the highest domestic kill count out of any world leader today.
So I ask? Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people. I saw a survey asking Americans and Escaped North Koreans would they migrate to North Korea and to the US if given the chance (hypothetical for the refugees). And it was like <0.1% to 95%. Obviously those people live in terror.
Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization? Nukes on South Korea? Is just not lucrative to step in? SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME PLEASE!?
Generally frowned upon to invade countries.
Ludicrously costly. Your tax payers will want to know why it’s more important than everything else you do with their money.
Immense suffering. Mostly by the people you’re trying to liberate but also your own troops and their families.
They have nukes and could probably blow up at least a few regional cities. If the regime is threatened they will most likely use them.
South Korea or China or Russia are the only countries with land borders. China and Russia find NK useful to have arround to annoy US. Seoul is within artillerty range of the border.
Building up a new state in it’s place is very difficult. Remember how the Taliban took back power about 15 minutes after the US left Afghanistan?
That’s not how it would play out or herw, but even in the best case scenario, you’d end up with a huge area with rampant poverty and discontent that would take generations to develop. We’ve had something similar in Germany. Even after thirty years and vast amounts of money spent, East Germany is still way behind and there are areas that have no perspective at all.
America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the “Korean War”.
We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.
Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime’s propaganda will make sure they never forget.
If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the “Arab Spring” model is much more effective and humane than the “Afghanistan War” model.
Til that I don’t know enough about the Korean War. Jfc
Ohhhhh it’s so much worse. Here’s the intro to the BlowBack podcast S3, which is all about the Korean War https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZX1YIvtHhxuoOTaH41VNC
Very informative listen so far. Thanks for sharing
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If you read the previous comment more closely you’ll realize that the commentor wasn’t comparing today’s NK to Gaza, but Korea during the Korean War to Gaza. That is a reasonable comparison, as nearly every standing structure was bombed.
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Damn, maybe we should stop doing them then.
North Korea was the one that started the war by invading the South
You can’t really “invade” your own country. North and South Korea were two sides in a civil war, with both sides claiming each other’s territory and aiming towards unification. It’s like saying that George Washington “invaded” Yorktown or that Lincoln “invaded” Virginia.
The South did invade the North though in the US civil war.
The Maryland campaign (or Antietam campaign) occurred September 4–20, 1862, during the American Civil War. The campaign was Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North.
And if you don’t want to use the word “invaded”, I guess you could just say that North Korea attacked the South, kicking off the war
This is like saying Ukraine started the war by invading Donbas
If Donbas was at the time part of Russia it would be like that. So it’s not really like that. Since North Korea actually went into South Korea with the intention of taking it over.
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What war? The Korean War from 70 years ago? Because they’ve been at peace since then, but some loonies in this thread want to go over and start trouble with them.
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Not peace. Peace treaty never signed just not currently engaged
You have obviously misunderstood me.
I was comparing the United States actions in the Korean War(1950s) to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The mass civilian bombing campaigns, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure, manmade famine, widespread preventable disease, and imposed economic isolation are very similar between the two cases.
I am not comparing current-day North Korea to current-day Gaza, and I agree with you that would not be a good analogy.
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So your thesis is that the 1950s war was inconsequential, and then you lay the entire blame on the Kim regime and their policies?
My dude, how do you think the Kim regime became a dictatorship?
Before the 1950s war, Kim was a weak puppet leader propped up by the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Kim regime had dictatorial power, which persists to this day.
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but to blame the entire state if the country on the bombing campaign of the 1950s is to…
Nobody said that.
The issue as you see it:
clings on to a pseudo-scientific economic ideology
The prescription you suggest:
pseudo-scientific economic ideology
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the Kim regime’s propaganda will make sure they never forget.
It’s the peak of chauvinism to think people would need propaganda to remember you leveling their entire country.
Yes I agree.
If you use context instead of cherry picking a half-sentence then maybe you would understand that is part of the broader point I am trying to get across to a western, chauvinism-brained audience.
Same reason why no one does anything about the atrocities that happen within the US.
So… Nukes.
Part of it.
How many children have been killed because an insurance company refused payment for healthcare.
Comparing “the atrocities” in the US with NK is really out of touch.
Shifting focus on the fact that US has its hands in vat fulls of blood yet the question is “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about NK?!”
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World powers typically let countries do whatever they want to their own citizens, it’s only when they do stuff to people of other countries that they get involved.
Simple and to the point. WW2 didn’t happen just because the Nazis were killing Jews, it happened because Hitler decided to barge into other countries.
More like when it threatens some status quo or be inconvenient for them to deal with or might cause a shift to some power dynamics.
I mean nobody(western leaders) gives a fuck about whatever is going on in Africa and Asia. And it’s quite literally mindboggling how the shit in Urkaine and Palestine is still ongoing without any major consequences for the aggressors other than mayyyybe harsh words or hurrdurr sanctions. Soo…as long as it does negatively not impact then, world leaders don’t give a shit about what other countries do.
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We all see and hear what goes on over there.
Bullshit.
Yeah all the terrible shit we see is just a tip of the iceberg.
Why would you believe your media regarding a country they admit is “closed off”?
Do you seriously believe they execute ppl for having the same haircut as Kim? And then execute ppl for having a different haircut from him?
They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.
I fully agree that a lot of the shittalk about them is exaggerated and ill-informed. They don’t execute people for having wrong haircut (dyeing can get you into some trouble), no, I do not believe that.
People live there. It’s certainly not nationwide Auschwitz as you might think.
But they also execute/punish people(and their family members) for trying to leave the country for good or talk shit about their supreme leader. I don’t know you but if that’s not a red flag I seriously don’t know what is.
They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.
Can’t get all the shit right, yes. That doesn’t make their countless crimes-against-humanity testimonies and proof any less valid. And since they are so closed off that even the whereabouts of high-ranking generals are often hard to know, it really is just the tip of the iceberg.
But I’m very sure that you are going to say all the defectors and reporters are liars and parrot all the wild cringe tankie shit that no less than 14 should you have outgrown and that’s fine. You do you. I hope someday you can make a personal visit to North Korea and leave the horrific, capitalistic hellhole of a society the West is.
If you are an American, eat what’s on your plate before you worry about NK.
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I’m Korean.
It’s not a tu quoque when NK isn’t hurting anyone but themselves and the Americans are burning down the fucking planet. One is an urgent situation, the other is political theatre that most of us are unqualified to even analyze due to the embargoes, censorship and pervasive propaganda.
Being worried about rumors that:
they also execute/punish people(and their family members) for trying to leave the country for good or talk shit about their supreme leader
from a tiny, insignificant backwater nation when the so called leader of the free world is disappearing people from potentially every country on Earth, when the most powerful trading nation is intentionally destabilizing the global economy, well it reeks of looking for a distraction. The US government has as much to do with what is happening to NK people right now as the NK government does.
Calling it a distraction when they literally harm our people and bomb our land. Thanks.
To us, it’s at least as urgent and as the U.S. crap and it has been that way for quite a long time.
NK is one of the most exceptionally successful aggressors in cyber crime. They perform heists in the 10s or 100s of millions of USD at a time, about 2 billion in the past two years. Their targets are global and indiscriminate, and their scope and skill set is growing at an alarming pace.
If it helps you sleep better at night that they’re only physically terrible to their local neighborhood, then whatever - I would argue that their reach is only limited by their lack of wealth, but that still has a radius that can reach nations as far away as Japan and they constantly threaten them, and would do so to others if they had the means, but again, if that doesn’t bother you then ok I guess.
But to say that they don’t affect anyone outside their borders is at best ignorance and at worst willful misinformation.
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Why do .ml’s get so triggered with this topic? And y’all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints when we know what totalitarian regimes do and have done throughout the ages.
When you recognize the amount of bullshit propoganda that is consumed daily and realize how false it all is it’s very easy to switch to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mode.
Additionally it’s harder to break others (and oneself) out of the propoganda soup without an extremely sharp distinction between the lies being spoonfed and the material reality. The material reality often ends up getting distorted as a result and the cycle continues.
I fully support the idea that we have a problem with bias in the news and people profiting from scandals, and we also don’t need to downplay what the government does. We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.
Let’s just review this conversation, shall we? What the other person said was:
Do you seriously believe they execute ppl for having the same haircut as Kim? And then execute ppl for having a different haircut from him?
They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.
So, that’s two examples of egregious misinformation that they pushed back on. How did you respond?
And y’all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints
We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.
The reason we “”“bootlick”“” and “”“treat them as absolute saints”“” is that you chatacterize any attempt to push back on blatant misinformation as “”“bootlicking.”“” So no, it is impossible push back on misinformation without “bootlocking,” because, by your standards, anything short of uncritically accepting every bad thing said about a US rival (that is, anything short of actual bootlicking towards the US) counts as “bootlicking.”
If I’m wrong, then show me what in their comment led you to conclude that they were bootlicking, aside from refuting misinformation.
I think you’re connecting two things in my mind that were completely separate, and are using that as a springboard to jump to conclusions about my supposed standards based on one flawed premise, then about me uncritically accepting things, and also that I’m explicitly against US enemies. Brother, I’m not even American. Can I not talk about a pitfall that I often see with people defending NK, as an “inb4” if you will? Because I hope you reread the sentence that way.
If anything, my only direct comment about the person I’m replying to was the first question: Why so eager to jump in like that about a known violator of human rights that has voiced unconditional support for Russia, a country actively picking a fight with the entire West side of the world? A tyrannic, totalitarian regime is everybody’s enemy as far as I’m concerned.
But sure, maybe I’m reading the other person wrong too, and I’m unnecessarily assigning blame because of my previous experience with this exact same topic with other .ml accounts behaving that way and swarming the person commenting.
We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.
It depends entirely on how you define “accidentally bootlicking” because I think [email protected] has done an excellent job of calling out how you have been making that distinction.
Taking a step back and decontextualizing how do you think one should make that distinction?
I’m sorry, but Objection has taken the wrong idea and run with it. If you think they’re making a great point, I’d suggest you reread with what I’ve said in mind. I do own that I’m a little hasty to judge .ml accounts from experience, but that’s about it. The rest is Objection assuming things with extra dressing to frame the conversation.
Tbh, I don’t even know what the fuck they’re arguing about now, and I can’t be bothered. Seriously, go take a look a that word salad and the embedded quiz of them just being an extra little argumentative gremlin.
We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.
Can you? You don’t’ seem to be able to.
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Your reply doesn’t really follow the conversation. This is tangential to the main thread. We’re talking about how we present and defend information as a meta commentary on these threads, and not how the egging on of an invasion of a totalitarian country upsets some folks.
Also, did you just make an account to participate in this thread? Your account is brand spankin’.
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The bunch of sheletered idiot worry about their little games
This you?
It takes huge balls to go around calling people stupid only to miss the entire point yourself. Terrible troll, honestly.
Why do .ml’s get so triggered with this topic?
Because we’ve seen what the real life effect of this kind of mindless jingoism and chauvinism is; millions killed by American bombs.
And y’all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints
No, .worlders just can’t stop themselves from strawmanning.
we know what totalitarian regimes do and have done throughout the ages.
That’s an absurdly broad generalization, and one I’m going to present as proof that you see things in a cartoonish “good guys vs bad guys” framing.
Western chauvinism is a faith based belief.
Also there’s a city of 20 million people like 10 miles from the border that could get nuked just by conventional weapons. Adds complications
Because that roads leads to war. The moment one country decides it has the authority to overule another’s sovereignity because they disagree with what’s going on there, it becomes a free for all.
This line of thinking is the very reason why there are two Koreas today, because of two superpowers who thought they knew better and could make a nice profit in the process.
We have a word for this: Colonialism.
And we certainly don’t do THAT anymore.
If NK was oil rich and off the coast of the US, we’d colonialism the shit out of it.
It’s not because the world is now too enlightened for colonialism. It’s because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. NK has nothing of value, and China wants it to stay there as a buffer to SK.
America was never about helping the people of the world. Many who believe that are mostly victims of propaganda. It’s all about American interests. If it’s in their interest they will give some reason like liberating a people as a pretence to enable military action.
Also to directly answer the question, they have nukes trained on Seoul, have the backing of China which considers it a buffer against western influenced south kr
Jesus Fucking Christ. Stop trying to “liberate” other countries. Don’t you understand what that entails? Rampant slaughter of civilians followed by propping up a colonial regime. How many times are you gonna try this shit before you learn? When has it ever worked?
At least DPRK minds it’s own business. Imo, the country most in need of a war of liberation is the United States, which not only has a backwards, oppressive regime that’s disappearing people off the streets, but also has been directly involved in multiple wars of conquest and aggression, and indirectly involved in more. Whatever you wish upon Korea, let it happen here, let’s let China or someone bomb our cities and set up a government they like. Will you be greeting them as liberators? Not so fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?
Someday I hope y’all are able to see yourselves for the warmongers you are. I have no idea how liberals are able to convince of themselves as “peace-loving” while saying shit like this.
Liberal has nothing to do with peace loving, or pacifism, that’s a right wing delusion they use to pump their courage before committing more atrocities on them. No different than ‘God forgive me for what I’m about to do’.
Right wing revolutions end with the left in political prisons and slavery. Left wing revolutions end with the aristocrats/oligarchs, and their families, in the ground. It’s really just a question of what flavor of violence is about to happen.
It’s more of a liberal delusion that they’re “usually” antiwar, but the one that’s happening now is always “different.” Liberals are right-wing, and generally their (especially US) meddling with regime change ends up installing a fascist who kills or imprisons the left.
I mean sure, if you want to make up your own meaning for right wing, then go for it.
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. Capitalism is right-wing. Leftism is defined by anti-capitalism.
In the UK, for example, the “Liberal Democrats” are right-leaning. It’s primarily in the US that “liberal” and “leftist” are used interchangeably, because once there was no longer a substantial (self-indentifying) socialist presence to scaremonger about, the right started scaremongering about liberals by equating them to socialists, and the meaning stuck. But I reject that and stick by the original meanings, which are used internationally.
In the UK, for example, the “Liberal Democrats” are right-leaning.
Depends on the leadership. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. There have been times when they’ve been further left than Labour.
Currently of course, that’s easy because Labour is too busy trying to appeal to Reform voters and Conservatives and are governing like they were the Democratic Party, which is a shame, because the country is desperately needing some wealth redistribution.
Labour are in power because were gasping for some sanity after a succession of Conservative lunatics, but all the Conservative Party needs to do is stump up a leader who can sound like they have a couple of good ideas and have a bit of charisma and they’ll be back in power before you can say “short memory”.
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I’m just going off what has happened historically every time you people have tried this shit. What happened when y’all tried to “liberate” Vietnam? What happened when y’all tried to “liberate” Afghanistan?
I hope you suffer as those who seek freedom from that removed do. Shame on you.
I hope you get exactly what you want and get to experience foreigners coming to “liberate” you through mass bombing campaigns. Maybe you’ll even get a front row seat to Agent Orange from your “liberators.” Shame on you.
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Because north korea only make empty threats and the west are hypocrites and never gave a damn,about internstional law, democracy and human rights in other countries
Or, just hear me out, because the west doesn’t want to enter into a war with China in Korea a second time.
In that case they should stop pretending to care about what i mentioned instead of acting like they care about Palestinians but still buying arms from them and keep great economical relation with the terrorist state , celebrating Israel attack on Iran under of the pretext that Iran is ruled by authoritarian regime while having great connection with Saudis, not pressuring UAE to stop support the RSF in Sudan using UAE, Israeli and USA arms
The goal poasts moved so far that I can not even see them in the field. Good talk!
😂😂😂
Nukes. We know they have them and missiles to deliver them. Any situation where a wildcard like North Korea uses nukes in any offensive capacity is terrifying. “Nuclear War: A Scenario” is a great modern book on how things could go to hell if one single North Korean nuclear missile is launched towards the United States.
Artillery. In any case of open war on North Korea anyone within artillery range of the NK border will be bombarded with heavy shelling. Even if it lasted for just an hour or two before the batteries were eliminated the civilian casualties and destruction would be like a large natural disaster. Now imagine if chemical shells were added to the mix, because they have those too.
China has the most leverage to help North Korea on a humanitarian and diplomatic level without risking war, so if it could be done the best chance is through them.
To add to this, N Korea also has a huge conventional army, and is a very mountainous country. Lots of soldiers+mountains=very bloody to invade.
This is also why Iran is fairly safe from ground invasion. It’s like a gigantic Switzerland, which if you’re familiar with WW2 history, even Hitler left Switzerland alone despite kinda wanting to occupy the place. The cost was just too high compared to the benefits, so, y’know, may as well skip it and invade the USSR instead.
Despite what people keep saying, a war in NK would be short and one sided. While they could cause a lot of destruction at the start, after a few salvos their artillery would be taken out by air power. Then their entire command and control structure would be eliminated so they couldn’t communicate with their troops at all. And those troops are conditioned to not do anything without orders. So at best they’d be sitting ducks waiting to be taken out. And I’m pretty sure most of them would cost to surrender once it’s clear that the regime is gone. There’d be a share of diehards that would choose death over surrender but i don’t think that would be a large percentage.
Modern war planners mostly know better than to count on everything going well.
Yes, that’s basically what we did in Iraq. It led to a 20y occupation, thousands of troops killed, hundreds of thousands to millions of civilian deaths, and several new terrorist organizations. It will cost the US alone about 8,000,000,000,000. Basically the entirety of cultural progress and then some was lost in a few months.
We saw how that failed in iran
And those troops are conditioned to not do anything without orders. So at best they’d be sitting ducks waiting to be taken out.
When you’re so racist you think Koreans are the battle droids from The Phantom Menace.
Oh absolutely the west would love to effect regime change in North Korea. Morale win, keep the military industrial complex going, grow the economy, get rid of some pesky poors in combat, maybe hoover up some natural resources.
The problem is China, NK is strategically important to them as a source of said natural resources and as a buffer zone against South Korea. Plus lots of slave labour, global economies can never have enough of that.
So yeah, messing with North Korea means messing with China. Despite some real grade A morons in power nobody has been that stupid yet.
Those pesky poors! Always getting in the way of some good imperialism 😤
Don’t worry! There’s this new little number called ‘Iran’ coming up. Plenty of opportunity to get rid of them there.
Ah, the old question about what to do about North Korea, it occupies the minds of many, there are some answers, many lead to more questions, and so on.
The stakes are increadibly high, so we have to tread very carefully.
Let’s bring up a few key facts.
- NK is a totalitarian state with a huge personality cult surrounding the Kim family.
- NK is supported by both China and Russia, they both have a highly vested interest in keeping the status quo.
- NK is located within artillery range of SK’s capital city, Seoul.
- NK’s society is vastly different from all of it’s neighbours, even the language used in NK is noticably different from the language spoken in SK.
- NK has nuclear weapons.
- NK does not have a problem ignoring the normal rules of diplomacy.
Now, you ask what other countries can do to help the people of NK, that is a hugely complicated question, which in general is mostly answered with an answer no one really wants to hear:
Support the current regime
For any proper aid to get into NK you need the support of the regime, and they will take the credit for the aid.
I saw a documentary of a film crew following a team of surgeons travelling to NK to help people who had lost their sight, it was a simple operation, preformed and funded by foreign organizations, the regime had only allowed the team access.
The operation took maybe a few min per patient, they replaced a lens in the eyes of the patient, and as soon as the patient was done, they rushed to the portraits of the leaders of NK, got on their knees and thanked them deeply for their graciousness of restoring their eyesight.
This is the kind of society NK is, everything is tied to the leader.
This is the starting point, and you have 26 million people to deal with…
Ok, say that a world power decide that they have had enough with the Kim family and this is worth going to war over.
What can we expect?
Regardless of what countries are involved, Seoul WILL be bombarded.
So now the attacker is hated both in NK and SK as well as probably a lot of other countries.
NK will use their nukes, and possibly other WMD they have.
Then comes China…
China loves NK as a buffer against the west, so they would and have deployed the PLA to save NK.
I fell asleep a few times while writing the pervious comment, so if it seems cut off, that is why.
Now, there are a few more things to talk about.
- What is more likely with regards to real change, military action by a foreign power, political collapse, or a gradual change?
- What will have to be done after thing have changed?
Lets start with 1 first:
I think we can rule out direct military action by a foreign power, any action will see Seoul in SK destroyed within a day, and even Japan is at a high risk here.
Political collapse is possible, but not realistic to happen in the current situation, remember that the government has an extreme level of control over the media in NK, this includes extreme control over the smartphones sold in NK, everything you do is monitored, any photo you take with the camera is cryptographically signed on the device so the government knows the origin of any photo spread around in NK, you can see more here: https://youtu.be/czJaA0S2AjE . With this level of control of the media, the regime will probably not fall soon.
Gradual change is the most probable, but will take a long time, people in SK do send baloons with USB sticks containing SK media, so people in NK are somewhat aware of life in SK. But as I noted earlier this will take a long time.
Ok lets move on to number 2, what would happen after a collapse of the NK government.
The most probable thing is that China will come and run NK as a kind of colony, NK lacks a LOT of modern infrastructure, and the citizens will be at extreme risk of exploitation.
Whoever colonized NK would face the daunting challenge of integrating 26 million people into a modern society, meanwhile other groups will try to exploit the cheap labour NK citizens can provide.
Bringing NK citizens into modern society with zero oversight will end in disaster, look at Albania as a warning, there was little knowledge of financial scams in the times after communism and several pyramid schemes was established and later collapsed, wiping out 50% of the GDP of Albania at the time and contributed in large parts to the 1997 Albanian rebellion.
Teaching the NK citizens about the dangers and advantages of modern society will take a long time, it will involve a lot of shattered illusions, plenty of people will want to go back their old ways, other’s will want to go full steam ahead, making their own paths without help.
This is just a small taste of the issues to come…
Great clarification. Do you think lifting sanctions and creating Pro-NK surpluses would help? Would Kim even do that?
China is the answer. Nobody does anything about North Korea for the same reason China doesn’t invade Taiwan.
And this goes back to the Cold War, which goes back to WWII, and the politics of the president and military commanders, specifically MacArthur, who wanted to continue north and take North Korea decisively to keep the Soviet Union and China from controlling it before it could be reinforced by Chinese soldiers.
At the time, North Korean soldiers were outnumbered by UN forces 3:1, with far more tanks, etc than NK had.
The UN waffled, and by the time they decided Korea should be reunified, China had shipped in nearly 300,000 troops, and an unknown amount of matériel.
Fuck the UN. It’s their fault this is still going on.
Why “fuck the UN” and not “fuck China?”
Sounds like the UN could have made better choices, but the real villain (at least in the part of the history you describe) is China. No?
No
Because - improbably, given its track record elsewhere - the world has worked out that the solution to someone killing kids isn’t to kill more kids.
But not after having killed a lot of kids first.
We are still … learning
