This is a pretty interesting read I think:

http://www.slate.com/id/2243112/

NK is probably the only country on Earth I think where the people have been this far brainwashed. I don’t know why our gov., purely for humanitarian reasons, doesn’t do more to topple Kim Jong Il.

Quote :

"One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, [the NK handler] mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he'd heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity."

Although, there are prominent politicians who probably think the same way over here...

2/7/2010 11:54:32 AM

A superb spoech by Christopher Hitchens on North Korea:

2/7/2010 11:56:46 AM

^damn

2/7/2010 12:06:20 PM

Another thing that i’ve never thought about before is the concept that all the North Koreans are basically slaves.

Unlike in even the worst of the middle-eastern countries, the NK have no access to the outside world. All that they know is that they are the greatest country with the greatest people and greatest leaders in the world. They have no ability to compare themselves to other countries, to even being to think of what freedom must be. Think “Allegory of the Cave.”

2/7/2010 12:18:07 PM

They do however have the largest flag and flag pole in the world.

2/7/2010 12:30:54 PM

Quote :

"I don’t know why our gov., purely for humanitarian reasons, doesn’t do more to topple Kim Jong Il."

Because we think -- rightly, I believe -- that it would take very little to send the regime over the deep end. If we start to destabilize it, it will have to act in order to keep its own people in line. In order to do that, they will have to show that they are not scared, and in order to do that they'll probably attack South Korea, maybe lob some missiles at Japan, all the usual nightmare stuff. Because we're allied with both of those countries we have to get involved, resulting in a nasty war and possibly a bloody, insurrectionist aftermath. It also means we'd probably get stuck with the bill for recuperating shattered, starving NK.

We've seen similar events before. Regimes (and the men at their centers) will opt for suicidal wars rather than admit weakness to their own people. Saddam Hussein knew that being coy about WMD's would increase the likelihood of a war he probably knew he couldn't win. But he did it anyway, because straight up complying would expose weakness that would probably be exploited by someone else in the country.

2/7/2010 2:14:23 PM

Not to mention the fact that NK is actually a satellite state of China and they use it to help keep the US and western countries in line.


In fact, were we to try to initiate anything in NK, we'd have hell to pay for it from China. Kind of like if anyone were to try to F with Israel... You know how it go.

[Edited on February 7, 2010 at 3:23 PM. Reason : s]

2/7/2010 3:22:25 PM

^^
It almost seems to me though that because the people have been trained to be so gullible, it would be easy for a psyops type of program to drift towards freedom. Not to mention with their family in the south, more or less, they'd have a lot of help and incentive to stay peaceful.

I don't accept that nothing can be done though.

2/7/2010 4:09:04 PM

Well fascism, nationalism, and racism all go hand in hand, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

I think North Korea is China's problem and I think they are actively taking steps to restrain it's aggression and change the regime from the inside out, diplomatically and economically. They know the problems of destabilizing North Korea, they don't want to have to increase their aid and take on thousands of refugees. This process will take a while, but I think, left alone, NK could change around in our lifetime, I think China sees NK as transforming from a military focused dictatorship to an economically focused stable country much as they did several years earlier, and that was a long process too, but it worked well.

2/7/2010 4:32:05 PM