Hacker News Reader

Comment by dbcooper | Hacker News Reader

I suspect that if they developed an H-bomb it would be due to China's assistance ...

I thought the only reason why China supported NK was because they don't want to clean up after a fallen regime and deal with the stream of refugees. Giving NK a H-bomb would not help with that goal, it'd increase instability if anything.

I don't know much about geopolitics so I could be very wrong.

Note the "if they developed". I don't think they tested an H-bomb.

NK having an H-bomb makes it far less likely for other countries to try and destablize NK. Additionally, if they start to get destbalized, then having a bomb makes it far more likely that countries like the US would support the regime (because, as much as we do not like the idea of NK having a nuclear weapon, it is still preferable to all of the groups that will take control of it after NK falls)

That doesn't make sense:

The groups that would take control:

Japan: Likely already have this tech, ally of US

Korea: Likely already have this tech, ally of US

Russia: Already have this tech

China: Already have this tech

USA: Already have this tech

Or do you mean some minor group, rather than a state taking control of a failed NK?

But dropping a bomb like that on Japan, US, S. Korea will kill skilled, educated people, destroy their technology, infrastructure and put country to a recession. Dropping it on NK will, like, kill thousands of slaves and destroy no meaningful infrastructure.

>thousands of slaves

People.

Agreed. But there's a potential moral debate to be had around the subject.

Imagine if you were given this scenario: "x" people will be killed tomorrow, you can't change that. There are three options for which people will be killed, either "well-off", "in poverty" or "random". You can choose one of the three, if you don't make a choice then one of the three will be randomly picked and the deaths still occur.

Would killing the people in poverty be better because you're wiping out more misery, would it be worse because you're letting financial state influence death?

And as much as ethically we want to think that all people are equal, let's not forget that most armys would be willing to kill 10 opponents to save the life of 1 colleague, and taking the US as an example I suspect (could be wrong..) a poll of the US would see most people willing to kill 10 North Koreans to save the life of 1 American, without having any other information about the 11 people who might die.

I think you could use anyone as an example. It's always easier to ignore people you don't know than the people you do. I imagine most people would pick a family member over people they don't know.

It matters that they NK people are slaves to their government. Killing the people will not influence the government like it would in parts of the world with better morality.

Yes, also, it's probably in the millions in terms of number of people we'd consider to be living as slaves in NK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun

It depends WHY it falls. The existing system is almost completely military with a sorta civilian mostly hereditary aristocracy leading it. So if it falls because the military collapses it'll be nearly a wasteland, total anarchy, but if the military stays in total power then instead of hereditary civilian aristocracy they'll have a genuine combat soldier (or at least a semi-experienced general) in charge.

At the very tippy top the Chinese like their buffer states, and are not going to be happy with reunification with SK. Of course the same people said the same things about Eastern Germany.

Pakistan's nuclear and missile program wouldn't be possible if not for China.

In both these cases (NK and Pakistan, assuming NK got tech from China), was there a lot of money involved? I mean, does China do it also for the money, or is it mostly geopolitical influence?

If NK regime falls down, likely it's going to be South Korea who is going to get refugees and to clean up the mess, since their long-term objective is to unify Korea and only the NK regime is preventing that.

The problem China does not want to have is a US ally at his border.

I am 99% sure that both China and the US would be happy with a deal along the lines of "The regeime goes, but NK stays a Chinese satellite", assuming that such a deal were feasible without risking huge destruction and loss of life.

What would the Chine government's motive be to help the Kim government upgrade to H-Bombs? They're already a political liability and most people in the region are nervous about them having atom bombs in the first place. It just seems like a bad idea.

at one time that might have been true but I would suspect that rational heads in China would not want to give such technology to an inherently unstable regime. Similar to how Russia operated, their allies might end up with nukes in their territory but they were Russian nukes, same as the US.

In the last decade or two, I doubt China wants a more dangerous North Korea. It could be that NK is attempting to play China like it plays the rest of the world. We always assume China is pulling all the strings but maybe NK knows some strings it can pull too

Reply on news.ycombinator.com