Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

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The US did invest heavily in rebuilding Korea after the war and in "economically winning over people and giving them more opportunity and freedoms". The portion of Korea that was and still is occupied by UN (primarily US) armed forces is now a healthy, well-educated, free and prosperous country—South Korea.

North Korea, on the other hand, is an impoverished totalitarian state that has been using the threats to demand aid for decades. It wouldn't even exist if China hadn't decided to intervene against the UN command in Korea and flood troops into the peninsula, and to this day it is the one and only country in the world China has formed an alliance with.

And your assessment is that the problem wasn't that the PRK chose communism, but instead it was the US not offering enough freedom or economic opportunity!? What about its communist allies?

I'm not a fan of all of some the US's military actions in recent decades, but if ever there was a war worth fighting since WWII, then surely the Korean War was it. You'd have a hard time finding anyone in the south wishing the communists had won the entire peninsula and that they'd become part of the PRK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#China_intervenes_.2...

It's worth mentioning that Korean democracy is a relatively new phenomenon. For a period of time, South Korea was effectively a military dictatorship. It was only until 1988 that SKorea actually elected a president for the first time. Before that it was just one military coup after another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee

Park Chung-hee is largely credited for creating the "Miracle on the Han River" which led to the current prosperous SKorea we know today. He was also a brutally repressive leader who tortured and killed many of his opponents.

The other three Asian tigers weren't democracies then, either. But along with Korea they were free market economies. While political freedoms were limited, it was a far, far cry from the situation in any of the communist countries in Asia. The choice between living in South Korea vs North Korea was clear even in the mid 1980s.

Not so clear before that. In fact the north did significantly better than the south then. There was a large influx of cash to South Korea from the Vietnam war (for which Korea provided 300000 mercenaries)

Yeah, before that quite a few Koreans migrated from the South to the North, as the north was doing better initially.

This is very interesting, and not something that many have given much thought to (including me). It suggests that Capitalism is a more effective path to freedom than Democracy, over the long term. Perhaps this bodes well for China.

Free markets, free minds, free individuals.

It's a libertarian mantra. I'm not a libertarian but the substance behind the credo is commendable and accurate.

PRK chose communism but they've got dictatorship now - insane, totalitarian dictatorship.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_Korea...

Excerpt of the aims:

"... guaranteed basic human rights and freedoms, including those of speech, press, assembly, and faith; universal suffrage to adults over the age of eighteen; equality for women; labor law reforms ..."

Sounds pretty good.

Many in the North probably would love communism (or anything!) in preference to what they have.

The communists didn't hold the North, the PRK was killed off quickly, the Kims soon took over as dictators - Wikipedia says the suggestion to have a "trusteeship" was from USA, that then put the Kims in power ...

An ignorant reading of this would be "USA saves communism from spreading by installing evil dictators instead". As a child we got our share of USA propaganda - in UK - the hated commies.

Except now it seems they were hated because they form a challenge to the rich capitalists. If workers demanded the profits from their labour in other countries, and the rich lost their places of power, then why wouldn't US Americans do the same?

Is that why USA has been at war against communism? To protect the positions of the wealthy elite over their own countrymen?

Am I wrong?

I will say the obvious. History showed that whoever wanted to implement Communism ended up in a similar situation. Perhaps we should drop the game of empiricism and accept that Communism is very very hard to implement and no matter how much you tune the parameters most likely it will end up a freak Totalitarian setup. It just does not worth it.

Yeah it doesn't matter what the stated intent is.

Let's overthrow the old government.

Now let's say the population is in charge but they don't actually vote... We'll just have to "represent" them, vigorously.

Now let's choose our leader according to who can murder their rivals the best.

...how can that turn out well?

"Chose” might not be the right word here. The dmz between the Koreas approximates how far the Soviet tanks got through the Japanese-occupied Korea at the end of world war 2 before acknowledging the Japanese surrender. In this sense, North Korea is analogous to East Germany.

South Korea is a great example of how a country can prosper friendly to the US.

Japan, Germany (and much of Europe), Philippines, many others, they may have had conflicts with the US but after we helped enemies become friends. It is easy to win over the side that is already friendly, we need to economically turn the non-friendlies into friendlies.

Around the time of the Korean war, we also recently moved from #16 military in the world before WWII to arguably #1. With this our economic plans turned more harsh in the following conflicts, we thought we could win with harsher ultimatums rather than just getting money to the people in the state we are trying to win over. Eisenhower even warned about this and he saw everything from WWII through Korea, a complex was emerging, the military-industrial complex, that in some cases preferred conflict to extend chaos over actual war ending nation building.

We stopped nation building for the side that we needed to win over, not just the friendlies. We essentially turned into the strict parent instead of the one that makes a good time for everyone and lives life for quality.

Yes China is complicit in this, they also fought the other side in Vietnam but the whole of Vietnam is now friendly to the US and economically it is benefitting finally. A divided Korea helps China and is a buffer. They need to be called out on it and much of the turn for North Korea has to come from China but we can encourage that.

We should have worked harder at getting North Korea on our side much much earlier, 60+ years of division is not the solution.

What is your idea of "working harder" in this case? Are you familiar with what was attempted?

I am familiar with what we did, maybe not all but much of it, and do today for South Korea.

We also have attempted many things on North Korea but much of it is from a position of force for many reasons including internal conflict, ideology and external players.

We aren't finishing things decisively with nation building. We even have politics today that argue against nation building when they mention wars. Peace and security are only about economics and nation building, extremism is subdued in good economic systems, exasperated in bad economic situations that turn toward authoritarian systems. This is a big reason why the ME is so messed up, small force, no nation building, no economic plan, chaos ensues, large amounts of wealth are made in the chaos, lack of cultural awareness leads to the wrong people gaining power in the power vacuum etc but I digress. Not nation building goes against things like the Marshall Plans, Eisenhower Doctrine and more, this is largely our problem since the Korean war or just after.

Are you saying we did enough in 6+ decades in Korea? We didn't even get a peace treaty, they are still technically at war.

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