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Comment by mlb_hn | Hacker News Reader

North Korea has wanted a peace treaty for some time. E.g. 2016 Rand did an analysis on North Korea wanting a peace treaty to get the US to withdraw from South Korea (https://www.rand.org/blog/2016/05/behind-north-koreas-bid-fo...). They wanted a peace treaty under Kim Jong Un's father as well (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-north/north-korea-c...).

Everyone seems to be forgetting that the reason that WE have refused to sign a peace treaty for decades is because of the human rights violations in North Korea. I have no idea how the narrative switched to North Korea wanting a peace treaty as a concession from them.

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It's interesting that our continued insistence on not signing a peace treaty because of humans rights violations has allowed them to continue for even longer.

That could be accurate. That's not the point though - the issue is that there are all these articles being written about North Korea wanting a peace treaty as if it's something new, when North Korea's always wanted the peace treaty.

Is that really an "issue" if that rewriting of history is what finally brings peace?

Yes. People rewriting history is always an issue no matter what the gain. Should we let Germany erase the holocaust if they donate sufficiently large sums to charity? Should we forget about the human rights issues in North Korea just so we can label the current situation peaceful, and pretend they do not exist?

I fundamentally disagree with that position, although I suspect that question may play a factor into the current partisan divide and the upcoming elections.

I don't see how signing a peace treaty will stop those human rights violations, unless North Korean leadership gives up power as part of the treaty.

I imagine that with a treaty, they would have an excuse to spend less on military and more on domestic improvement. Whether it would actually play out like that is an entirely different can of worms, though.

Human rights is an excuse.

US needs to there to curb China.

The reasoning in that RAND article is pretty effing bad. North Korea could successfully invade South Korea?! Yeah right. That's not a credible scenario whatsoever, even if the U.S. withdrew.

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