Comment by bloggergirl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bloggergirl | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for posting this. A key takeaway from the article is in the final paragraph: "if we allow it, we could live in a world that makes great strides forward, but that can never rid itself of the abhorrent authoritarian tool that is the concentration camp."

We allow these horrors to occur. That's not a judgment on anyone; I'm definitely part of the problem because I'm not part of the solution (to borrow a cliche).

But what can we do? That's a real question. I want to know what we can do. Yes, we can sign Amnesty International petitions, which is a step, but what else?

The HN community is a problem-solving community. Human rights violations of all sizes and shapes (including and especially the North Korea concentration camps) are a major problem to solve. What can technology do to help? Can we solve fatigue re: "prolonged exposure to blaring 24 hour news streams that fry sensibilities with their constant emotional appeals"? Can we mobilize people and keep them engaged in helping people they don't know?

Initial ideas:

- Keep sharing the link for a week/month on Facebook, hopefully making it viral

- Setup a Facebook page for this, asking the same question "What can we do?"

- It has to start from within, see Tunisia, Egypt etc.

- Making sure folks inside North Korea can access info via proxy servers if it's blocked

Agree. I remember hearing that the general population of WWII Germany was unaware of the atrocities that happened in Nazi concentration camps. Given also the recent events in countries you mentioned, I think that making regular people in North Korea know what's going on in their country could be very, very important.

We need to wait for large mineral or oil deposits to be found in North Korea, and then the US can implement democracy.

So true! You hit the nail on the head, chopsueyar.

Sarcasm or not, it is a valid solution.

Making the whole problem somehow relevant economically to US or international community might be helpful, although I have no idea how to do that.

North Korea does have large mineral resources, but China already has the upper hand in exploiting the political situation to gain access to them:

“There are growing concerns that North Korea could be selling the development rights of mineral resources to China at a very cheap price as the relationships between the two Koreas worsen and North Korea has no other market to turn to,” said Yoon Hong-gi, an official with Korea Resources Corp.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2931111

Actually the biggest problem is that the North Korea military is pretty well equipped. Any military solution would require evacuating large sections of South Korea.

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