Please don't take HN threads further into ideological or nationalistic battle. It's repetitive, tedious, and nasty—the things we're trying to avoid here.
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive - if we were going to liberate North Korea, the point would be largely to let the North Korean citizens live free of their horrifically oppressive government. You just have to distinguish between the culture of a country as defined by the traditions and history of its people and the culture as defined by the government, particularly if the government is a dictatorship. The former is good and should be preserved (generally) while the latter is generally to the detriment of the former.
Oh you mean like they liberated the people of Iraq in 2003? yeah North Koreans are really missing out...
And people in Cuba and Hong Kong raise American flags just because the US is an enemy of their State (enemy of my enemy is my friend) not because of "freedom and change".
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological or nationalistic battle. It's repetitive, tedious, and nasty—the things we're trying to avoid here.