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Comment by mtoner23 | Hacker News Reader

Victimless? North korea is not a victimless country. There's a reason why they are sactioned. He clearly broke a big and important law and knew he was doing it. idk what else one would expect

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Yeah I don't see how anyone could consider it victimless. By helping North Korea circumvent sanctions he indirectly has blood on his hands. This is a country that sentences multiple generations of a family to work camps.

The USA has a similar incarceration rate to North Korea, albeit with better conditions.

The fragment "albeit with better conditions" is doing a lot of work here.

Quite a bit better on average. At the extremes, the US can be just as bad.

# Prisoners being beat to death

# Prisoners' shackled in restraint chairs being nasally force fed and tortured

# Solitary confinement for 40+ years

Better conditions and due process. Whataboutitists love to conveniently the latter.

Man oh man. You're right for a lot of cases, but in the USA if you're uneducated, poor, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, you can get railroaded by some crooked cops and a plea deal with a crooked DA, and it's going to be small comfort that things aren't usually as bad as in North Korea

True unfortunately, but those instances are generally considered to be violations of the spirit of our system, institutions, and rights, at the least, if not also the letter, or exploitation of legal loopholes and technicalities, depending on jurisdiction. And we can publicly raise hell about it, protest, lobby, and elect reps who will work to fix it and close the loopholes.

In authoritarian systems, those instances are in accordance with their system. And while people there do sometimes raise hell about it, sometimes they're ignored, sometimes they're placated, and sometimes they're disappeared, depending on the whim, temperament, and calculations of whoever is in power, with zero recourse.

The two really aren't comparable.

Nobody is arguing that the system is perfect. Yes we know bad things happen and there are bad people in the system who prey on others. That's true everywhere and it should go without saying.

It doesn't change the fact that the US is very different from NK and not really at all comparable if we are being intellectually honest.

> ... conveniently ignore the latter.

My dyslexia strikes again.

Nonetheless two wrongs don't make a right.

sure, Im not saying that they do make it right. I am pointing out the conspicuous hypocrisy that people don't feel that they have blood on their hands for paying US taxes, but aiding NK in any way is a mortal sin.

I find this comparison extremely weird.

North korean prisons are described as hellholes whereas US prisons actually seem decent to me (eastern european) if we exclude that you likely won't have the best of company.

Plus that only a small amount of taxes go towards the prison system.

> whereas US prisons actually seem decent to me

based on what? Places like Angola or San Quentin are as brutal as any gulag.

Should we compare the %of taxes that go to gulags and military in NK to that in the US? I honestly wonder if they would be favorable

Just look at how the US treats Assange and Chelsea Manning. Starts wars on false pretences that killed hundreds of thousands (Irak). So you could argue that helping the US is in some form also having blood on your hands.

Crypto, Blockchain etc... is apolitical, it can be used for bad and good. Sanctions on N. Korea have starved people there to death.

North Korea isn't sanctioned because of human rights violations. The US doesn't even care for its own citizenry sufficiently. Why would American politicians care about the plight of hungry people half the world over?

North Korea is sanctioned because they won't let Amazon, McDonald's, Netflix, BlackRock, Google, and a myriad of other highly destructive and financially motivated corporate entities run amok in their country.

Edit: Downvote it all you want. Nobody will disprove what I've said here.

So your saying being actively at war with close ally South Korea, with enormous amounts of artillery aimed at Seoul, and killing people who commit Lese Majeste, are not credible reasons for being a target of US ire?

North Korea is the enemy because they fought Americans off and held their ground. If you don't understand this, you are incapable of understanding global politics and should direct your energy and attention somewhere else.

Saudi Arabia has death penalty by behading people in front of the masses... and they are invading Yemen. Where are the American "sanctions"?

The US suffered around 58k casualties during the Vietnam war. Nearly as many people domestically are dying each year from opioid overdoses. In 2017, that number was 47k. Now compare and contrast this with 9/11, which killed roughly 3k. If you believe the government's bald faced lies, that should be a great enough loss of life to spur them into action. Yet there's nothing substantial being done to fix this. Keep in mind here that 9/11 is supposedly what got us the Patriot Act and legalized sexual assault in airports.

So not only am I saying the US government doesn't care about civilian mistreatment, they actively encourage it by turning a blind eye to corporate greed. North Korea does bad things, but it doesn't matter because nobody talking about is actually willing to help those people. So they're just pawns for you to signal about. No policy is impacted it whatsoever.

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