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Comment by fufulabs | Hacker News Reader

It boggles my mind how little anyone, inside or outside, has done to change North Korea.

Maybe i am just ignorant of how difficult it is or the attempts done.

It is easy to say that North Korea should change. What is difficult is articulating the type of change that one would like to see occur and how to implement it.

Should Kim Jong-Il have been ousted a la Saddam Hussein in Iraq? How dangerous would that have been, considering that North Korea has nuclear arms? What to do in case of a conflict that spills over into neighboring countries? What would China's take on all of it be? Would they stand idly by or back up their Communist cousin?

Once the dictator is gone, what do you do? Let the military take over and potentially let it establish a junta government, Myanmar-style? Or do you try to install democracy forcibly? Would the right thing to do be to hand North Korea over to South Korea, integrating the two countries by shotgun wedding?

The complexities quickly exponentiate. Consider the cultural shock of the North Koreans once they're introduced to modern South Korean culture alone. If German re-unification is any indicator, putting together two halves of a country that have been split into Communism and western capitalism is not a trivial task.

Also consider the cult of personality built up around Kim Jong-Il. The situation in N. Korea could quickly become explosive once people realize the deceit they've been living in.

So it's difficult thing to do, just by itself. All the econo-political ramifications just make it that much harder.

Nuclear weapons barely change the equation. The best estimate is that North Korea could begin firing around 10,000 artillery shells per minute into densely populated suburbs areas around Seoul on a moment's notice. Even if through some masterful and historic level of effort we managed to shut down those artillery bombardments or evacuate the targeted areas in a mere half an hour that still leaves hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and huge numbers of homes and businesses destroyed. It would be a destruction on the scale of a natural disaster such as the earthquake off Japan earlier this year. Add in the very real possibility of North Korean nuclear weapons landing on Seoul, Tokyo, Taiwan or maybe even the US mainland and that starts focusing your thinking about how worthwhile it would have to be to depose the North Korean regime.

I remember hearing that because of this all large buildings in South Korea are required to have a shelter area able to withstand such attack.

There has been a lot of work put towards North Korea -- some of it we know about, and probably some other that we don't. For example, there have been numerous attempts recently to draw them into nuclear disarmament talks, and a lot of aid has been provided as a carrot for those talks.

But, from a cold, inhumane, and strictly logical perspective, North Korea is a problem that will probably solve itself. Assuming that most of the non-mainstream stuff that I read and hear about it is true (and I'm a little unsettled at even wondering that, let alone specifying "non-mainstream"), North Korea is badly starved for resources.

When your population is starving, when your media singularly carries fictional programming about your state and leaders, when your education is tightly authoritarian, you are less likely to produce the geniuses needed to solve engineering challenges like accurate long-range guidance systems.

Ordinarily, a resource-starved state would devolve into desperation; in North Korea's case, I'm not sure whether to expect that, because the entire state seems to be so uniquely dependent upon the whims and notions of a single individual -- its party leader at the time. If Kim Jong-Un continues to place pride before population, then it's likely that the state will collapse in our lifetimes in a mostly nonviolent way. If, on the other hand, he decides to try to take some kind of action, he'll eventually be forced into a game of poker where everyone at the table knows that he's got the weakest hand. Although he could certainly do a lot of damage on the way out -- mostly to neighboring South Korea and Japan -- he could not destroy the Earth, and he'd be faced with an immediate and deadly counterstrike from more capable nations.

It certainly is a terrible situation for the poor souls born into that country. Still, sometimes the best strategy is to simply wait out your opponent and let him starve to death, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this was in fact the Western strategy.

You are aware of the fact that NK is PRC's puppet state, aren't you? NK will live on as it is, till PRC ceases tp support it.

My impression is that at this point 'puppet' is far too strong a term.

North Korea still relies on the PRC's tolerance and patronage, and the PRC doesn't prefer any outcome that boosts the influence of the US and South Korea. But the PRC's influence and patience with North Korea are limited. Some of the Wikileaks cables indicate China has begun backing away from the regime:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables...

North Korea is a vassal state of the PRC, and exists because it is politically advantageous to China for them to do so.

Until recently, China hasn't liked to take a direct approach to many aspects of international affairs. So they influence countries like North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran as tools to achieve their political aims.

They aren't whole-hearted supporters of all aspects of the North Korean regime, frankly, I'd say that they don't really care about what happens in North Korea, as long as they are achieving their foreign policy goals.

China's interests (and hence, position) are "don't fuck around and create trouble for us".

A collapsed NK state creates more trouble for China in the form of refugees than a still-functioning one, so we see enough aid for them to keep functioning.

An occasional diplomatic poke in the eye to the US helps China too, but that's a want, not a need. Don't confuse the rhetoric with the reality.

Yeah, in the event of actual war, there's no way they intervene as long as the North Koreans are the aggressors -- they know North Korea will lose on its own, and they don't want to get into a fight with the US. South Korea's one of their major trading partners now, too.

I think they let a US/SK operation clean up while issuing various diplomatic missives decrying the violence, then wrangle a treaty barring major military installations or exercises in northern areas of, and establishing free trade with, the reunified Korea.

It's worth noting that they did intervene the last time the North Koreans were the aggressors, that is, the Korean War.

Partly because MacArthur was looking (and talking) like he was going to press on into China as he stormed up the peninsula after the landings at Incheon.

It's also worth noting that 1950 China has very little in common with 2011 China.

Indeed, but it also has some factors in common through different pathways - I grow nervous when I read of the ultranationalist riots permitted by the Party, because it seems like the kind of thing that would itself to the leaders deciding to enter 'a short, victorious war'. (Defending the Middle Kingdom, defending the Revolution; rather similar.)

Entirely different, see my comment above about Deng Xiaopeng's ascendance in the late 1970s and the quite severe repercussions for the perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution. There's no linkage between the revolution and nationalism anymore. "A cat that catches mice is a good cat, whether it's white or black".

Nationalist pride, sure, that's been a constant through any cohesive nation's history. Koreans aren't Chinese, though, and the leaders of China are too smart to look for a "short, victorious war" on the Korean peninsula..

I didn't say nationalism and the Revolution were the same thing, I said they could play the same role.

China wasn't a growing economic powerhouse in 1950. In fact, it didn't have much of an economy, period. They've made too much progress, established too many economic links, gained too much international influence to throw it away on a stupid war that, even in "victory", would be a loss.

They don't even have an idealogical interest -- we throw around the word "communist", but North Korea's modern ideologies are so far removed from Chinese communism that it's practically apples and oranges.

And the Cold War is long over, nobody's out to "eradicate" or even "contain" communism. US-Chinese relations are strained, but not hostile, and they know we wouldn't be looking to cross the Yalu.

Even more than the macro factors, the 1950s Chinese state was a revolutionary state bent on the worldwide spread of communism.

In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaopeng killed off the last group of leaders trying to keep that sentiment alive (the Gang of Four) and since then they've been all pragmatism, all the time. Any talk of communism is window-dressing, their regime is ideologically committed to doing what's practical.

So even aside from the cost-benefit, they have no ideological incentive to throw their lot in with the North Korean gov't. As I said upthread, the reason they give them aid right now is because a refugee crisis in Manchuria would be inconvenient. Pragmatism.

Mao's China was far more brutal and crazy than modern China, and 1950 North Korea was to some degree less brutal and crazy than modern North Korea. In 1950 they were peas in a pod. Since then, they have grown in different directions.

I do not think that an unpredictable loose cannon could be referred to as a "puppet state", no. Although China has been (and still is) North Korea's largest source of aid, China has also been distancing themselves from North Korea over the past decade.

China is a very different, and very complicated situation, but they are currently enjoying more political influence than at any time in recent history, and as they are poised to become a dominant world power, North Korea is a liability that they may well decide that they cannot afford.

I would also point out that our respective notions of "live on" must be a bit different; assuming that the data I've read can be trusted, North Korea has almost no paved roads at all [1], which means that the movement of supplies throughout the country is badly hindered. Given the well-known height differences between North Koreans and their South Korean neighbors, the gulags and other oppressions mentioned in this article and others, the threats which North Korea uses to squeeze aid in the form of energy and other supplies from other nations, their nearly complete lack of electrical lighting after dark, and what's known of their trade with China, I find it difficult to see North Korea as being on anything more than the barest of life support from China.

[1]: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/north-korea/roads-paved-perc..., among others.

> North Korea is a liability that they may well decide that they cannot afford.

Hard to tell. On the other hand, their influence over North Korea is an asset they can use in negotiations with other superpowers. Plus, they start to look good in comparison.

I've not gotten the impression that North Korea really likes China, just that they tolerate them (because they are the only ones willing to deal with them). Maybe things will change a bit now, but I was always under the impression that N.K. could have easily lobbed a nuke at China 'just because.' That kind of uncertainty is a liability.

Are you so sure about that?

It's my understanding that NK is far from a PRC puppet state, and have a strained relationship, but being that NK depends heavily on China for it's continued existence and security, they do have some sway.

Kim Jong Il has conducted several actions, like the 2006 nuclear test, which has embarrassed and/or annoyed China considerably, underneath the public facade.

Some pertinent links:

http://www.cfr.org/china/china-north-korea-relationship/p110...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China%E2...

Saying NK is a PRC puppet is like saying South Korea is a US puppet.

China is glad NK exists as a buffer against the US zone of influence (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan), but NK causes China a lot of problems too (eg, there is a crystal-meth problem in the border zones because North Korea produces it as a medicine(!!)[1])

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/19/north-korea...

Geopolitically, South Korea is a puppet state of the American Empire. So is Japan.

Both countries invaded Iraq for oil at the command of George Bush II.

Both countries have ~30,000 imperial troops stationed there.

Both countries toe the imperial line on foreign policy.

Why can't Americans see their own Empire? The rest of the world does.

Coming from a country that had it almost as bad as North Korea, I can say that nothing can be done from outside and little can be done from inside.

There is only a handful of people that are in charge in North Korea that can try to effect some kind of change. But even if suddenly one day they wake up with the best of intentions and all cleared up about where they would want to go, i.e. to achieve some sort of South Korean democracy, it will be extremely hard to improve anything in a short amount time (and by short time I mean around 10 years).

Basically the people living there today are screwed. Ideologically they have grown up to expect everything handed down from the state. How can the state hand down everything if it doesn't own everything? Economically, maybe 90% of economic activity is useless. In a free economy all of them would be closed. How would you cope with 90% unemployment?

You remind me of a National Geographic article on post-communist Russia, and how the elderly wanted to go back, since the new system was much harsher on them.

And post-communist Russia is an example of what could happen in North Korea, replacing one group of tyrants with a mafia. Only N.K. doesn't have the kind of natural resources Russia has. Maybe Albania might be a better example.

Albania is the nearest one can come to find a similar regime to North Korea's. The country was so totalitarian you weren't free to choose almost anything. The school where you went, including the branch of study in University was decided by the state. Where to work was decided by the state. The state provided you with a house (after many, many years of waiting). The state even told you where to buy the bread, where to buy the milk, where and in what day to buy the meat, all in different stores of course. The state "guaranteed" the right to work, so almost everyone got a job and all jobs had quite similar salaries. Almost nobody had savings since salaries and prices were calculated to balance themselves for a normal family. Since everybody had to work, lots of fictitious jobs were invented. And people learned soon enough that no matter how much you worked you still got paid and got paid the same, so nobody was really working.

So, when the communism collapsed in 1990, the country collapsed too. What saved the people was the fact that Albania is a very small country of 3 million in the middle of Europe so about 30% of people were able to immigrate. Now where would 8 million of North Koreans immigrate if suddenly communism collapsed in their country? I don't know.

"Now where would 8 million of North Koreans immigrate if suddenly communism collapsed in their country? I don't know."

Many would migrate to China, and this is probably one of the main reasons why China tries to keep the status quo in North Korea. China does not want a collapse of their neighbour.

> How would you cope with 90% unemployment?

Special Economic Zones are the name of the game, and yeah, it'd take decades to transform the whole economy -- China's still working on it. But the standard of living can start increasing almost immediately with the combination of trade and increased aid once they stop being an international pariah.

"Screwed" is on a spectrum, and you can start moving up immediately, if slowly.

I wrote an extended series on North Korean strategy that begins by explaining the current incredible stability. Until Kim Jung Il died, since 1945 a country the world disliked and actively tried to change had two (!) leaders, father and son.

It begins here -- http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-strategy-preview

I believe a strategic systems perspective reveals why that stability is so durable, but reveals little opportunity to change it. I can tell you what won't work -- military, diplomacy, aid, and sanctions. The most effective agent of change so far is the smuggling of dvds into the country, which reveal how different the outside world from the government propaganda.

(by the way, I'm in the process of making an e-book out of it. If you're willing to read it critically and give constructive criticism, I'll send you an advance copy)

It is not possible to change North Korea in the short term. Like any communist society, everybody has learned to live according to the rules. It takes generations to change that, and even then it is difficult.

The learnt that the state provides everything, that they are nothing without the state. People over 20 years old are not going to learn ever to live by their own means. They need communism.

I think saying that they need communism--or even that they would be worse off without it--is a little much. While the state provides everything, that's just a relative measure: in an absolute sense, it does not provide very much at all. I think that they would be better off without communism even in view of the inevitable difficulties transitioning.

The North Korean constitution (2009) "officially rejects North Korea's founding ideology of communism." (Quote from Wikipedia, and I've heard it elsewhere.)

It's better to say it's an absolute dictatorship, or absolute monarchy (with the Divine Right of Kings thrown in for good measure).

Russian life expectancy plummeted in the decade after the fall of communism. Don't downplay the extreme difficulty of transitioning from a command economy to a functioning liberal market economy.

Russia and North Korea are completely different. I don't think North Korean life expectancy has very far to plummet.

Thank you, that's exactly my point: since the government isn't doing much anyhow, going over to a different system is almost definitely going to be an improvement.

There was once a documentary about the mass games. It was very strange to see that a lot of people were very honored to play for the big leader. They had little to eat, had to work hard, but they were doing it all for the big leader.

If you can't (are not allowed) to look over the fence, you won't know that the grass is greener on the other side.

That movie "A State of Mind" - a really excellent documentary film.

Well there's only so many dictators we can knockout at any one time. We've been targeting those oil rich countries in the past decade where the ROI will be worth our while. The minerals of North Korea do look pretty sweet but we need some time to refill our barracks and sort out our own economic mess first. Don't worry though we've got economic sanctions in place against NK already so they won't be developing much.

I don't understand why all this urge in the "west" to change the north korea ? Not only that you believe all the western propaganda against NK but you have no doubts that you definitely know whats better and best for NK. Yes, you have no doubts that the west should rob them like they did with Irak and "set them free" and give them the shitty innefective democracy which strangely works only to make the western rich richer and the rest rich enough to not die.Why doesn't the west mind his damn business ? Why this arrogance that you know what others had to do ? If the US/Europe is a paradise, why are the poverty/corruption/unhappiness levels so high ? Why are u still in denial about what's really going on home but u have no doubts about whats really going on in NK and China ? This is some incomplete and not structured rant but still i make a case that the west and it's cool kids are arrogant, doubtless and biased like hell and work involuntarily to fulfill their invisible master's plan (again and forever ?).

I guess you're trolling, but anyway. All politics aside, the people in NK are hungry. Hungry as in "I don't have anything to eat". There's no doubt about the fact that the Western World managed to get this right.

I'm not trolling. Even if the people in NK are hungry (but they are not more hungry then the poor in the west), this does not give you the right to "save" them and take their little left posesions in the process, because you know, US never saved anyone without the army taking ground. If you see a poor man hungry on the street and you give him food, that's "saving him" but if you take his home and take his belongings because you can "manage" them better than him and if you force him to work for you, that's not "saving" him. That's slavery hidden in the form of charity. Isn't it strange that US goverment never saves the real poor of the world (saharian africans - they leave their salvation to red cross and independent charity) instead somehow US gov. always finds some richer "poors" and if they can't be "saved" by corruption and bribery, they are "saved" by armed invasion?

  > I don't understand why all this urge in the "west" to
  > change the north korea

Going in and 'freeing' a country is never as simply as it seems. That said, North Korea is not in a very good situation currently. There is a very real temptation to 'swoop in' and 'save' them. The idea being that rather than waiting for (possibly) decades for change to happen (and all of the suffering along the way), we could instantly change things for the better. The problem is that this drastic change is tantamount to revolution, and revolutions are never easy or clean.

Assume for a second that the US was perfect, and we could somehow attempt to impart this to the North Koreans. The population of North Korea has under gone over a decade of anti-US/anti-West propaganda. A not-inconsequential number of these people are going to violently resist US/Western involvement in North Korea. Even if we were able to produce irrefutable proof that all of the propaganda was a lie, there would be enough people that would violently refuse to believe even the truth that was right in front of them to produce significant turmoil.

The US can't save themselves. US never saved anyone, they only changed regimes and took huge economic advantages from the chaos it generously created (include here the "saved" europe). US government + their corporate backers does not care about their own citizens, don't tell me they really care about third world countries. They want you to care because they need your approval to go to war.You get the illusion that the war is "freeing" someone and the corporations get their money. See Halliburton, Bechtel and so on. By saving and freeing others US actually is saving their corporations and their interests. Everything else is american propaganda which I have to admit, brainwashes more efectively and more people than the NK propaganda. You don't even slightly consider that you are disinformed by western media and thats a huge success for them.

Ah yes, it's so much effective than NK. Do you think you would be able to post a similar comment in NK?

The NK guys may not be right but that does not make the US guys automatically right. Today we approach the point when the main difference between China/NK and US/Europe is that in China u can't protest openly and say anything u want while in US/Europe you can protest orderly and you will be widely ignored (by commercially controlled mass media) no matter how much sense you make or if you will protest in a more "disorderly"(guess who decides what is orderly or not these days http://thedailywh.at/2011/12/19/this-is-all-kinds-of-wrong-o...) way you will be labeled as a hippie, crackhead, conspiracy theorist, terrorist, communist, islamic fanatic and beaten and pepper sprayed by the police like in China.Yeah, we're far much better in the west. We have the right to work and pay our forever increasing visible and invisible taxes.

And in the US, you have the choice to read things besides "commercially controlled mass media," or even to start your own newspaper if you'd like!

If people ignore protests, whose fault is that? The government or the people? And you know, there have been some very successful protests... the US didn't originally have things like the Civil Rights Act.

While perhaps your favored ideological points are not currently being heard by the people you think should hear them, that does not discount the fact that US citizens have pushed for all sorts of laws that have been enacted. To draw upon a recent example, a good number of Republicans voted against NDAA 2012 when they initially were going to vote for it, solely because of citizens contacting them and expressing their concerns. The very fact that that happened proves that, for all we might complain, representatives (and other citizens) do listen.

It might be hard to get people to listen sometimes, and we might see incidents like the misuse of pepper spray, but if you think that puts us on the level of China then frankly you're completely deluded! You do realize that in China you can be incarcerated for talking about democracy, and that they have their own party-appointed leaders for religions like Tibetan Buddhism and Catholicism?

Your insistence on seemingly conflating "Rest of the world" with "The US" is fascinating.

In China they prevent you to speak. In the west they let you speak as much as you want but the state ignores you and propaganda machine covers you with noise. The european powers fear the referendums like hell. If still by some miracle some bunch of guys manage to unite over some slogan or message not tolerated by the state and put pressure on the state institutions in unauthorized meetings(unauthorized by the same state - duh conflict of interests) then the police kicks in and abuse and arrest everything that moves. I don't ask you to agree and praise some other regimes, I don't ask you to go somewhere else where it's better. I just ask you to see the bullshit and the hypocrisy of the west.

  > The US can't save themselves. US never saved anyone,
  > they only changed regimes

You're either incapable of understanding my post, or you're just trollin'. I'm not even going to bother continuing a conversation with you.

  > You don't even slightly consider that you are
  > disinformed by western media

This is the problem with your arguments. You're presenting counter-points (i.e. "western media is lies!") without anything to back it up. This has 'troll' written all over it. Why? You're not responding directly to anything that was actually said (e.g. what parts of my post are mistaken based on 'western media lies?'). You are also going out of your way to be as not specific as possible, just controversial (e.g. What is western media lying to me about? Everything? So when western media says that I need to eat to stay alive that's a lie too?).

The situation in NK is continuously presented in negative terms(lots of speculative numbers and information is presented as facts). The people "die of hunger" (and the media presents images with sick kids as if this is the fault of Kim Jong Il), they are oppressed and the immediate suggestion is that US and the world somehow has this obligation to solve this problem.They forget somehow (lie by omision) to mention that a lot of the hunger and sickness is provoked by the embargo imposed on them by US.The second lie is that the leaders of north Korea are crazy, and that they have atomic bomb and want to attack others around, without rational reason.This is a lie, they only threatened to defend themselves in case they are attacked (all this while they are surrounded and provoked by US and South Korea navy). If you watch closely, it's the same recipe applied to Iran and Irak. Present rumors about victims and atrocities, weapons of mass destruction, insane leaders and intentions of war as facts and propose an invasion if some vague terms are not respected by the "rogue state" all this because we have to defend ourselves right ? Did Iran or NK ever say they want to implement preemptive strikes like US ? No, but still they are seen as the aggressors here and not US which is all over them spying and making plans and publicly announcing that "nothing is off the table". And tell me this is possible because mass media tells the truth (we know in the case of Irak that mass media lied together with the Bush administration but now you want to pretend that was an "isolated case").

Are you able to consider North Korea's situation on its own merits, rather than harping on the deeds of the United States? Can't the Kim family dynasty be brutal and oppressive independently of the US? I think that they can be, and have proven it.

I suggest you look at the material that comes out of North Korea, from human rights groups and the like. The "rumours" of how life is inside of North Korea are backed by very credible evidence. Much less evidence exists to support the claims made by North Korea's government. Or do you think that there were actually celestial events to herald the birth of Kim Jong-Il?

This is ridiculous. In the West we have open discussions even in the "Media" about how much corruption and so forth goes on in the government. In fact everything you say is pretty common knowledge/cliche to hear on any Cable News network. These kinds of discussions could never occur in North Korea. Perhaps things could be better but you cannot compare this to a secretive state such as North Korea in which people believe their "Dear Leader" never had to deficate or urinate. You're hatred for the West is just making you miss a huge problem of scale.

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