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Comment by elhudy | Hacker News Reader

Preventing the north korean regime from having the funds to grow its military presence seems like a fair use of economic sanctions to me - sadly, even if there is an economic cost to its people.

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I really doubt that worked, given that North Korea does most of its trade with China and Russia, who don't participate in the sanctions. Besides, they already have nukes and the ability to launch them over the ocean. The military presence has grown as much as the regime needs it to with the sanctions, so there's no point to keeping them anymore.

Maybe, but thats a different argument from “your reminder that economic sanctions does nothing but starve ordinary people…”

North Korea has roughly the equal third largest standing army in the world. North Korea has nuclear weapons. What exactly have we prevented?

My point is that economic sanctions never work against enemies. They only work against allies. Apartheid South Africa is the example that springs to mind.

Take the economic sanctions against Russia after it's unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. What have they done exactly? Russia is now basically a war economy. It still has energy exports because there's always a market for that.

I don’t get why you’re trying to characterize NKs military as strong when it is objectively not so. The goal for stability in the region is for SK to have a stronger military. If we want to look at whether sancions have progressed that goal, then we would need to evaluate the relative strength of the two since the time sanctions went into place. How large of a standing army they have is not your kpi

TBH NK special case in that they make sanctions bite extra hard out of (Juche) policy. They're in prime geography to evade/smuggle all they want. IMO pretty good illustration on the maximum limits of US sanctions - i.e. countries with enough industrial base with max sanctions and tying their own hands can still concentrate enough resources to nuclearize and build icbms. Reality is NK nuclearization threatens US regional security architecture and likely reached stretch goal of penetrating CONUS GMD, i.e. NK basically the only shit tier country that can on paper nuke US.

Conventionally, now that we're in era of cheap drone warfare, harder to extrapolate NK/SK force disparity anymore. Risks no longer limited to artillery a few dozen km south of DMZ. NK building loitering munitions that can cover entirity of SK - SK has no longer have even modest strategic depth to hide high end hardware unlike few years ago. Ditto with Iran being able to credibly hit Israel. But that's more factor of tech proliferation.

You're not responding to the comment you're trying to reply to. The claim is that it does not actually do that, only starves ordinary people.

I thought the context of the previous response was that sanctions do nothing to the regime i.e. in terms of strengthening, weakening, or getting rid of. The North korean dictatorship remains in place so that is agreeable. However, North korean military presence (seen as distinct from the regime presence) has seemingly faltered dramatically.

> North korean military presence (seen as distinct from the regime presence)

That distinction is nonsencial in this context.

No, it isn’t, as described by the divergent strengths of the two.

Do sanctions force North Korea to adopt ridiculous internal agricultural policies which leads to frequent famines?

Life expectancy follows South Korea rather closely, with the exception of a period in the nineties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_North_...

Is that to be expected with frequent famines?

That chart does not at all show that it follows South Korea! It is massively behind and has suffered a debilitating famine in the 90s. That on top of the spurious data collecting in North Korea that probably skews those numbers.

The people against sanctions want countries around the world to be forced to trade with North Korea. We don't have to be forced to trade with anyone. Free trade is earned, not a right for all the dictators of the world.

The way US sanctions against countries work is when we sanction a country, we also sanction any other country or entity or person who passes money or goods in return for money or goods from the targeted country.

It's not simply "We've decided to not buy and sell goods from a certain country."

more info here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-...

What really happens with US sanctions is the guys we sanction all decide to band together with each other and to oppose and hate America, and eventually withdraw from using the US Dollar, reducing the US's influence. That may be good or it may be bad but its definitely not what the US has in mind when it sanctions a country.

Right, so one famine in the nineties. Other than that the curve is very similar to the one for South Korea.

Is this expected under regularly occuring famines?

REGULARLY OCCURRING FAMINES!!! What is this the 14th century?

Why are you screaming?

I would expect a curve looking more like this, but less irregular: https://tum.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_Som...

By "a period in the nineties", you mean "since the nineties", right? So basically for the past 35 years North Korea has been heavily lagging in life expectancy.

Another way to put that is it's been 75 years since Korea split, and half that time North Korea has been much worse than south Korea.

Let's not even get into what that chart would look like if humanitarian aid wasn't shipped during those famines.

In that chart I see one clearly identifiable famine, after which the life expectancy started rising again. Can you perhaps take a copy and mark out the other famines?

North Korea infamously refuses foreign aid, do you have a source that describes more in detail the aid you're referring to?

The World Food Programme has been operating in North Korea for years, "when possible" (read: whenever it suits the whims of the Kims).

https://www.wfp.org/countries/democratic-peoples-republic-ko...

The 1990s famine, if you want to call if that, is also sometimes described as a series of famines.

Here's more details about the aid I'm referring to.

700,000 tonnes in 1999 alone, from one country.

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R40095.pdf

OK, could you mark where the other famines are in that graph?

Life expectancy in the northern portion of Korea was higher than in the southern portion up until the point the US bombed 2/3 of all buildings in the northern portion.

If you look at the graph, life expectancy didn't really diverge until the 90s, 40 years after the bombing campaign.

And, any way, the North Koreans started it.

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