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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

North Korea is the most evil country in the world.

Note: tptacek said "most evil" not "most dangerous", and I may have to agree with him. Inside North Korea is a hellhole the likes of which we rarely see in the 21st century outside of movies about Nazi atrocities. Most estimates of deaths due to state crackdowns, gulags, and so forth within North Korea put the number right around 10% of the entire population of the country. A catastrophe equivalent to the holocaust has happened in North Korea but few people appreciate that it has because of the extreme secrecy of the regime. On top of that there are the continual threats North Korea makes to the security of the region and the world, their acts of terror (they've downed airplanes, kidnapped civilians, and worse). And, perhaps the worst of all, they've been a major player in the international export of both nuclear and ICBM technology.

Number of deaths due to US wars of aggression since 2001 [1][2]: 400,000 - 1,000,000

Number of deaths due to North Korean wars of aggression since 2001: 0

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_war

Sophomoric comments like this are why we'd be better off if all politics stories were kept off HN, wholesale, like the guidelines suggest.

From the guidelines:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

If you reread my comment I think you'll see that I wasn't in fact calling anyone a name.

Really?

> Sophomoric comments like this ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling

> Name calling is abusive or insulting language referred to a person or group,

If I squint in a half light, I might consider you have obeyed the literal letter of the guidelines. So, congratulations.

But seriously? You want to defend that comment as not insulting to the poster?

Also, at what point did you reply to the argument?

Are they sophomoric or do you just dislike being reminded of the fact? He linked statistics (although I'm almost certain it's >0 for DPRK) that are worth being reminded of, that's it. YOU made a judgement. Twice.

If that's the count, fine, let's let this comment make it three times that I "judged" North Korea as the most evil country on the planet. Want to make it four times? Five? Fine by me.

I'm not sure how are you counting the death, but according to Wikipedia [1] since 2001 there are between 8 and 54 death of South Korean in incidents against North Korea.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_involv...

You've got to count the victims in North Korea, and with an official population of 24 million today, we know from the history of other Communist countries who's killing fields have been at least partly revealed that they're going to number in the millions.

Pay no attention the forced labor camps behind the curtain?

Would you care to elaborate why, if you feel like it? When I try to cognize the word "evil", I get hazy connotations in my mind. Why North Korea in particular, what are your criteria? (genuinely curious.)

I'll let someone else elaborate why.

Let's just mention some bottom line things:

Due to pervasive malnutrition, North Koreans are on average a foot shorter than South Koreans, and significantly less intelligent (IQ/g), which is one very good reason the latter don't want reunification.

They are by far the largest of the last unrepentant Communist counties, so all the inevitable evils that come with that are in their greatest effect there (although China is just so big it's GULAG very possibly has more inmates).

How about their still being in a state of war with, well, everyone else in "the West", and regularly reminding us of that with overt lethal attacks?

I agree that what the NK regime is and has for a long time been doing to the people of NK is brutal, atrocious and nigh-unimaginable, at least when you try to understand the scale of it all / of the labour camps where people are born and live their lives inside the camps, and so on. I don't want to be that guy arguing semantics, but just a small remark:

    > How about their still being in a state of war with, well,
    > everyone else in "the West", and regularly reminding us of
    > that with overt lethal attacks?

I dare speculate that this must be how (in a sense) the U.S. looks/sounds like to many people from the countries it has deemed to be its enemies (say, Iran and Iraq); the difference being, the U.S. did actually go ahead and commit lethal attacks. But this line of strictly consequentialist reasoning (however one may call it, not sure) is not without its flaws, of course. Thanks for the comment.

But compare the nature and focus of the lethal attacks. Have we done anything like (and this is just from memory):

Randomly, not as part of a campaign or anything, shelled an island.

Randomly torpedoed a naval vessel.

Brought down a civilian airliner as an act of terror.

Attempted to assassinate a country's leader and take out a good fraction of his cabinet with an indiscriminate bomb on foreign soil (foreign to both; and this is a debatable point, we certainly hit with 2,000 pound bombs any place we thought Saddam was during the war in the last decade. These details, including the lack of an all out hot war, are frequently used to label this act as terrorism, plus it wouldn't have made much difference to South Korea vs. taking out someone who'd been the Maximum Leader of a country for around 3 decades).

In the save vein as the above, we might debate their regular landing of commandos (especially given the fairly random violence they then engage in) and perhaps their regular naval skirmishes.

My bottom line is that they're batshit crazy in a way we simply aren't, whatever the bottom line is in those killed and wounded. Generally you can divine a fine grained rational cause and effect from our lethal actions, the DPRKs' only in a much broader way.

> North Korean news sources alleged that the North Korean actions, described as "a prompt and powerful physical strike", were in response to provocation from South Korea that had held an artillery exercise in the disputed waters south of the island

The US tried to assassinate Castro without even a declared war, they assassinated Gaddafi and have instigated various coups. On the other hand North and South Korea are actually at war.

United States brought down an Iranian civilian airliner.

North Korea is desperate and does terrible things but I don't think there is any reason to believe they are as completely irrational as everyone tries to paint them. One problem is that the extremely aggressive military actions by the United States often go unreported while far more benign military action by North Korea are disproportionately reported (e.g. moving missile launchers and missile tests a few months ago).

I am in no way saying North Korea is "better" than the United States or that they are not evil, only that there are significant distortions in the way each is viewed, especially by Americans.

The South Korean artillery exercise was routine, and if you accept North Korean sources, or find any equality between a shoot down made in error and a premeditated terrorist bombing, we have absolutely no common ground for discussion.

Are they dangerous? Yes. Do they commit terrorism? I wouldn't doubt it. Do they do stupid things sometimes? Sure. Are they insane? Almost certainly not and your examples do nothing to provide evidence to the contrary. Why even provide a justification for the shelling if they were insane? Do you really believe they do not try to act in their own self interest?

I haven't seen any evidence that the depiction that they-could-do-anything-next and are therefore immune to normal diplomacy and threats of force is anything but a caricature.

Again, I am not defending North Korea just pointing out distortions which impair making informed decisions and correctly interpreting world events.

They run death camps. They so impoverish their people as to force them into cannibalism. The regime in North Korea is insane and evil.

That they commit terrible crimes isn't the question. This is:

When North Korean leaders make geo-political decisions do they act in their own self interest? As a state or even individuals?

The mad man caricature is an attempt to justify arbitrary action against North Korea, actions which would be much harder to justify against someone rational that could be influenced by carrots and sticks. It denies even the existence of motivations, however ill-intentioned those motivations may be.

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