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Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

Oh, great, American expansionism (let CIA fund "freedom fighters" against villains; what could possibly go wrong?) combined with the American mythology that dictators are somehow afraid of armed people.

That "weak and starving" North Korean army would cut through a town-ful of untrained militia like knife going through butter. Really, stop fantasizing about armed revolution just because it once worked for your ancestor 200 years ago. It fails more often than not, and with near certainty when someone foreign nation has the bright idea of arming insurgents.

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The North Korean army actually having to bother fighting is a best case scenario anyway. It's a pretty big assumption that isolated peasants, brought up in an environment where periodic famine is the norm and indoctrinated from birth about the importance of vigilance against the US aggressor, would upon seeing their hated enemy drop propaganda leaflets, immediately rush to read them and carry out their instructions about militia formation.

I think if you asked a North Korean today if they wanted "American expansionism" or their current state of affairs, the answer would be what any starving person would do, choose the lesser of two evils that feeds them.

I hardly think North Koreans would have a problem with democracy and freedom that feeds them than their leader which have failed them and forced to praise them at gun point.

It's funny because lot of left-leaning South Koreans have a naive view of their Northern cousins. News flash: North Korea is a time travel to Chosun Dynasty gone horribly wrong, nothing to do with communism. Some actually believe South Korea is under worse condition because of Uncle Sam that saved the country just as they were about to get overrun by Kim Il Sung, than under Japanese Imperial rule because of "democracy and freedom". I invite these people to defect to the North, and see why there's streams of North Koreans going the other way and staring at you like you are crazy.

Vive la revolucion!

Well, I concede that some South Koreans have a very naive view of North Korea, but it doesn't logically follow that the US saved South Korea from similar fate. In fact, historical economic data shows that South Korea was as shitty as North Korea in its early years[1]. Nor was its pro-American leader Rhee much better in terms of human rights: he murdered some 100k-200k of his own people[2] for being communists (many of them were anything but).

So, what you propose offering to North Koreans is not in fact "democracy and freedom". With high chance, you're offering a civil war, followed by yet another dictator with horrible human right records, except that he would have close friends in Washington DC instead of Beijing, and the US will tolerate this dictator because at least he's fighting bad guys and giving a semblance of "stability" in the region. Honestly I don't think the US could make a better outcome even if it wanted to (which is another question).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Two_koreas_gdp_1950_1977.j... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre

Note that the massacre happened during Korean War. If Kim Il Sung hadn't invaded South, none of this would've happened.

North Korea had an edge in terms of economic power up until Park Chung Hee came into power and began revitalizing the economy. Again, apples and oranges when it comes to comparing North and South. The other is completely void of rationality.

Highly doubt a civil war will be allowed to go alone. United States and South Korea have clear interest to secure nuclear facilities as a top priority. Can't let that fall into another dictator.

The real problem is China, as it sees North Korea as a buffer.

that's a really good point, and mainly due to all the propaganda that they beleive

Democracy and freedom isn't going to feed the North Koreans. They need an authoritarian government that understands geopolitics and economics, and has the ability to exploit the former to jump-start the latter. It's how every successful East Asian country has done it - Japan (Meiji bureaucracy and then LDP post-WW2), South Korea (Park Chung-hee), Singapore (Lee Kuan-yew), Taiwan (KMT in the 70s/80s), and now China (CCP). Of course, it's possible that they end up with a shitty dictator (like in the Philippines), but democracy only produces change very slowly.

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