We all see and hear what goes on over there. Kim will execute kids if they don’t cheer hard enough at his birthday party or something? He’s always threatening to nuke countries and is probably has the highest domestic kill count out of any world leader today.

So I ask? Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people. I saw a survey asking Americans and Escaped North Koreans would they migrate to North Korea and to the US if given the chance (hypothetical for the refugees). And it was like <0.1% to 95%. Obviously those people live in terror.

Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization? Nukes on South Korea? Is just not lucrative to step in? SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME PLEASE!?

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago

Not quite answering your question, but I highly recommend reading Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demrick. It's a really interesting book about daily north Korean life based on accounts of defectors. It does a really good job at humanizing North Koreans and understanding how the country works for day to day life.

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  • [–] 84 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Generally frowned upon to invade countries.

    Ludicrously costly. Your tax payers will want to know why it's more important than everything else you do with their money.

    Immense suffering. Mostly by the people you're trying to liberate but also your own troops and their families.

    They have nukes and could probably blow up at least a few regional cities. If the regime is threatened they will most likely use them.

    South Korea or China or Russia are the only countries with land borders. China and Russia find NK useful to have arround to annoy US. Seoul is within artillerty range of the border.

    Building up a new state in it's place is very difficult. Remember how the Taliban took back power about 15 minutes after the US left Afghanistan?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    That's not how it would play out or herw, but even in the best case scenario, you'd end up with a huge area with rampant poverty and discontent that would take generations to develop. We've had something similar in Germany. Even after thirty years and vast amounts of money spent, East Germany is still way behind and there are areas that have no perspective at all.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago*

    Also there’s a city of 20 million people like 10 miles from the border that could get nuked just by conventional weapons. Adds complications

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Because that roads leads to war. The moment one country decides it has the authority to overule another's sovereignity because they disagree with what's going on there, it becomes a free for all.

    This line of thinking is the very reason why there are two Koreas today, because of two superpowers who thought they knew better and could make a nice profit in the process.

    We have a word for this: Colonialism.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    And we certainly don't do THAT anymore.

    If NK was oil rich and off the coast of the US, we'd colonialism the shit out of it.

    It's not because the world is now too enlightened for colonialism. It's because the juice isn't worth the squeeze. NK has nothing of value, and China wants it to stay there as a buffer to SK.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    Nukes. We know they have them and missiles to deliver them. Any situation where a wildcard like North Korea uses nukes in any offensive capacity is terrifying. "Nuclear War: A Scenario" is a great modern book on how things could go to hell if one single North Korean nuclear missile is launched towards the United States.

    Artillery. In any case of open war on North Korea anyone within artillery range of the NK border will be bombarded with heavy shelling. Even if it lasted for just an hour or two before the batteries were eliminated the civilian casualties and destruction would be like a large natural disaster. Now imagine if chemical shells were added to the mix, because they have those too.

    China has the most leverage to help North Korea on a humanitarian and diplomatic level without risking war, so if it could be done the best chance is through them.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    To add to this, N Korea also has a huge conventional army, and is a very mountainous country. Lots of soldiers+mountains=very bloody to invade.

    This is also why Iran is fairly safe from ground invasion. It's like a gigantic Switzerland, which if you're familiar with WW2 history, even Hitler left Switzerland alone despite kinda wanting to occupy the place. The cost was just too high compared to the benefits, so, y'know, may as well skip it and invade the USSR instead.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Despite what people keep saying, a war in NK would be short and one sided. While they could cause a lot of destruction at the start, after a few salvos their artillery would be taken out by air power. Then their entire command and control structure would be eliminated so they couldn't communicate with their troops at all. And those troops are conditioned to not do anything without orders. So at best they'd be sitting ducks waiting to be taken out. And I'm pretty sure most of them would cost to surrender once it's clear that the regime is gone. There'd be a share of diehards that would choose death over surrender but i don't think that would be a large percentage.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    And those troops are conditioned to not do anything without orders. So at best they’d be sitting ducks waiting to be taken out.

    When you're so racist you think Koreans are the battle droids from The Phantom Menace.

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    World powers typically let countries do whatever they want to their own citizens, it's only when they do stuff to people of other countries that they get involved.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    More like when it threatens some status quo or be inconvenient for them to deal with or might cause a shift to some power dynamics.

    I mean nobody(western leaders) gives a fuck about whatever is going on in Africa and Asia. And it's quite literally mindboggling how the shit in Urkaine and Palestine is still ongoing without any major consequences for the aggressors other than mayyyybe harsh words or hurrdurr sanctions. Soo..as long as it does negatively not impact then, world leaders don't give a shit about what other countries do.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago*

    Seoul is so close to the border, it’s within artillery range of NK. Kim can cause all kinds of havoc without resorting to nukes. If provoked enough, he could put one (or more) craters in South Korea’s largest city, without even playing his scariest card.

    Then there’s the possibility of a military response from China. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that.

    Lastly, NK has been under all kinds of sanctions for years. It might not be the “anything” you have in mind, but many nations seem to be doing about as much as they can without risking all-out war.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    NK could not defeat the US or China militarily but it could do quite a bit of damage to SK before anyone could stop them. This is a big reason the US doesn’t intervene.

    China is concerned about the population of NK suddenly becoming millions of refugees they’ll need to recuse and deal with. So they would rather the regime not collapse.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Countries are not good or bad they don't have friends they have interests. Is always a good rule of thumb when thinking about Geopolitics.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    Because north korea only make empty threats and the west are hypocrites and never gave a damn,about internstional law, democracy and human rights in other countries

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Or, just hear me out, because the west doesn't want to enter into a war with China in Korea a second time.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    In that case they should stop pretending to care about what i mentioned instead of acting like they care about Palestinians but still buying arms from them and keep great economical relation with the terrorist state , celebrating Israel attack on Iran under of the pretext that Iran is ruled by authoritarian regime while having great connection with Saudis, not pressuring UAE to stop support the RSF in Sudan using UAE, Israeli and USA arms

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The nukes are recent, and probably not tactically functional. It's purely a cost benefit analysis. As long as NK isn't in serious motion to cause more damage outside their country, than it's worth to stop them, no one will.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah true. Like Turkmenistan. That country is like North Korea, but not in conflict with other countries. So no one cares.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 119 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Generally countries in the west only get involved in conflicts if they get something out of it, be it directly via getting wealth from the country, or indirectly like curbing successful non-capitalistic economies before they catch on and their own people start questioning the billionaires. The "we're there to liberate people" is just marketing speech.

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  • [–] 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I wonder why you say "countries in the west" and not just "countries". It's not like, I don't know, Banín is shouting about North Korea every day and nobody listens.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    The US has invested a lot in its capacity to police the world (just look at how many bases we have around the world). So it’s logical to ask why the US would or wouldn’t police something. And usually before the US polices something with force, they start talking about it publicly.

    Benin has no such capacity or intentions and so neither polices anything nor telegraphs its opinions.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    You're saying that no one with empathy has any power to help these people?

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago

    It’s more that there’s little that can be done that doesn’t also risk making the situation much worse.

    Something like going to war to depose Kim would lead to mass death and risk spilling over into a much wider conflict since North Korea has the backing of China.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago

    People in power in the west are barely moving the needle for their own people sadly.

    Also even if they did, they'd still need a valid cause to start an international conflict I think, it's why Russia tried the "it's actually russians in Ukraine that are being oppressed and we're liberating them" excuse

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago*

    It's not a lack of empathy as much as a kind of educated empathy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. We historically have a notorious and awful track record of nation building, and I think a lot of people believe this boils down to the fact that it's very difficult to impose a national identity on people from outside, even with direct, physical intervention. We have tried to get around this at times by only supporting what we believe are legitimate independence movements which clearly already possess a strong national identity. Unfortunately even those tend to devolve into ethnic cleansing campaigns and dictatorship as soon as we leave. And if we don't leave, then we have to stay there forever and we have to keep interfering every time things threaten to go off the rails and then it becomes paternalistic colonialism.

    Keep in mind too that a lot of people living under oppressive regimes are genuinely damaged people and there is nothing but time that can heal those wounds. They are traumatized, they are angry, they have lost loved ones, they have been subjected to horrors we can only imagine and clinically document, without feeling the fear and emotional scars those things inflicted on millions of people. If you suddenly give them back power again, even small amounts of power, it is in human nature for many to seek revenge for what they've gone through (and not always against the right people). They've learned how to operate within the context of a deeply flawed and dangerous regime, and it is natural to adopt some of the same tools and practices. As resilient as the human spirit is it still is difficult to teach new ways.

    At some point, people have got to learn to stand on their own two feet and find a way to build an equal, fair and just nation for all of themselves, by all the people and for all the people. While we certainly can do a better job of supporting this, we can't do it for them and our attempts to do so have typically ranged from highly questionable to disastrous and extremely counterproductive. We fought for our own freedom, and it is not out of selfishness that we tell them they must fight for their own too. It's not that we enjoy the fighting, it's that as awful as it is, it appears necessary to get that hostility out into the open and understood to be as awful as it is, for a successful outcome to be possible.

    On the other hand, even that hasn't helped in Israel/Palestine where it seems like we've tried almost everything and failed. The fact is, nobody has the answers. We don't know the way to fix this. We are always trying, even when it doesn't seem like it, but we have to be abundantly cautious that we're not making it worse, because we often are. For that matter, we have our own problems, and we haven't figured those out either. Just because we're doing much better than the worst countries in the world or even much better than average doesn't mean we've got it all figured out or even that we're doing anything right at all.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's one of the most heavily fortified countries with an extreme nuclear power regime out in the mountains. How could a country like the United States help North Koreans without threatening intense military conflict?

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    China is the answer. Nobody does anything about North Korea for the same reason China doesn't invade Taiwan.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    And this goes back to the Cold War, which goes back to WWII, and the politics of the president and military commanders, specifically MacArthur, who wanted to continue north and take North Korea decisively to keep the Soviet Union and China from controlling it before it could be reinforced by Chinese soldiers.

    At the time, North Korean soldiers were outnumbered by UN forces 3:1, with far more tanks, etc than NK had.

    The UN waffled, and by the time they decided Korea should be reunified, China had shipped in nearly 300,000 troops, and an unknown amount of matériel.

    Fuck the UN. It's their fault this is still going on.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    Short answer is that NK is pretty much self-contained. Occasional Kim might rattle his sabre but no one is too worried about it. Until they start making serious threats to the stability of other countries it's just a case of leave well enough alone.

    Sure it sucks what the people of NK have to endure but it's not for other countries to tell them how they should live unless they directly ask for help or start threatening the sovereignty of other countries.

    As someone else in the comments mentioned, WW2 wasn't an intervention to protect the German citizens that were being persecuted, it was a reaction to German invasion of other nations.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Because - improbably, given its track record elsewhere - the world has worked out that the solution to someone killing kids isn't to kill more kids.

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