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!?

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    4 hours 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.

  • Mustard@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    10 hours ago

    Oh absolutely the west would love to effect regime change in North Korea. Morale win, keep the military industrial complex going, grow the economy, get rid of some pesky poors in combat, maybe hoover up some natural resources.

    The problem is China, NK is strategically important to them as a source of said natural resources and as a buffer zone against South Korea. Plus lots of slave labour, global economies can never have enough of that.

    So yeah, messing with North Korea means messing with China. Despite some real grade A morons in power nobody has been that stupid yet.

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    10 hours ago

    Nobody wants to do that. North Korea is a shithole-class country that hates SK, is propped up by China, and to a lesser extent, Russia, who basically use them as slave labor and cannon fodder for their illegal war in Ukraine.

    While NATO could easily steamroll NK, SK is right there and would get heavily damaged in a war. And then SK would probably have to take care of a ton of starving, brainwashed, uneducated people and a bombed flat country. Nobody wants to fix them, and superpowers like China are actively working against peaceful initiatives like reunification.

    It’s an injustice for the world, but there’s much bigger fish to fry on the world stage right now. Existential, extinction-class threats like climate change and nuclear war. Democracies fighting tooth and nail against totalitarianism, like Ukraine. And western countries in various fights against the predictable but extremely annoying rise in fascism.

  • PahdyGnome@lemmy.world
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    15 hours 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.

  • Leet@lemmy.zip
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    America was never about helping the people of the world. Many who believe that are mostly victims of propaganda. It’s all about American interests. If it’s in their interest they will give some reason like liberating a people as a pretence to enable military action.

    Also to directly answer the question, they have nukes trained on Seoul, have the backing of China which considers it a buffer against western influenced south kr

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    14 hours ago

    Feel free to pitch the idea to congress. It will cost somewhere in the realm of trillions of dollars to invade, occupy, and rebuild North Korea. We’re talking an occupation lasting decades. A full time military presence for the foreseeable future as North Korea rebuilds something resembling a functional democratic society.

    Don’t get me wrong, their military would get absolutely bodied in a full on shooting war with any sort of NATO-esque military coalition. But they have a sizable entrenched force with more than a few functional nuclear weapons. It would cost A LOT of lives.

    So, that’s the bill. If you think you can convince congress to go for it, go nuts.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      3 hours ago

      China would never let that happen, it would end up being a China US proxy war… Which it always was

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    Jesus Fucking Christ. Stop trying to “liberate” other countries. Don’t you understand what that entails? Rampant slaughter of civilians followed by propping up a colonial regime. How many times are you gonna try this shit before you learn? When has it ever worked?

    At least DPRK minds it’s own business. Imo, the country most in need of a war of liberation is the United States, which not only has a backwards, oppressive regime that’s disappearing people off the streets, but also has been directly involved in multiple wars of conquest and aggression, and indirectly involved in more. Whatever you wish upon Korea, let it happen here, let’s let China or someone bomb our cities and set up a government they like. Will you be greeting them as liberators? Not so fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?

    Someday I hope y’all are able to see yourselves for the warmongers you are. I have no idea how liberals are able to convince of themselves as “peace-loving” while saying shit like this.

    • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Liberal has nothing to do with peace loving, or pacifism, that’s a right wing delusion they use to pump their courage before committing more atrocities on them. No different than ‘God forgive me for what I’m about to do’.

      Right wing revolutions end with the left in political prisons and slavery. Left wing revolutions end with the aristocrats/oligarchs, and their families, in the ground. It’s really just a question of what flavor of violence is about to happen.

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        13 hours ago

        It’s more of a liberal delusion that they’re “usually” antiwar, but the one that’s happening now is always “different.” Liberals are right-wing, and generally their (especially US) meddling with regime change ends up installing a fascist who kills or imprisons the left.

        • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          I mean sure, if you want to make up your own meaning for right wing, then go for it.

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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            10 hours ago

            Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. Capitalism is right-wing. Leftism is defined by anti-capitalism.

            In the UK, for example, the “Liberal Democrats” are right-leaning. It’s primarily in the US that “liberal” and “leftist” are used interchangeably, because once there was no longer a substantial (self-indentifying) socialist presence to scaremonger about, the right started scaremongering about liberals by equating them to socialists, and the meaning stuck. But I reject that and stick by the original meanings, which are used internationally.

  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • ximtor@lemmy.zip
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      17 hours 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.

    • xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day
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      16 hours ago

      Simple and to the point. WW2 didn’t happen just because the Nazis were killing Jews, it happened because Hitler decided to barge into other countries.

      • novibe@lemmy.ml
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        19 hours ago

        Why would you believe your media regarding a country they admit is “closed off”?

        Do you seriously believe they execute ppl for having the same haircut as Kim? And then execute ppl for having a different haircut from him?

        They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.

        • VeryFrugal@sh.itjust.works
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          I fully agree that a lot of the shittalk about them is exaggerated and ill-informed. They don’t execute people for having wrong haircut (dyeing can get you into some trouble), no, I do not believe that.

          People live there. It’s certainly not nationwide Auschwitz as you might think.

          But they also execute/punish people(and their family members) for trying to leave the country for good or talk shit about their supreme leader. I don’t know you but if that’s not a red flag I seriously don’t know what is.

          They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.

          Can’t get all the shit right, yes. That doesn’t make their countless crimes-against-humanity testimonies and proof any less valid. And since they are so closed off that even the whereabouts of high-ranking generals are often hard to know, it really is just the tip of the iceberg.

          But I’m very sure that you are going to say all the defectors and reporters are liars and parrot all the wild cringe tankie shit that no less than 14 should you have outgrown and that’s fine. You do you. I hope someday you can make a personal visit to North Korea and leave the horrific, capitalistic hellhole of a society the West is.

              • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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                12 hours ago

                It’s not a tu quoque when NK isn’t hurting anyone but themselves and the Americans are burning down the fucking planet. One is an urgent situation, the other is political theatre that most of us are unqualified to even analyze due to the embargoes, censorship and pervasive propaganda.

                Being worried about rumors that:

                they also execute/punish people(and their family members) for trying to leave the country for good or talk shit about their supreme leader

                from a tiny, insignificant backwater nation when the so called leader of the free world is disappearing people from potentially every country on Earth, when the most powerful trading nation is intentionally destabilizing the global economy, well it reeks of looking for a distraction. The US government has as much to do with what is happening to NK people right now as the NK government does.

                • VeryFrugal@sh.itjust.works
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                  14 hours ago

                  Calling it a distraction when they literally harm our people and bomb our land. Thanks.

                  To us, it’s at least as urgent and as the U.S. crap and it has been that way for quite a long time.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Why do .ml’s get so triggered with this topic? And y’all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints when we know what totalitarian regimes do and have done throughout the ages.

          • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            When you recognize the amount of bullshit propoganda that is consumed daily and realize how false it all is it’s very easy to switch to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mode.

            Additionally it’s harder to break others (and oneself) out of the propoganda soup without an extremely sharp distinction between the lies being spoonfed and the material reality. The material reality often ends up getting distorted as a result and the cycle continues.

            • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              I fully support the idea that we have a problem with bias in the news and people profiting from scandals, and we also don’t need to downplay what the government does. We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.

              • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
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                1 hour ago

                We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.

                It depends entirely on how you define “accidentally bootlicking” because I think OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml has done an excellent job of calling out how you have been making that distinction.

                Taking a step back and decontextualizing how do you think one should make that distinction?

              • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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                5 hours ago

                Let’s just review this conversation, shall we? What the other person said was:

                Do you seriously believe they execute ppl for having the same haircut as Kim? And then execute ppl for having a different haircut from him?

                They execute generals all the time, then the generals appear alive a few months later. That’s that mystical Juche necromancy for ya.

                So, that’s two examples of egregious misinformation that they pushed back on. How did you respond?

                And y’all invariably paint NK as these absolute saints

                We can push back against misinformation without accidentally bootlicking.

                The reason we “”“bootlick”“” and “”“treat them as absolute saints”“” is that you chatacterize any attempt to push back on blatant misinformation as “”“bootlicking.”“” So no, it is impossible push back on misinformation without “bootlocking,” because, by your standards, anything short of uncritically accepting every bad thing said about a US rival (that is, anything short of actual bootlicking towards the US) counts as “bootlicking.”

                If I’m wrong, then show me what in their comment led you to conclude that they were bootlicking, aside from refuting misinformation.

                • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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                  4 hours ago

                  I think you’re connecting two things in my mind that were completely separate, and are using that as a springboard to jump to conclusions about my supposed standards based on one flawed premise, then about me uncritically accepting things, and also that I’m explicitly against US enemies. Brother, I’m not even American. Can I not talk about a pitfall that I often see with people defending NK, as an “inb4” if you will? Because I hope you reread the sentence that way.

                  If anything, my only direct comment about the person I’m replying to was the first question: Why so eager to jump in like that about a known violator of human rights that has voiced unconditional support for Russia, a country actively picking a fight with the entire West side of the world? A tyrannic, totalitarian regime is everybody’s enemy as far as I’m concerned.

                  But sure, maybe I’m reading the other person wrong too, and I’m unnecessarily assigning blame because of my previous experience with this exact same topic with other .ml accounts behaving that way and swarming the person commenting.

  • rumimevlevi@lemmings.world
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    1 day ago

    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

    • Spur4383@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

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

      • rumimevlevi@lemmings.world
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        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

        • Spur4383@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          The goal poasts moved so far that I can not even see them in the field. Good talk!

  • Krono@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the “Korean War”.

    We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.

    Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime’s propaganda will make sure they never forget.

    If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the “Arab Spring” model is much more effective and humane than the “Afghanistan War” model.

    • anachrohack@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      North Korea does not allow its own people to leave. The situation is nothing like Gaza, and to claim otherwise is some dipshit 16 year old tankie nonsense. North Korea is the most oppressive country to have ever existed

      • Dogyote@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        If you read the previous comment more closely you’ll realize that the commentor wasn’t comparing today’s NK to Gaza, but Korea during the Korean War to Gaza. That is a reasonable comparison, as nearly every standing structure was bombed.

      • Krono@lemmy.today
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        1 day ago

        You have obviously misunderstood me.

        I was comparing the United States actions in the Korean War(1950s) to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The mass civilian bombing campaigns, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure, manmade famine, widespread preventable disease, and imposed economic isolation are very similar between the two cases.

        I am not comparing current-day North Korea to current-day Gaza, and I agree with you that would not be a good analogy.

        • anachrohack@lemmy.world
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          North korea had comparable standards of living to south korea until the late 1980s, mid-1990s when they stopped getting bankrolled by the soviet union. Leaning on the war in the 1950s to explain modern NK is factually wrong. The reason North korea is in such a poor state is because

          1. Their country clings on to a pseudo-scientific economic ideology which has destroyed their country

          2. Their monarchist dictatorship is hell bent on an unsustainable nuclear weapons program and regularly threatens to annihilate their neighbors in a blaze of atomic glory. Sanctions against North korea are designed to prevent them from acquiring fissile materials for further development of weapons of mass destruction. Considering the stakes here, hitting them with sanctions is letting them off easy

          If the North Korean government cared about its people (which it doesnt) then they would do 4 things:

          1. End their nuclear ambitions

          2. Implement market reforms to allow the free flow of trade and end centralized planning of their economy

          3. Free all political prisoners and the 3 generations of their family which are considered guilty by association, and end the mass system of concentration camps which they run

          4. The Kim dynasty must step down and allow free and fair elections

          None of these things will happen because North korea exists solely to be the personal theme park/prison state for Kim Jong-Un, who does not care an iota for the wellbeing of the North Korean people

          • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            The issue as you see it:

            clings on to a pseudo-scientific economic ideology

            The prescription you suggest:

            pseudo-scientific economic ideology

            • anachrohack@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              There’s actually tons of research that says that a free market economy is much better at alleviating poverty than a centrally planned economy.

          • Krono@lemmy.today
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            17 hours ago

            So your thesis is that the 1950s war was inconsequential, and then you lay the entire blame on the Kim regime and their policies?

            My dude, how do you think the Kim regime became a dictatorship?

            Before the 1950s war, Kim was a weak puppet leader propped up by the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Kim regime had dictatorial power, which persists to this day.

            • anachrohack@lemmy.world
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              14 hours ago

              It’s not inconsequential, but to blame the entire state if the country on the bombing campaign of the 1950s is to

              1. Ignore the period that took place between the 1950s and the 1990s, during which their country was rebuilt with support from the soviet union (just as south korea was rebuilt with support from the US)

              2. Deprive their government of literally all agency and blame their problems on the United States because it confirms your political biases

              • Dogyote@slrpnk.net
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                9 hours ago

                but to blame the entire state if the country on the bombing campaign of the 1950s is to…

                Nobody said that.