Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wishfullthinkng]

[jrwhite82]

[shifter2009]

[jrwhite82]

No, I'm wondering why people on this board try to put words in my mouth...

Clearly my point was that expansionist powers past and present and brutal military dictatorships are to blame for children being slowly killed through starvation now, and being just straight up killed in the past. Maybe that's progress though...

[northway]

[jrwhite82]

What about all the people who died in the 1990s from the severe flooding? Although a natural disaster, the conditions leading to them being so easily exposed to such hardship were due to political motives. (Trade embargoes, Cold War, isolationism, etc...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/433641.stm

North Korea has long relied on aid. It used to come from Russia mostly during the cold war. But guess what, differing political ideologies and the Cold War that was dragged out between them lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of most aid going to NK.

Then you have NK pursuing nuclear arms so they have more power to make demands and bully their neighbors. (A political move) Then you get GW adding them to the Axis of Evil in the early 2000s. (a political move) And the amount of food aid being sent to them through USAID drastically decreases from 2004-present.

Add on the terrible weather and NKs inability to produce enough food for self sustainability and we have a humanitarian disaster on our hands.

Let's not forget that North Korea uses their nukes as a way to threaten to get aid. And the US/SK uses food as a way to get the NKs to come to the table to talk about getting rid of said nukes.

[aq8knyus]

@jrwhite82

All those measures taken against the NK regime both military and political were responses to the belligerence of the regime. As SK proves there is no reason why NK should have ever had any problems feeding and caring for its population.

Everything from the famine and its effects to the economic collapse is 100% the fault of the regime.

[jrwhite82]

[ThingsComeAround]

[aq8knyus]

@jrwhite

The gulf between SK and NK cannot be explained simply by American support, especially as up until the 1980s NK was thanks to Soviet support stronger than SK in many areas. There are also plenty of countries that used to have Soviet support and yet today are doing much better than NK, even countries still pretending to be communist like Cuba and Vietnam.

NK is suffering because it is isolated and that isolation is the fault of the regime's and its policies. The racist Juche philosophy and its drive for self sufficiency, the closing down of the country to the outside world and the Kim's cult of personality are just some of the regime's domestic policies that has brought the country to ruin.

As for their foreign policy you cannot dismiss blowing up a plane if the person ultimately responsible is still leader of the country. I would also add its multi-billion dollar international drugs trade, the lack of even an apology for its mass kidnapping of foreigners particularly from Japan, the systematic murder during the 90s of the Koreans who migrated to NK from Japan, anti-miscegenation laws, the estimated 300,000 people currently imprisoned in NK concentration camps, the conditions in those camps, the sinking of the Cheonan, building nukes and missile technology then trading it and using said technology to threaten its neighbours.

I know the response to all this is well other countries have done/still do bad things but 1) not to this extent and 2) its not the point of the post.

What I am trying to show is that the above domestic and foreign policies of the NK regime are at the root cause of its isolation, the blame for which rests squarely with the Kim's.

[jrwhite82]

[aq8knyus]

@jrwhite

The difference with Libya is that they played ball, they stopped their belligerence and tried to work with the international community. They even gave up their WMD programme that allowed the AQ Khan network to be more fully understood.

If NK did this there would be a lessening of sanctions, aid would flow and they would not even have to reform greatly their 'system'.

Whilst you are completely right KIS was a Soviet puppet NK, especially after the death of Stalin, became far more independent of their backers. I doubt the Soviets and later the Chinese ever gave their blessing to the Rangoon attack.

I will not deny that outside influences play a role, as they do in every country. However, I think you underestimate how much it is in KJI's interest to maintain the status quo. Things are not changing in that country not because of the influence of foreign governments but because as things stand KJI and the elite get to live a life of luxury.

[jrwhite82]

North Korea was playing ball for a while during the 90's in terms of their nuclear proliferation. The Agreed Framework signed in the early 90's was loathed by Republicans (politics again) and Bush took many steps to backtrack on it in 2001. Plus, we weren't holding up our end of the bargain in terms of supplying them with the reactors agreed on in the deal by 2003. (But that was due to political influence and blocks on both sides). There was no way it was getting done by the date we (the US) promised.

So it can be argued that the US broke the deal.

It was in late 2002 that NK announced they were starting to enrich plutonium (or uranium...can't remember which) again. And that snowballed into aid cuts, ballistic missile and nuclear tests, and a further rift in relations between regional and US relations. And now the starvation.....again.

Again, I'm not defending the North Korean regime for anything they've done. I'd love to see a regime change in their country. And I totally agree with you that KJI does not have the average NK farmer's (and I use the term farmer loosely, because there are no crops to farm there) interests in his consideration at all.

But I think you are underestimating the influence of other countries on the situation here and how it has exacerbated the famine. And perhaps, I'm overestimating it and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.