North Korea
It's not like we forgot that the Korean Revolution began as a struggle against Japanese imperial dominance. It's that that part is always conveniently left out. For this conversation, we're going to ignore the Commodore Perry expedition and the antics that led through the Meiji Restoration and ultimately gave rise to imperial Japan. Yeah, that was US intervention, too, but we're talking about Korea here, and why there's still a North and South.
So after World War II, the victors carved up the 'spoils,' and one of those carve-ups was the newly divided Korean Peninsula. Kim Il Sung was eventually placed on top of the new country by the Soviet army.
It's a long hard road out of Hell.
Like every other attempt at full blown communism, the leadership made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes cost people their lives. Interestingly enough, by the 1960's, North Korea actually had a higher standard of living than the South for a while. The North had attempted to "reunify" the peninsula by force, and held on to that doctrine for quite some time.
While seeking self-sufficiency, North Korea remained somewhat dependent on the Soviet Union until its downfall. When that happened, things got really bad really fast. Kim Il Sung was replaced by Kim Jong Il, and things got worse. Kim Jong Il didn't last nearly as long as his dad did, and that brings us to where we are today.
Kim Jong Un presents a unique opportunity for the world if we don't mess this up. He lived in Switzerland and traveled around western Europe, and so has seen firsthand life in other, highly different parts of the world. Make no mistake, this is a handle-with-care situation, but we have to see how the pressure we put on people makes them act defensively. If you have ever had anyone threaten you, you know the animal protective impulses you feel. The longer the threats go on, the more vicious those impulses become.
Yeah, they have nukes. So do we. A lot more.
Yeah, they have missiles. So do we. A lot more.
The cold war is over, the red scare is gone.
Our sanctions are killing as many people as their emphasis on weapons programs is, and tightening the noose is not going to make anyone any safer. We have no business preventing Asia from being Asia, and we're causing more harm than good.
We prop up monarchies, even ones that kill people. We're currently funding a genocide that the majority of our population doesn't support, and people want to quibble over whether it's genocide or not.
You should know what I'm going to say by now: Let's welcome these people into the world. It will take decades for them to trust us, but what do we have to lose? Arms sales? That's not helping very many of us.