History will judge us very harshly for what we have all allowed to happen in north korea. Everyone should see Adrian Hong's speech: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/4170683
He's co-founded a NGO that helps escapees from dprk.
One challenge I always have when I speak about North Korea is I run out of adjectives for how bad things are. And many of you that follow policy or human rights situations oftentimes get jaded with numbers,”
“It’s very easy for us to write off bad things because we just assume these are bad things that happen ‘over there,’ and many times they don’t necessarily affect us. And the challenge with North Korea in particular is that things are so bad on such a scale and scope that it sounds fake. It sounds unfathomable, it’s impossible to really comprehend.”
"History will judge us very harshly for what we have all allowed to happen in north korea."
History isn't judging "us" harshly for Rwanda, Somalia, etc, so I doubt it will judge "us" harshly for the DPRK. It will likely judge those directly responsible, however, for example the army of the DPRK.
The reason is that they they are keeping their population in a developmental limbo that benefits no one except the the elite.
The proximity of populated areas of South Korea, and the touchiness of China over intervention in the area, are particular problems. If it weren't for those, the U.S. would probably have bombed the North at one point or another, especially once the nuclear tests gave a plausible excuse to do so. If anything there was a better argument for attacking North Korea than for its fellow "axis of evil" member Iraq (on either humanitarian or "WMD" grounds), but Iraq was a much easier target. It wasn't really for any lack of interest on the U.S.'s part: for a few years, very pro-intervention neoconservatives had a strong role in the Bush administration's defense policy, and they investigated North Korea options, but presumably couldn't arrive at one.
Stop giving them food and financial help. A difficult decision indeed, but what we are doing currently is giving just enough for the current regime to continue working forever as it is.
Should the population go poorer than they are currently, they may revolt on their own in an unprecedented scale. Or the regime will take progressive reforms to allow of bit of capitalism to pervase in their society and slowly change the economic landscape.
He's co-founded a NGO that helps escapees from dprk.
One challenge I always have when I speak about North Korea is I run out of adjectives for how bad things are. And many of you that follow policy or human rights situations oftentimes get jaded with numbers,”
“It’s very easy for us to write off bad things because we just assume these are bad things that happen ‘over there,’ and many times they don’t necessarily affect us. And the challenge with North Korea in particular is that things are so bad on such a scale and scope that it sounds fake. It sounds unfathomable, it’s impossible to really comprehend.”