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It's North Korea though and they're all eViL. Imagine a world where the U.S lifted sanctions on N.K. traded with them and stopped crying about losing a war 70 years ago. Ah well a boy can dream.

Edit: Lol saying anything positive about North Korea on hacker news and people instantly freak out. This fucking website man. North Korea isn't what I would call a free society but it's also not the hell on earth that most liberals want you to think it is. So much of the misery that normal North Koreans have to face is because of western imposed sanctions. We've tried punishing them for 30 years now, it hasn't destroyed the regime if anything they double down. I guess it's easy for a bunch of overfed over paid tech workers to not feel any kind of solidarity for a North Korean though and insist on punishing them even more. Hell the North Korean government would even be open for this kind of agreement if we would actually guarantee their sovereignty, sadly trusting the United States of America to hold up any kind of deal you make with them is fucking impossible.

Here is a quote I came up with but is attributed to Henry Kissinger

Having the United States as your enemy is dangerous, but having them as your friend is fatal.

That old bag liked it so much he had no problem taking credit for it.



Lot's of people have tried trading with North Korea, but they're politically unreliable. China and Russia both try obviously, but so has South Korea. These cooperations usually work for a while but eventually the unreliable reality of the North Korean government wrecks it for them. If it were all America's fault, as these sort of regimes always claim, they'd be able to get on well enough with their neighbors, but they can't.


The United States plays a large role in destabilizing them I went to a lecture at my university where a South Korean professor said as much. He was hardly a fan of the North Korean regime. At this point the regime has zero interest in cooperation, I'm sorry but your government is slowly becoming an authoritarian state in its own right and is currently causing chaos at the behest of Israel a country which just commuted a genocide with the blessing of both parties in your country. Imagine trying to get along with your neighbor when they have billions of dollars of military hardware on your border. No country is to willing to cooperate with North Korea because being in the good graces of the United States is 100x more beneficial. You claim that North Korea can't get along with its neighbors please remind me which country invaded and artificialy divided Korea when they elected some one The United States didn't like.


The US has been authoritarian for a long time. What else do you call a society that keeps on humming along while doing various genocides via a culturally embedded Monroe Doctrine mentality.


Okay, let me remind you then.

Korea was divided by both United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union organized elections, rigging towards a rather unpopular figure, even within the national socialist circles, for their imperialist purposes.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but where did OP state was american? How is their nationality even relevant here? How is the american descent to authoritarianism, which is still far from a autocratic socialist regime (at least yet), relevant to NK being distrusted even by USA's opposition (i.e. China and Russia)?


ah yes, its Americas fault NK citizens are starving and cannot freely leave the country lmao what kind of weird cope are you talking about here


The US has fuck all to do with it. Vietnam whooped America's ass in a war which was far more socially significant for the American public (the Korean War is called the "Forgotten War" in America), still has their communist government, yet has normalized (relatively) relations with America and certainly the rest of the world and trades with everybody. North Korea is economically isolated because they refuse to be normal even by communist standards.


I don’t think you know what “communist standards” means.

> “North Korea is economically isolated because they refuse to be normal even by communist standards.”

“Kim is isolated because she refuses to be normal like the other submissive housewives beaten by their husbands”

You are blaming the victim while acting like the aggressor oppressors actions are not their own responsibility.


Like they stated above, Vietnam exists.

> You are blaming the victim [...]

Pray tell, what crime did USA commit that motivated the abduction of 2 innocent citizens?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abduction_of_Shin_Sang-ok_and_...


I don’t get what you’re saying. There is a paused civil war due to outsiders (whites, UN, etc) interfering and still occupying half the country.

Not sure what you mean what crime did the current outsider occupiers commit after they did a genocide (and not using this lightly. There aren’t that many genocides)?

Sob stories are available against/for every major human conflict. The story you linked isn’t really relevant even to the severity of what we are talking about.


None of the sides are occupied, though, neither by UN, "white" people, etc. That's literally just propaganda. At best, by a large stretch too, one could say NK is occupied by Russia and China, the only countries currently vouching for NK, and, as previously stated, that's a stretch given their reluctance towards Kim' personal kingdom. It is more accurate to say NK serves as a buffer state to them.

What genocide are you referring to? The Shichon Massacre? The one only NK sources claim outsiders commit, for the sole purpose of promoting xenophobia and ultranationalism?

Finally, I think you straight up didn't read the reference. How exactly kidnapping 2 movie directors just to produce propaganda pieces are justifiably helpful to the war effort? I hope you have the decency to realize that this isn't a war tragedy, where innocents are killed/multilated despite best efforts. This is a large private corporation kidnapping 2 civilians from the other side for strictly private purposes.

If the relevance to the discussion isn't clear, the point is that North Korea, even as a Stalinist-inspired socialist country, doesn't need to commit the crimes it does to survive. You are just trying to dismiss NK's particularly rogue behavior under the excuse that "west"(which, in this context, is just a propaganda term, could've used just USA instead) oppresses them, ignoring even other socialist countries that do not have to stoop so low.


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Vietnam didn't submit to America, they kicked Americas ass. You need to get a clue. I can't help but notice you're refusing to even acknowledge the point of Vietnam, because it makes you look like an idiot.


Come to think of it, what is a leftoid like you even doing defending North Korea? You should be disowning them. You should be pointing out that North Korea is a de facto monarchy and therefore definitionally Right Wing. You should be arguing North Korea as yet another failed extremist right wing regime. Why do I have to explain your own ideology to you? Is it that you like to get dominated? Come to me, dumb slut, we can be friends. I don't discriminate.


Have you read Escape from Camp 14? It absolutely is a dire human rights catastrophe


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Even other communist dictatorships are pretty sick of North Korea's shit!


Oh yeah you don’t know what you’re talking about haha. The west isn’t a dictatorship! Only the Others.


While one could scrutinize the accuracy the of the west being a dictatorship (which will likely devolve into a discussion of semantics), I prefer to call attention to the fact that calling North Korea a dictatorship does not require to speak well of the west. Likewise, one can simultaneously criticize the west without protecting its "enemies". Such a binary, poorly critical, way of thinking is ill-suited in pursuing better material conditions for all.


Wow so you guys don't have ideological brain worms at all. I can tell you guys have never studied international relations because you refuse to try an take North Koreas concerns seriously. Do I have to remind you that a South Korean attempted a fascist coup recently and that it was left wing organisations and trade unions that mobilised to stop him? Also which "communist dictators" are you talking about, and how do you know this? You do realise that the United States is also a one party state when it comes to foreign policy right?

If you love freedom so much shouldn't this be worrying more? https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5340753/trump-democracy...

For any one interested in learning a bit more about North Korea and how it got to be the country it is I'd suggest Noah Kulwins series Blowback.


> Wow so you guys don't have ideological brain worms at all.

You have to remember that the supermajority of this site are ultra AnCaps who believe that anything which infringes upon the right of companies to kill people is Communist satanism and a significant minority agrees wholeheartedly with Peter Thiel's weird brand of techno-accelerationism and actively participates in NRx movements.

Like, I understand what you want to get at and I wholeheartedly agree! Just don't be too surprised at the pushback.


Those scholars are blowhards. Trump is basically the same as any other time. As you state the US is unipolar in how it treats Others. Aka authoritarian.

Blowback was great I should finish that season.


> Do I have to remind you that a South Korean attempted a fascist coup recently and that it was left wing organisations and trade unions that mobilised to stop him?

Those "left wing organizations" encompass the majority of South Korea, almost 2/3 of the current parliament, and the current sitting government. And may I remind you that South Korea's current "leftist" president recently gifted Trump a golden crown to get favorable deals?

He's about as leftist as Joe Biden.


> Do I have to remind you that a South Korean attempted a fascist coup recently

By "fascist", I suppose you mean right-wing. Going by the average RW authoritarian dictatorship, that's still better than the documented NK conditions, specially given that most fall later.

> ...[...] and that it left wing organizations and trade unions that mobilized to stop him?

Nice cherry picking. Even Yoon's own party turned against him. But even ignoring the right wing here, said left wing organizations are also in opposition to NK.

> You do realize that the United States is a one party state when it comes to foreign policy right?

That sentence doesn't make sense. There's no such thing as "one party state foreign policy". The idea of a one party state is specifically about a state that is intolerant to any other ideas other than those accepted by the one true party. If you are referring to USA's aggressiveness, may I remind you that that switches between presidents.

> If you love freedom so much shouldn't this be worrying more?

Whataboutism.




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