Do you think this is going to end up in a conflict between the North and South, or will the rest of the world get involved?
To be honest I hope we strike them and take out their regime only for the humanitarian aspect of it. There are 200,000 innocent people in concentration starvation & death camps in North Korea. And I'd love them to be freed. 60 years of this. Not to mention the people of NK are trapped and can't leave. So sad.
Go to youtube and put in "North Korea concentration camps" and you'll see horror stories. Women raped in the camp then having the baby cut out of their stomach. Children beaten *to death* because they were starving and ate a corn kernel, people having their hands and legs tied and a fire lit under them to burn them.
Their only crime being born in a concentration camp. Just horrible and no one does anything. I hope their suffering is over soon.
videos on their suffering. Just pure hell, this is why I hope we strike against their government and free these people
So, what exactly are we hoping to fight? The Zombie apocalypse? The aliens? Godzilla?
I dunno. I just think about people having their fingers cut off, children beaten to death. people eaten alive by dogs, etc and just wish I could have them freed.
I'll give a donation to Amnesty International, but they can't do shit. NK wont let anyone in to see anything and they deny the camps even exist. But with Google Maps you can see them
One is called Yoduk http://goo.gl/maps/qqMgc
In response to your comments, I think it’s a tragedy that innocent people are incarcerated, tortured, and/or staved. North Korea, sadly, is only one of many countries where this is ongoing.
For some perspective, there are 24.7 million people in North Korea with 200 thousand people incarcerated in some type of living hell. That’s 200 thousand too many people, but less than one percent of the whole population of North Korea. I can think of many countries—including North America--where the percentage of those wrongfully incarcerated is significantly higher. It does not justify North Korea’s actions, but it does give it some context.
When I read, “take out their regime”, I can only think, “really?”. Taking out a whole regime to rescue 200 thousand people? Morally, sure it may be right, but to play devil’s advocate, at what costs? If you’re going to take down the regime, you are stating starting a war with North Korea. Let’s play war: Assuming a conservative estimate of NK’s armed ground force at 700 thousand, if a war were initiated, you would be looking at a loss of 5 to 10 % of those forces, let’s split the difference and say 52.5 thousand NK ground soldiers killed. The rule of thumb for civilian to military loss is 10:1, so we're looking conservatively at 525,000 civilian NK’s killed. Still, if “we”, meaning the US, are involved, then China and South Korea would become involved. Outside of NK, both SK and China have some of the world’s highest urban population densities (Drop a few sizable bombs in Seoul and you’re looking at catastrophic numbers of civilians killed). Keeping it conservative, let’s only double our number of other than NK military and civilians killed, and we're looking at 1,150,000 million killed.
You still want to “take out their regime”? Let’s spend money. The estimate for the Iraq war is upwards to 6 trillion dollars in 10 years. How long would it take out the North Korean regime? 1 year, 5 years? Let’s be conservative and say 2 years. Using the Iraq numbers as a reference point, and then figuring in inflation plus the costs of maintaining a force in North Korea beyond the initial build up—$2,000,000,000,000 sounds like a reasonable number, no? OK, we can do a Donald Rumsfield and do it on the cheap for $1.2 trillion; however, for some reason, I doubt if America’s private contractors--fighting for freedom --would let the bids get that low. Just for another perspective, you’re now saying that for EACH person set free from incarceration in NK that the equivalent costs would be 5.75 people killed and $10 million. You feel better now?
You ridded yourself of the regime, now what? You have a country that’s been led in a centrally controlled government for over the last 60 years. There’s really, in terms of a market economy and sustaining infrastructure, nothing there. You’re going to have the NK’s bereft of money, food, the tools for acquiring those, and lacking some type of social and political structure, go forth boldly on its own? You thought that the 200,000 people being incarcerated there had it bad, you should see what happens when there’s a power vacuum of that magnitude —it’s going to be very much Mad Max and very little Gangnam Style. Somebody is going to have to pay for that rebuilding—where’s the money coming from?
We can keep playing war, but you get the idea. To me it comes across flippant when people talk about taking out a regime as if they were taking out their nightly trash. Jesus.
On the three videos, the one video (second video in the post) from Lorber productions is realistic and a good portrayal. Not to diminish the video’s message, but you can make the same video portraying abhorrent incarceration practices in many countries; NK’s are not the only bad boys in town. The AFP video (first video in the post) seemingly tried to be objective but missed the mark. Look at the makeup of its management: http://www.afp.com/en/agency/management-team/. The video would probably have come off without jingoistic undertones if only one person in the management came from the part of the world it was reporting. The last video in the post should come under “it’s my agenda and this is the ONLY story. ” Did anyone actually look at Cornerstone Ministries site? Good grief. The bulk of all the posts are made by one guy named Joe. Again, not to diminish the message, it’s horrible, but far from objective. I’m sure when Joe has set these NK's free, he and his fellow SK evangelicals will be working to save souls and it won’t be gay friendly.
In response to your comments, I think it’s a tragedy that innocent people are incarcerated, tortured, and/or staved. North Korea, sadly, is only one of many countries where this is ongoing.
For some perspective, there are 24.7 million people in North Korea with 200 thousand people incarcerated in some type of living hell. That’s 200 thousand too many people, but less than one percent of the whole population of North Korea. I can think of many countries—including North America--where the percentage of those wrongfully incarcerated is significantly higher. It does not justify North Korea’s actions, but it does give it some context.
When I read, “take out their regime”, I can only think, “really?”. Taking out a whole regime to rescue 200 thousand people? Morally, sure it may be right, but to play devil’s advocate, at what costs? If you’re going to take down the regime, you are stating starting a war with North Korea. Let’s play war: Assuming a conservative estimate of NK’s armed ground force at 700 thousand, if a war were initiated, you would be looking at a loss of 5 to 10 % of those forces, let’s split the difference and say 52.5 thousand NK ground soldiers killed. The rule of thumb for civilian to military loss is 10:1, so we're looking conservatively at 525,000 civilian NK’s killed. Still, if “we”, meaning the US, are involved, then China and South Korea would become involved. Outside of NK, both SK and China have some of the world’s highest urban population densities (Drop a few sizable bombs in Seoul and you’re looking at catastrophic numbers of civilians killed). Keeping it conservative, let’s only double our number of other than NK and civilians killed, and you would be looking at 1,150,000 million killed.
You still want to “take out their regime”? Let’s spend money. The estimate for the Iraq war is upwards to 6 trillion dollars in 10 years. How long would it take out the North Korean regime? 1 year, 5 years? Let’s be conservative and say 2 years. Using the Iraq numbers as a reference point, and then figuring in inflation plus the costs of maintaining a force in North Korea beyond the initial build up—$2,000,000,000,000 sounds like a reasonable number, no? OK, we can do a Donald Rumsfield and do it on the cheap for $1.2 trillion; however, for some reason, I doubt if America’s private contractors--fighting for freedom --would let the bids get that low. Just for another perspective, you’re now saying that for EACH person set free from incarceration in NK that the equivalent costs would be 5.75 people killed and $10 million. You feel better now?
You ridded yourself of the regime, now what? You have a country that’s been led in a centrally controlled government for over the last 60 years. There’s really, in terms of a market economy and sustaining infrastructure, nothing there. You’re going to have the NK’s bereft of money, food, the tools for acquiring those, and lacking some type of social and political structure, go forth boldly on its own? You thought that the 200,000 people being incarcerated there had it bad, you should see what happens when there’s a power vacuum of that magnitude —it’s going to be very much Mad Max and very little Gangnam Style. Somebody is going to have to pay for that rebuilding—where’s the money coming from?
We can keep playing war, but you get the idea. To me it comes across flippant when people talk about taking out a regime as if they were taking out their nightly trash. Jesus.
On the three videos, the one video (second video in the post) from Lorber productions is realistic and a good portrayal. Not to diminish the video’s message, but you can make the same video portraying abhorrent incarceration practices in many countries; NK’s are not the only bad boys in town. The AFP video (first video in the post) seemingly tried to be objective but missed the mark. Look at the makeup of its management: http://www.afp.com/en/agency/management-team/. The video would probably have come off without jingoistic undertones if only one person in the management came from the part of the world it was reporting. The last video in the post should come under “it’s my agenda and this is the ONLY story. ” Did anyone actually look at Cornerstone Ministries site? Good grief. The bulk of all the posts are made by one guy named Joe. Again, not to diminish the message, it’s horrible, but far from objective. I’m sure when Joe has set these NK's free, he and his fellow SK evangelicals will be working to save souls and it won’t be gay friendly.
U.S. would seek regime change in North Korea if attack occurs
Besides, we already burried 33,686 American soldier's in the 50's to free half of that peninsula. Let the half we freed (South Korea) fight for their own country! We set South Korea on the path to develop a great country and they have generally succeeded in doing exactly that. Now, if there is to be conflict, it becomes basically a civil war that we could support with munitions, etc, but we owe them nothing in terms of soldiers to be killed in battle. We've already been there, done that!
There are other ways to force them to soften up their stands without the Arms Conglomerate- sponsored violence - embargos, sanctions, blocking aid, political pressure from the UN, etc. And a verbal threat doesn't provide a *valid* excuse for pre-emptive strikes against any political entity. ( cue : This is when you go "So, do we have to sit here, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for them to nuke us and destroy our liberty?").
And while we're on the topic, why does no one seem to care about helping the oppressed people in some countries in Africa (Rwanda, Uganda, Mali, etc), with its military rule, child militia, genocides, slave trade, blood diamonds, homophobia, human trafficking, etc? Maybe an invasion might be more helpful than clicking "Likes" and resharing Kony-2012 posts on Facebook?
And let's face it - This is the 21st century. "Liberation" always comes at a cost - be it economic, political, military or otherwise. In the end, all it ends up being, is a euphemism for "Your country is my country's bitch".
Yes, the gulags and concentration camps, the segregation and hate, the brutality and genocides need to end. There's no questions about it. How we go about helping those people is the tricky and touchy issue. And there are no easy answers.
Prefer finishing Guantanamo, as promised and never done.