BTRTN: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?

[reggieandlee]

Born to Run the Numbers on the need for new thinking about Korea:
http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2017/09/how-do-you-solve-problem-like-korea.html

Excerpt:
"The single most effective thing that the United States could be doing to combat North Korea is to create and foment a Korean Spring… a recognition among the people of North Korea that Kim Jong-un is a savage tyrant who is terrorizing, repressing, and starving his own people to save his own position... Why aren’t we waging the most aggressive and sophisticated communications program in history to let North Koreans know that their leader is a cruel tyrant who is endangering their families, repressing their freedom, killing their opportunity, and preventing them from joining in the prosperity and economic vibrancy of free nations?

"Sure, it will be tough to get that message into North Korea, but we must. Smuggle it, mail it, put it on flash drives and air-drop it. Put it in water-tight canisters – messages in a bottle -- that wash up on the shore. Put it, Trojan-horse style, in gifts. Yes, and have Lin-Manuel Miranda write it, Patty Jenkins direct it, Bruce Springsteen sing it, and Stephen Doyle design it. We need to put a world class team of creative artists and media gurus to the task of communicating with the people of North Korea. Advertisers know that for all the money they spend on television, the most powerful medium in the world is word of mouth. Once we get the fire started, there will be no stopping.Like there was no stopping Lech Walesa, the people from the east pouring through the gates of the Berlin Wall, a man in front of a tank Tiananmen Square, Martin Luther King… or Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton."

[beachbum bob]

1. a repressive regime like NK isn't so easily toppled

otherwise something would have happened generations ago.

[Not Ruth]

2. Kim would just post Harvey/Irma pictures of the US

[TeamPooka]

3. Now I have the Sound of Music soundtrack stuck in my head.

[California_Republic]

6. Exactly!

Not just me!

[Xolodno]

8. Tell me about it.

Now I'm humming inside, instead of "how do you solve a problem like Maria"....its "how do you solve a problem like Korea"

[reggieandlee]

10. Did you read the entire blog post, or just the excerpt?

If you go to the full post, you'll see that they have fun with the lyrics to the song from "The Sound of Music."

[tgards79]

11. And...

...a whole lot of parody songs as well. The right-hand column has a link to their political song archive. "You Can't Hide Those Ryan Lies" and "I Am Barack, I Need Ohio" among many others.

[FLPanhandle]

4. Many U.S. presidents have tried many different approaches, and they have all failed

Here we are.

North Korea has tons of artillery pieces lined up on South Korea.
NK has had a decades long program to get atomic bombs, despite many threats/rewards/minor sanction efforts all of which failed.
NK has also been working on it's missiles for decades and no approach has stopped that either.

Frankly, we are down to only a few approaches
1) Ignore them and let them continue to do what they want.
2) Heavy and extreme sanctions (including going after China if they don't stop playing just lip service to stopping NK.
3) Military.


I think we will go through all the solution options and end up at #3 eventually.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. This approach shows a complete and utter ignorance of experience of the North Korean population.

[Kentonio]

7. Yup.

It also seems to carry the rather bizarre implication that millions of people who have spent their entire lives living under an oppressive regime somehow need America to tell them how bad it is.

[reggieandlee]

9. Thanks for the comments

It may indeed be a bizarre implication, but if indeed millions of people have spent their entire lives living under an oppressive regime that presents itself as a deity incarnate, controls all communication, manufactures an astonishing amount of fake news, and stifles even the slightest whiff of dissent, it does seem possible that they only dimly aware of the true nature of societies and cultures other than their own.

If nothing else, Donald Trump has demonstrated that the comprehensive and unrelenting dissemination of utterly unsubstantiated assertions and outright lies to a modestly educated populace can decisively sway an election is what is supposedly the most free society in the world. I can only imagine the degree to which untrained minds can be programmed in a more primitive society.

So, yes, that is the bizarre implication.

[Yavin4]

12. You're looking at the entire situation from a Westernized viewpoint instead of looking at it like a

North Korean. For example, you wrote: " if indeed millions of people have spent their entire lives living under an oppressive regime". It's not oppressive to a large majority of them. They don't know any other way of life. They have no idea that it's "oppressive".

Blasting them with American propaganda won't work one bit.

[reggieandlee]

13. So interesting...

Again, thanks for your comment. It's fascinating, as I think we see the same set of facts from different perspectives. You make the very legitimate hypothesis that if all they know is oppression, then blasting them with American propaganda may not work. Fair. My interpretation of the same fact is that we have the opportunity to educate these people that their rulers are brutally subjugating them. All that's being suggested in this post is to attempt some modern version of Radio Free Europe, that served an important role in conveying a different perspective to those who lived behind the iron curtain. But again, thanks for the exchange. Very worthwhile.

[Kentonio]

16. I disagree with the idea that they don't know they're being subjugated.

Listen to the accounts of the people who have successfully defected, the people don't need anyone to tell them that being starved, imprisoned and murdered is a bad thing. The problem they have is that they don't have any way out.

They're a regime where children are brainwashed at school that they should inform on their parents for any transgression against the regime. They're a regime where if one family member becomes thought of as subversive, their entire family and friends can be placed into vicious concentration camps and left there, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Everything is monitored, no-one knows who can be trusted or who will sell them out to the authorities, and the price of failure is at best being put in a concentration camp and at worst death for you and everyone you care about.

There's an interesting but little known fact that revolutions are almost never started by those most oppressed. It's almost always those in a more comfortable position who get things started, and its because the poorest and most oppressed simply don't have the means to rebel when they're focused every day on base survival. If there is a revolution in NK it will come from the army, there's basically nobody else who can do it.

[Not Ruth]

14. I love this North Korean film about consumer slaves of the West

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/1694185644007816/

[reggieandlee]

15. Thank you..

Amazing film. Fascinating. Thank you for posting...