If China decided they would no longer back North Korea, the regime could be replaced in hours. Most of the time, when toppling regimes, you have to be worried about someone even worse taking over. In this case, I don't see how it could get any worse.

History has shown that tempting fate like this often doesn't end well.

> I don't see how it could get any worse.

The embattled regime could employ a scorched earth policy and will launch all the weapons they've got, resulting in millions of civilian deaths. That seems worse to me.

It's not like Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, or even Putin's Russia.

If it wasn't for that Korea could be reunited and it will probably end up fairly well, similar to how the reunification of Germany ended up well.

The economic, industrial, agricultural, social, technological and cultural differences between north and south Korea are far, far greater than between east and west Germany.

Germany still has east-west integration problems.

Almost every country has regional differences; for a variety of reasons. "Integration problems" is overstating the issue IMO.

What I imagine would happen is the North Koreans who have suddenly stopped becoming prisoners in their own land trying to enter China, and then China would have to post guards at the border, and be responsible for the mess, including violence, trying to stop them coming in. So the Chinese government probably has an interest in keeping an NK government alive, that way they can claim "He's the evil dictator oppressing his citizens, the mess over there is not our problem!".

I wonder why that's my first thought, rather than the citizens wondering "Well, the government is gone, let's build a collective to self-govern." -- I guess people would rather join a structured society somewhere else rather than try to build one themselves (probably out of nothing, in NK). Not to mention yeah, even if the current asshole is gone, the next asshole is probably busy setting up shop to resume the oppression.

An important matter to understand is that a power vaccum fills very quickly, and often a power vacuum is filled by the most sociopathic, brutual and ruthless people around because they are willing to do anything necessary to secure and retain power.

Many good and normal and moral people would want to self organize and self govern and build something better from the ashes of a fallen country, the problem is that those good and honest people will be manipulated, tricked, and murdered by those who are more brutal and cunning than them.

Any worse? Pol Pot?

PRC has little control over NK whose the one that's been limiting cross border trade. NK would rather starve a few people in exchange for autarky / independance. NK only started openning up to agri imports from PRC / RU in Q1 this year, but that's mainly due to may/june being toughest period for NK agri production - "sprint poverty" right before harvest. All PRC can do is deal with NK like everyone else, while also encourage their missile program since they'd rather NK fling their target at Japan or US West Coast than PRC.

I mentioned at the end of my comment I don’t have a good solution. I think something being tragic and shameful is possible even if we don’t have a solution. Just on a human level, this is humans doing horrible things to other humans. To me that’s shameful for all of us on the scale of history.

How is it shameful if nobody can think of a solution? What is there to be ashamed of, lack of omnipotence?

Tragic, disappointing sure. I also happen to disagree that it is ignored or forgotten, this article just being the latest example.

I’m probably being needlessly emotional about it. Anytime you look back in history you have all of the foresight from however many years after. I’m sure we’ll know a even more about what’s going on currently in 2023 way off into the future.

On a purely logical level, we did what we could. But when people talk about other world events (WW2 for example) they’ll often wonder why the average person didn’t fight whatever horror was going on then.

Does it ignore the entire context of the situation, yeah. But it’s odd that I think we’re in that time now.

I’m being emotional because I have a cold, I’m in bed, reading something that made me sad. Take that with a grain of salt haha

If the world can get through the Cold War and Germany reuniting, I feel there is a chance for NK at some point in the future (however slim)

I would have gave MacArthur whatever he needed to win.

He wanted nuclear bombs in NK and China.

Do you have a citation for that? The only sources I've seen have said that others suggested offensive use of nuclear weapons, then scapegoated MacArthur when the studies were leaked/released to the public.

I maintain that the second greatest mistake the US ever made was not giving McArthur the bombs he wanted.

What's your number one mistake then? Not nuking Russia in 1945 or asking Stalin to help out in Asia?

What you are referring to is allowing MacArthur to have nuked China when they entered the Korean war, aka killing millions of civilians and leaving the eastern seaboard of China irradiated for generations. We should be glad he was kept on his leash.

MacArthur repeatedly rejected suggestions for such use of nuclear and chemical weapons, stating that he would only use them to prevent an ultimate fallback. It seems that others, such as Bradley, Ridgeway, Truman, and even Eisenhower were more in favor of escalation than MacArthur, who seems to have been made something of a scapegoat upon his dismissal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur#Nu...

Sidenote: I am not a MacArthur 'fan', but he was a very complex character

> leaving the eastern seaboard of China irradiated for generations

It might depend on the particular warhead, but this was not the case for Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

The nukes we had by korea were much larger