People in this thread itself are talking about how they wish NK would be invaded. You can justify pretty much anything using any justification as long as enough people believe or support it.

Well, from the article, some people there seem to hope for something like this.

> “Only with a war, and by getting rid of the entire leadership, can we survive,” he says. “Let’s end this one way or another.”

> Myong Suk agrees. “If there was a war, people would turn their backs on our government,” she says. “That’s the reality.”

I don't have any opinion myself. I would hope the world could do something about it and put an end on this, but nobody has figured out how so far apparently. I would naively hope we could avoid war and convince the Kim family to stop the disaster…

TFA has a North Korean wishing that the US would invade so that they could be free.

Okay...you can find people in the US who wish the US would be invaded by another country and taken over too so they can be free from a capitalist hellscape or whatever. Doesn't really say much except you can find those types of people everywhere.

> People in this thread itself are talking about how they wish NK would be invaded. You can justify pretty much anything using any justification as long as enough people believe or support it.

So what is your point here? That it would be...wrong to invade? Something else?

> I just can't understand what motivates so much violence towards a whole population.

Texas. Florida. Many other deep-red states led by Christofascist alt-right conservatives. The leading edge of the same kind of repressive and regressive ideologies is alive and well in America.

It's not any different from capitalists having terrible working conditions in their factories. Humans have an enormous capacity to ignore others' suffering as long as they have a good life themselves. And somehow they always find a way to rationalize this.

> It's not any different from capitalists having terrible working conditions in their factories

Is it not, really? Have we read the same article?

I hate capitalism, and I hate many consequences it has including horrible working conditions for some workers, sharp inequalities, terrible incentives like preferring to produce stuff in countries with terrible laws because it's cheaper and therefore promoting horrible working conditions and terrible environmental practices, etc. I see capitalism as a worldwide oppressive system.

But this?

Capitalism is best described as both progressive to the past and regressive to a better future it prevents. The tension of NK running a revolutionary and ideological state and surviving in global geopolitics led them down this path. The more ideological would see this as biding their time for their enemies to collapse under the weight of their contradictions. However, the people in this article want to live a better world now. Unfortunately, the world and realpolitik is messier than fulfilling human desires.

Capitalism was the only thing keeping some of these NK people alive. Did you read the article?

I think the article has mistaken markets, trade, and side hustles for capitalism. These things existed before capitalism and may still exist after. Capitalism is private ownership over the means of production, and I am not sure how much ownership common people can have in a country that owns everything.

What is present here is that NK is supposedly centrally planning the economy, but there are gaps which are filled by the black markets.

Many (though far from all) dictators started out with fairly good intentions: Mao, Gaddafi, Mugabe, Castro, etc. all fought against oppressive regimes and were more or less justified in their fight. Turns out that the required skill sets of "freedom fighter" and "effective democratic leader" don't have a whole lot of overlap, and that people with the right skills for both are relatively rare.

Once you've got absolute power fewer and fewer people will call you out on your bullshit and you quickly become more detached from reality – humans are very good are rationalizing our own actions, even when it's wholly irrational, and if there are never any real consequences ... well ...

My point being: Kim Jong Un may genuinely believe he's doing the right thing.