Are they starving though? It's a question that seems impossible for anybody to verify independently. I'm not saying they aren't, but it's impossible to know that they are for sure, too. And we're not to worry about their nukes either, after all according to the official sources they've all merely fizzled.

I'm just not going to worry about North Korea either way. If they want to own suckers running Windows, well, I'm not impressed by that either. People do it all the time.

Video evidence snuck out of the country frequently shows obviously malnourished people, even military soldiers, who are supposed to get special privileges and access to food look pale and show obvious signs of malnourishment. That said, they're a model for carbon footprint reduction.

It's not that hard to verify given the people who have risked their life to escape the country and spoken openly about the conditions there.

maybe the US should end the korean war so the DPRK no longer has to defend as hard, would be a good start

> maybe the US should end the korean war

Takes two, not just the UN side, to end the war.

You can't be serious.

"Ending the war" requires handing South Korea over to DPRK based on their conditions and they still claim their government has rightful jurisdiction over it.

I mean the war is effectively over. It's been a cold war since the "cease fire" has been adhered to. It's not like they're going to stop trying if we agreed to take down the DMZ. Their entire culture is based around reunification and defeating the evil Americans.

You could equally say ending the war means handing NK over to SK because that's what South Korea's constitution says.

Less flippantly, "ending the war" means reaching a mutual agreement that preserves the two Korea's current territories: nobody sane is using the term to mean anything else.

(BTW, South Korea did push for officially ending the war multiple times, IIRC. It's just that North Korea remains uninterested. Same for the US - probably because they don't see the deal happening realistically.)

Right, which is why I said its effectively what we have now (a situation that preserves their current territories), AFAIK, the situation barely effect SK life. It's just neither side believes the minute they stop pointing weapons at each other's borders the other side won't take advantage, and as far as I know, prior attempts to sit down and end the war officially require the other side basically give a full surrender. There's also a Chinese interest in keeping DPRK (it was Chinese MiGs American fighter pilots engaged in the actual war and I assume currently supplies DPRK with arms in a similar role to the US and SK) as a buffer zone, and a source of cheap labor and source for human trafficking in some cases. So both countries have a larger country/acting ally disrupting the politics.

This is such a strange take it borders on satire.

Could you elaborate on if you genuinely think this would resolve the issues the DPRK experiences?

This would cause immediate conflict with China. Imagine China showing up to liberate Mexico from the drug cartels.

How does anyone know the average heights in NK?