And I believe that a bad country that doesn't fuck with your country is better than a bad country that fucks with mine and most countries.
Is this comparison available for us to view?
Does that mean that the Western European models of governance work? Duh!
Because in the US, at least in my experience, 'starving people in africa' is kind of a colloquial trope - it is more readily referenced than starving people in asia, since we don't see charity organizations constantly using asian faces to advertise their foundations.
>forced into producing cash crops for export to Western Europe
Who exactly went around the the countries in africa and asia and disallowed them from growing their own food instead of cash crops? My bet is that these places found economic incentive in growing these crops rather than what they would consume locally - whether the global economy is a net benefit or net loss for a poor country is an entirely different discussion
They have giant statues of their leader and a massive painting of him in the most prestigious place of the country. On official articles, the leader is mentioned everywhere. They manufacture 'pins' with the face of the leader on it and everyone is wearing it. There is painting of the leader in almost every house. (do I need to continue ?)
I'm sorry. I agree NK is a horrible place but that reasoning is ridiculous. Every heard of the Lincoln Memorial [0] or the Lansdowne portrait [1].
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne_portrait
Edit: Just realised you may have been using sarcasm. If so my mistake.
You'll note that there isn't a giant statue of Obama on the White House lawn and in every town square. In N. Korea this is the case.
Adult Americans are not legally required to wear lapel pins featuring prominent past presidents, nor are they required to have images of those presidents in their homes with nothing else permitted on the wall that hosts those images, while in N. Korea they must.
Americans can freely speak a poor opinion of Obama or the Congress or the SCOTUS and not fear that they and their family will be imprisoned and tortured, unlike N. Korea.
The press can say what they like about Obama/other branches of the government without fear of censorship and imprisonment, unlike N. Korea where there is only state-run media that fawn over their leader.
I think that was what they were trying to get at even if they didn't fully expand it.
Washington Post? ;).
North Korean concentration camps, for example, are several orders of magnitude more horrific than the US prison camps you compared them to. And it's significantly easier to end up in an NK concentration camp than it is in prison too.
Families being rounded up and taken away and/or killed is a common theme discussed by the defectors as well.
Now I'm not saying that America (nor any other country for that matter) is perfect. If anything, I happen to agree with you that the US has some hugely hypocritical tendencies. But for all America's faults, the DPRK is still in a whole other of league of bad.
North Korea has withstood decades of economic isolation, and yet it lives and its people live much better than citizens of Somalia and other great capitalist nations, not that anyone would let you know. You're not freeing North Korea by isolating it and starving it, you are killing it, and the people. You say it doesn't tame much to control many, but this applies to the West as much as it does anywhere. You have a set of values, and you are in harmony with enough people, you can work for them, with them. The same applies in North Korea, and USSR (where I'm from). The country is a single company, the CEO might be eccentric, but people do have jobs, work hard, have education, healthcare and believe in communism. What they don't have is Hollywood, McDonnalds and Fox News. And this is why you want to "free them". They have nuclear weapons not because they are evil, but because they know what US does to countries people like you believe need to be freed.