In previous blog posts, we've debated about the U.S.'s role of being a sort of international policeman/watchdog figure. In the middle east, some commend the U.S's progress, while others criticize the U.S. for getting involved.
Now we hear about North Korea, where dozens of innocent civilians are being rounded up and publicly executed in front of thousands of other civilians for "crimes" like watching South Korean dramas and owning Christian bibles. Friends and family of the executed(/murdered) "criminals" are then taken to prison camps, further instilling fear in all North Koreans.
Clearly these killings are heinous and wrong by our standards. Morally, I feel that it is wrong to allow such killings to go on–for crimes like watching TV. Realistically, I believe the U.S. would be making a huge mistake to confront and even go to war with North Korea. What is your stance on the issue of involvement/non-involvement? What is the right balance between morals and reality? Is there a right balance?
4 comments:
I agree with Travis that the executions in North Korea are morally wrong. However, I do not think that the US should intervene in this issue because I only think it will make the problem worse by causing more deaths. Unfortunately, I do not think that there is a perfect solution to an issue like this, especially since North Korea is so isolated from the rest of the world and the ongoing tension between the US and North Korea. Ultimately, I think it would be best for the US to stay out of this conflict to prevent future problems or heighten current issues.
Even though US intervention is probably a bad political move, this is a situation in which political correctness is trumped by moral righteousness. Where is the line drawn? I mean how many people have to die for the US to say "hey, something's going on in North Korea and we should jump in so we don't look bad"? Maybe there's a carefully calculated threshold that must be met for the US government to care, and that number hasn't been reached yet so we'll go ahead and sit on our hands a little while longer. This situation is not anywhere near the severity of the Rwandan Genocide, but still I can't help but link US passiveness in this case to that of Rwanda. What starts out slowly can quickly spin out of control, and I think that It'd be better to prevent such malevolence than to try to control it later on when it may be too late.
North Korea is nicknamed the "Land of Lousy Options" by many diplomats and statesmen for a reason. While the moral reasons for intervening in NK are ever present (no rational and unoppressed person would ever say they support a brutal totalitarian regime), there are too many reasons against intervention. Despite being a really crappy place, the regime seems to be stable in the short term, and as such any direct military intervention would result in numerous casualties on both sides as well as the ire of the Chinese. Sadly, even an execution of this size is not surprising nor severe compared to other human rights abuses and war crimes being committed not just in North Korea but in many other nations (some would say in the United States as well...). This incident is not a strong enough reason to intervene in a situation that would not end up well for both sides anyways. No one thinks that the regime can or should go on, but no one can come up with a good way to end it.
Going off of what Kevin said, North Korean intervention is a kind of damned if we do damned if we don't situation. An invasion of North Korea would be costly in American and Korean lives and military action might provoke an already unstable power into potentially irreversible nuclear action. Along with that, how difficult would rebuilding North Korea be? The refugees, lack of infrastructure, and cultural abyss spells out and almost impossible task (or at least a task that would consume years and billions of dollars). Quite frankly, 80 lives are insignificant in the big picture of North Korea and just continues a trend that is unlikely to stop any time soon. Right now, even with it's horrible human rights abuses, North Korea's current existence is preferable to the chaos and death that would surround a United States military intervention. Despite how much we'd love to say that we came through for the North Korean people, action right now is simply not worth it.
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