Maybe it wasn’t clear, but I think the comment is explaining the importance for superpowers of keeping their immediate surroundings politically aligned - china wants NK on their side for the same reason neither the US or the URSS wanted nukes on their doorstep.

It was still a fascinating aside, and it's not like HN stays on topic in a thread. I learned something today.

You can’t separate colonialism and imperialism from Korea. As if any of us know what Korea would be doing if the west didn’t invade then sanction among other things.

> The topic is cybercrime and espionage, not nuclear brinksmanship or colonialism.

Those are all closely related topics in geopolitics.

From Khrushchev's own words (27 October 1962) [1]:

> Your missiles are located in Britain, are located in Italy, and are aimed against us. Your missiles are located in Turkey.

> You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is 90 miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But Turkey adjoins us; our sentries patrol back and forth and see each other. Do you consider, then, that you have the right to demand security for your own country and the removal of the weapons you call offensive, but do not accord the same right to us? You have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us. How then can recognition of our equal military capacities be reconciled with such unequal relations between our great states? This is irreconcilable.

According to General Boris Surikov [2]:

> 'Khrushchev and his Defence Minister, Rodion Malinovsky, were at Khrushchev's estate on the Black Sea. They went for a walk and Malinovsky pointed in the direction of Turkey and said: 'That's where the American rockets are pointing at us. They need only 10 minutes to reach our cities, but our rockets need 25 minutes to reach America.' Khrushchev thought for a while and then said: 'Why don't we instal our rockets in Cuba and point them at the Americans? Then we'll need only 10 minutes, too.'

This article goes on to quote the Soviet Ambassador to Cuba, Alexander Alexeyev, who was a direct witness and a go-between between Khrushchev and Castro:

> 'On 14 May 1962 I was called to a meeting of the Defence Council at the Kremlin. Khrushchev said, in effect: 'Comrades, I think it would be a good idea to instal rockets in Cuba. Do it clandestinely. I don't want it known in the US until November (after the mid-term Congressional elections). Alexander Alexeyev, how will Fidel react when we present him with our decision?'

[1]: https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct27/doc4.html

[2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-cuban-missile-crisi...

> ... the US preying on its neighbors the way Russia and China are currently doing

Well, that's a matter of perspective isn't it? Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, Chile, El Salvador, Venezuela, the list goes on. There's a Wikipedia page dedicated to all the US backed coups since 1945 [1] it happens so often.

We've had a post-WW2 history of deposing democratically elected countries (in the Americas and elsewhere) to suit the interests of Western corporations. Who exactly are we protecting?

> ... it was a policy aimed at keeping wars between European colonial powers away from the newly independent countries in the Americas

Where is Moscow?

> ... people in the Americas shouldn't have to die in wars just because one European king insulted another.

Ok, but what about American belligerence? Pinochet and Noriega spring to mind.

Aso, I reject the contention that colonial wars were the product of European kings insulting one another. The interests were and always have been material. Even the Crusades (which were sold on Christian conflict with Islam) were fundamentally materialist in origin.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

You better edit the Wikipedia article to remove the propaganda. According to that, since Roosevelt the Monroe doctrine has been repurposed for hegemony in the Western Hemisphere:

Starting at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine#Roosevelt_Coro... and further.

> For starters, this propaganda often mischaracterizes the Monroe Doctrine as the US preying on its neighbors the way Russia and China are currently doing, when in fact it was a policy aimed at keeping wars between European colonial powers away from the newly independent countries in the Americas.

...so we can freely do as we please. Of course we've been preying on our neighbors. We've been invading and deposing all across the Americas to force alignment with our interests for well over a century now. We even have terrorist training camps hosted on our soil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...

What, do you think that our invading Grenada, or Panama, is somehow in their interests? It's a flagrant violation of international law and sovereignty. To imagine that this is somehow an abnormal deviation from our "protection" of our neighbors is... well, I honestly didn't realize anyone thought that way anymore.

Furthermore, we didn't enforce this doctrine when France invaded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Saint_Pierre_and_Mi...), nor in the Falklands war.

Look I can understand not thinking america is "evil" or entirely machiavellian, but it seems just as absurd to take any noble intentions we claim to have at face value. The monroe doctrine is as good an example of this as any.

So there is a universe out there where the US would have supported/allied with Nazi Germany had it been convenient?

That doesn't have to be the result of it. A more humane regime in NK doesn't mean reunification has to happen. And, part of the reason those US forces are in South Korea is the threat of the North. By threatening US involvement in case of an attack.

In the initial era of the split between North and South Korea, South Korea both was run by a bunch of people who had a history of outright killing leftists, and the United States was involved in similar actions.

The lack of serious offramps to reunification, along with not as huge a delta in quality of life between north and south for a long time (aid from other countries sure helps!), allowed the DPRK to establish itself as its own nation.

Now there is the surveillance state apparatus allowing the DPRK to exist in its current form in perpetuity. And even if tomorrow they showed up and said "let's unify Korea", South Korea (even ignoring all the ideological reasons it might not want to) would likely be unwilling to absorb an extremely poor country and pay for it (see the painful experience of Germany's unification).

There is probably no off ramp that exists unless people are willing to let the elite walk away clean from the situation in one way or another, and it seems hard to imagine such a future.

And if you are a north korean elite and you are allowed to travel to northern china, you will see a place where things are running more smoothly, but you're still going to see places with massive amounts of internal controls and restrictions. So who's offering the upside to some regime change here?

Nearly every authoritarian country starts with people promising good things. A lot also start with rebels fighting against a group that led a massacre. They're underdog groups with popular support.

Then those underdogs take over. They become paranoid about the possibility of being killed themselves, so they repeat the massacres they fought against. A lot of people who supported the new regime think it's just a few remaining enemies being taken out. It won't happen to them. Then the government starts laying out methods to solidify their control. The list of things seen as traitorous and against national interests grows. It becomes a frog in a boiling pot situation. By the time people realize they might be a target, the system is too complicated and widespread to take down alone, and a new generation of youths have been raised knowing only the current system. And to those youths, things are stable. The most terrifying thing to people raised in stability is the idea of losing that stability. So keeping your head down and following the law is much better than absolutely anything else.

And with the absolute control of information that NK has, a significant portion of people really don't even know a better world exists out there. And they're terrified of anyone that even talks about shaking things up.

For the first couple decades while it was ahead of South Korea economically (in large part due to support from China/USSR) it was not that bad but during that time the system of absolute control by the Kim family was setup and once it was up it is too late to really do anything due to how absolute/brutal the control is (you say anything wrong and you and your whole extended family end up in a prison/death camp)

Basically people are willing to put up with a lot if their lives are getting better (economic growth). Problem with that is what kind of system of control an authoritarian government can setup in that period of growth.

Less of brain control, and more like slaughter of anyone who disagrees or rolls their eyes. Read accounts of those who escaped

Empiricism in the face of a totalitarian regime is difficult.

It's funny to say that because we're living in a bubble too.

If both counties sustain their current trajectories, in 50 years it will be NK re-populating and re-developing SK. And the "if" here is mainly about NK, chances of SK getting out of the death spiral are very thin.

Genuine question that I'm trying to learn about - the industrialisation of Japan and South Korea led to huge wealth creation and increases in quality of living. I know some of that is stagnating now and especially in South Korea things are difficult, but why isn't North Korea ever spoken of in those terms rather than always the GDP hit to South Korea?