No Stupid Questions

Generally countries in the west only get involved in conflicts if they get something out of it, be it directly via getting wealth from the country, or indirectly like curbing successful non-capitalistic economies before they catch on and their own people start questioning the billionaires. The "we're there to liberate people" is just marketing speech.

Generally frowned upon to invade countries.

Ludicrously costly. Your tax payers will want to know why it's more important than everything else you do with their money.

Immense suffering. Mostly by the people you're trying to liberate but also your own troops and their families.

They have nukes and could probably blow up at least a few regional cities. If the regime is threatened they will most likely use them.

South Korea or China or Russia are the only countries with land borders. China and Russia find NK useful to have arround to annoy US. Seoul is within artillerty range of the border.

Building up a new state in it's place is very difficult. Remember how the Taliban took back power about 15 minutes after the US left Afghanistan?

America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the "Korean War".

We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.

Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime's propaganda will make sure they never forget.

If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the "Arab Spring" model is much more effective and humane than the "Afghanistan War" model.

World powers typically let countries do whatever they want to their own citizens, it's only when they do stuff to people of other countries that they get involved.

Same reason why no one does anything about the atrocities that happen within the US.

Also there’s a city of 20 million people like 10 miles from the border that could get nuked just by conventional weapons. Adds complications

Because that roads leads to war. The moment one country decides it has the authority to overule another's sovereignity because they disagree with what's going on there, it becomes a free for all.

This line of thinking is the very reason why there are two Koreas today, because of two superpowers who thought they knew better and could make a nice profit in the process.

We have a word for this: Colonialism.

We all see and hear what goes on over there.

Bullshit.

America was never about helping the people of the world. Many who believe that are mostly victims of propaganda. It’s all about American interests. If it’s in their interest they will give some reason like liberating a people as a pretence to enable military action.

Also to directly answer the question, they have nukes trained on Seoul, have the backing of China which considers it a buffer against western influenced south kr

Nukes. We know they have them and missiles to deliver them. Any situation where a wildcard like North Korea uses nukes in any offensive capacity is terrifying. "Nuclear War: A Scenario" is a great modern book on how things could go to hell if one single North Korean nuclear missile is launched towards the United States.

Artillery. In any case of open war on North Korea anyone within artillery range of the NK border will be bombarded with heavy shelling. Even if it lasted for just an hour or two before the batteries were eliminated the civilian casualties and destruction would be like a large natural disaster. Now imagine if chemical shells were added to the mix, because they have those too.

China has the most leverage to help North Korea on a humanitarian and diplomatic level without risking war, so if it could be done the best chance is through them.

Because - improbably, given its track record elsewhere - the world has worked out that the solution to someone killing kids isn't to kill more kids.

Because north korea only make empty threats and the west are hypocrites and never gave a damn,about internstional law, democracy and human rights in other countries

Oh absolutely the west would love to effect regime change in North Korea. Morale win, keep the military industrial complex going, grow the economy, get rid of some pesky poors in combat, maybe hoover up some natural resources.

The problem is China, NK is strategically important to them as a source of said natural resources and as a buffer zone against South Korea. Plus lots of slave labour, global economies can never have enough of that.

So yeah, messing with North Korea means messing with China. Despite some real grade A morons in power nobody has been that stupid yet.

Short answer is that NK is pretty much self-contained. Occasional Kim might rattle his sabre but no one is too worried about it. Until they start making serious threats to the stability of other countries it's just a case of leave well enough alone.

Sure it sucks what the people of NK have to endure but it's not for other countries to tell them how they should live unless they directly ask for help or start threatening the sovereignty of other countries.

As someone else in the comments mentioned, WW2 wasn't an intervention to protect the German citizens that were being persecuted, it was a reaction to German invasion of other nations.

china is the only reason why NK doesnt collapse right away, the ccp uses NK as a buffer against SK and the west. NK is a true vassal state of china, and ccp has recently begun making headways into russias natural resources.

China is the answer. Nobody does anything about North Korea for the same reason China doesn't invade Taiwan.

Seoul is so close to the border, it’s within artillery range of NK. Kim can cause all kinds of havoc without resorting to nukes. If provoked enough, he could put one (or more) craters in South Korea’s largest city, without even playing his scariest card.

Then there’s the possibility of a military response from China. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that.

Lastly, NK has been under all kinds of sanctions for years. It might not be the “anything” you have in mind, but many nations seem to be doing about as much as they can without risking all-out war.

NK could not defeat the US or China militarily but it could do quite a bit of damage to SK before anyone could stop them. This is a big reason the US doesn’t intervene.

China is concerned about the population of NK suddenly becoming millions of refugees they’ll need to recuse and deal with. So they would rather the regime not collapse.

Ah, the old question about what to do about North Korea, it occupies the minds of many, there are some answers, many lead to more questions, and so on.

The stakes are increadibly high, so we have to tread very carefully.

Let's bring up a few key facts.

1. NK is a totalitarian state with a huge personality cult surrounding the Kim family.
2. NK is supported by both China and Russia, they both have a highly vested interest in keeping the status quo.
3. NK is located within artillery range of SK's capital city, Seoul.
4. NK's society is vastly different from all of it's neighbours, even the language used in NK is noticably different from the language spoken in SK.
5. NK has nuclear weapons.
6. NK does not have a problem ignoring the normal rules of diplomacy.

Now, you ask what other countries can do to help the people of NK, that is a hugely complicated question, which in general is mostly answered with an answer no one really wants to hear:

Support the current regime

For any proper aid to get into NK you need the support of the regime, and they will take the credit for the aid.

I saw a documentary of a film crew following a team of surgeons travelling to NK to help people who had lost their sight, it was a simple operation, preformed and funded by foreign organizations, the regime had only allowed the team access.

The operation took maybe a few min per patient, they replaced a lens in the eyes of the patient, and as soon as the patient was done, they rushed to the portraits of the leaders of NK, got on their knees and thanked them deeply for their graciousness of restoring their eyesight.

This is the kind of society NK is, everything is tied to the leader.

This is the starting point, and you have 26 million people to deal with...

Ok, say that a world power decide that they have had enough with the Kim family and this is worth going to war over.

What can we expect?

Regardless of what countries are involved, Seoul WILL be bombarded.

So now the attacker is hated both in NK and SK as well as probably a lot of other countries.

NK will use their nukes, and possibly other WMD they have.

Then comes China....

China loves NK as a buffer against the west, so they would and have deployed the PLA to save NK.

They have nukes

Because China doesn't want anyone to.

Countries are not good or bad they don't have friends they have interests. Is always a good rule of thumb when thinking about Geopolitics.

The same reason you never hear from what happens inside abusive households until someone from within speaks up (aka: a "defector")

Edit: As for the follow up questions:

Imagine you live in the "hood" where the authorities doesn't do shit, and you see someone who's part of a gang abuse their child, are you gonna go confront them at the risk of getting your whole family shot to death? That's what MAD is like on the world stage. North Korea has China as an ally, don't forget about that.

Nobody wants to do that. North Korea is a shithole-class country that hates SK, is propped up by China, and to a lesser extent, Russia, who basically use them as slave labor and cannon fodder for their illegal war in Ukraine.

While NATO could easily steamroll NK, SK is right there and would get heavily damaged in a war. And then SK would probably have to take care of a ton of starving, brainwashed, uneducated people and a bombed flat country. Nobody wants to fix them, and superpowers like China are actively working against peaceful initiatives like reunification.

It's an injustice for the world, but there's much bigger fish to fry on the world stage right now. Existential, extinction-class threats like climate change and nuclear war. Democracies fighting tooth and nail against totalitarianism, like Ukraine. And western countries in various fights against the predictable but extremely annoying rise in fascism.

We all see and hear what goes on over there.

Do we? We only get a little bit of news from there, and I wouldn't be sure how reliable it is.

Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people.

Help how? Go to war and slaughter most of their population? They are already heavily mobilized, and no doubt they'd conscript a lot more in case of a conflict. Not to mention they have nukes.

Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization?

Who is 'we'? No offence, but this sounds like some oblivious American patriot asking why America hasn't saved the world yet.

Is just not lucrative to step in?

Most countries don't have their own nukes, so they will never even consider getting into a conflict with a country that does have them. Most countries don't have even a fraction of the resources needed for any sort of operation.

Plus, North Korea has powerful allies (like China) and is technically a member of the UN, so you can't just disregard everything and conquer it.

Feel free to pitch the idea to congress. It will cost somewhere in the realm of trillions of dollars to invade, occupy, and rebuild North Korea. We're talking an occupation lasting decades. A full time military presence for the foreseeable future as North Korea rebuilds something resembling a functional democratic society.

Don't get me wrong, their military would get absolutely bodied in a full on shooting war with any sort of NATO-esque military coalition. But they have a sizable entrenched force with more than a few functional nuclear weapons. It would cost A LOT of lives.

So, that's the bill. If you think you can convince congress to go for it, go nuts.

We live in a sad world, western democracy with high standard regarding human right are the exception, not the norm.

So are we gonna start war against every dictatorship? Look at the results in Afghanistan instead of freeing them, they now rank worse than North Korea in the economist democracy index not only they got a 20 year long war, but in the end stayed one one of the worst dictatorship in the planet, not really a success

Nukes baby!

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What exactly are you suggesting we do about it? They’ve got enough conventional artillery aimed at Seoul to cause millions of casualties the moment it even looks like we’re about to intervene.

"Step in?" Well, because the world isn't run by a mom and dad who step in and make governments do the right things.