
North Korea's silent football matches - rickyconnolly
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22470430
======
GhotiFish
I have to say, I am scared. Very scared actually. I am scared of the
grumblings around North Korea, the overwhelming and consistent negative media.
This has sprung up recently (country scale timeline), over the past 1.5 ish
years i'd say off hand, maybe?

I really am terrified that this is the western nation creating a causus belli.
A reason for war. I'm really scared that in the coming years, the graph of
human population is about to take an unexpected dip. Another nightmare in
human history. Someone tell me that's not going to happen :(

~~~
alinajaf
Very well, you get your wish: A war with North Korea is bad times for pretty
much everyone involved. Seoul bombed into the dust, thousands of refugees
crossing the Chinese border and a potential for a proxy war between the U.S.
and (China/Russia/Iran). Nobody wants this, especially not the North Korean
regime. For all their bluster, they are still begging for food from pretty
much anyone who will listen to them.

According to experts on the regime, recent threats directed at Seoul and
Washington were moves to shore up support from the military faction that was
waning after Kim Jong-un came to power and fired a bunch of senior military
officials.

Instead of war, you get to watch a country deteriorate into the seventh
circle. Humans _bred_ for slavery in concentration camps, people below a
certain height relocated to remote islands and left to die and mothers
executed in front of their children for being 'enemies of the state'. Does
that make you _any less_ scared?

------
rikacomet
As long as they don't nuke anyone, I believe North Koreans have every right to
live as they want, no matter how strange/hilarious/unmeaning/suppressed their
lifestyle may seem to us.

EDIT: Explanation-<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694012>

~~~
robomartin
A number of issues with your position.

First of all, people, regardless of country, don't start wars, governments do.
The North Korean people will not nuke anyone, ever. If that happens it will be
done by their government. Be sure to understand that distinction as you go
forward in life. The hundred million people killed during the world wars died
because of decisions and actions taken by governments, not farmers in Germany,
teachers in Japan, taxi drivers in New York or restaurant owners in London.
War is one of the most regrettable failures of our collective approaches to
government.

As for the rest, read the Allegory of the Cave. Someone who only knows shadows
does not know reality. You seem to imply this is perfectly acceptable. I think
most of the negative reaction you are seeing is because, of course, this idea
is deeply flawed and, at some level, really cruel.

I'll take this to an uncomfortable extreme. Suppose the town next to yours has
a culture of child abuse. That's just what they do. Every home has a dungeon
and kids are kept in there until they become adults. No education is provided
at all.

You and I look at this from the outside. You say it is OK no matter how
horrible this might look to us. I say it is not.

I know you've had criticism for being young. I won't go there other than to
say that there are a lot of indoctrinated young idealists in the HN audience.
In some cultures they come out of school indoctrinated and fail to understand
the world and their environment until perhaps decades later. I'd venture to
say people don't really get it until somewhere around 30 to 40 years of age.

Start by reading some of the Greek philosophers. I am not suggesting you take
their writings as facts as much as I would propose they might teach how to
reason and view things from many angles. I don't intend this to imply you are
ignorant. Not even close. It's something from my own education I continue to
find value in over the years and I thought I'd share that with you.

~~~
obviouslygreen
_First of all, people, regardless of country, don't start wars, governments
do._

This is exactly backwards: There is no such entity as a government. It is a
collection of people, appointed in some fashion (whether by others or by
themselves), who make decisions on behalf of a larger group of people. It's
people all the way down.

It's like a corporation in this respect. Google has never _done_ anything, nor
has Microsoft, Citibank, or any of those big earners on Wall Street. There are
not bad corporations or good corporations; there are only corporations run by
people that make decisions and take actions to which we then assign a moral
judgment.

Making the mistake of assigning that judgment to a faceless non-entity and not
to the people who are running it is the same as saying "The North Korean
people will not nuke anyone, ever." If a nuke is launched by North Korea, it
absolutely was launched by North Korean people: Those who gave the order to
launch it. This is why different politicians within the same government can
continue to hate, disagree with, and rail against each other, and why it's
never so simple as "country x did thing y, they're all evil, kill 'em all."

If it were that simple -- or even if many people believed it were -- we'd have
all wiped each other out very quickly after the advent of the nuclear bomb (if
not before).

~~~
robomartin
Sorry, that's nonsense. Did the people of the US decide to attack Iraq? Nope.
A few people in government did. Yes, they are US citizens. Still, it is a
ridiculous stretch to say that the people of the US decided to go into Iraq.
Nobody asked me. I would have said not to do it.

