North Korea

Too often are Presidents, politicians, and everyday Prince Charming’s use North Korea as another excuse for the United States to get themselves involved in another nation’s internal affairs.  Most often, this desire for American involvement is due to our dedication to democracy, and attempting to implement it around the world in order to form a strong globalist coalition of democracies.  However, such a fantasy is just that – a fantasy.  There are complexities, intricacies, and nuances within every nation that none of us will be able to understand as outsiders.  We believe that American democracy is a round peg, and every other nation happens to be a round hole.  This is simply a fallacy.  North Korea, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of our failed interjections are triangular and square holes, but we, the persistent child, force the peg in regardless.

This is certainly not to say, however, that North Korea is given a clean record and should not be influenced otherwise.  Though, when we decide that, since our system of government and way of life is superior to theirs, we must force them to adhere to it, we find the flaws in our own ideals.  It is clear that the United States, free of human rights atrocities like the DPRK, can serve as a model to not only the Kim family, but other nations around the world.  However, we cannot allow ourselves to force this onto them.  To do so downplays and ignores those intricacies and nuances that each nation holds.  The best thing, at this point, that the United States could do, would simply be to serve as a model for North Korea to follow.  Although this is inefficient, it is much more efficient and effective than forcing it. 

Further, this is only referencing American policy on the internal affairs of North Korea and their blatant human rights violations.  There continues to be an ever-present external threat to the United States posed by North Korea, which should be handled otherwise.  The nuclear threat that the DPRK poses is real, and diplomacy is the only present way to alleviate that threat.  We have seen Presidents flaunt their attempts at diplomacy with North Korea for decades, although none seem to have made any progress.  Frankly, certain Presidents from the 1990’s made things significantly worse.

Diplomacy with North Korea seems to be a very challenging task, which it certainly is.  However, it is not impossible.  There is an abundance of stigma surrounding the nation which is almost completely negative.  This stigma creates most of the difficulty in working with them, since it is considerably frowned upon to cooperate with nations that commit such heinous acts upon their people.  If we were able, as Americans, to blind ourselves to these things and make an honest attempt to help these oppressed peoples, we may be able to see good results.  Kim Jong Un is a man that, although crazy, would be able to rationalize a discussion if given the right opportunity.  Our leaders have spent too long demeaning North Korean leaders, while at the same time, attempting to have diplomatic discussions.  Two such things are simply mutually exclusive.