Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week) [LWN.net]

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 10:20 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Yep. The only enemy here is the North Korean government. Get rid of that and they'll quickly
unite.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 11:47 UTC (Sat) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

By no means this is that simple.
The current North Korean government might not even be the biggest problem there. There are
signs that they are slowly opening their communication to the world. The biggest problem is
poverty and the lack of democracy experience of the people there. Living in Romania you can
observe that having political freedom does not suddenly make the country a flourishing
democracy. One second after the old regime is gone, the new one will be composed from
ambitious people that have been favoured and had political influence in old regime.
As North Korea had a longer dictatorship and people are way more poor than they were in
Romania, I guess the transition is a long and extreme process.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 13:43 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> The biggest problem is poverty and the lack of democracy experience of the people there.

And the fault of whom is that? (hint: notth korean government. And possibly U.S. for giving up
on the war and China for getting involved on the wrong side.)

Now your confusing 'simple' with 'easy'. These are two entirely different things and although
people often relate these things together, they most often are actually not. The concept is
simple, the execution would be difficult.

Right now the best thing that could ever possibly happen to the North Korean people at this
point is if their rulers all of a sudden just sucked into the sun and dissapeared into it with
a yelp and a flash of smoke. I cannot stress that strongly enough; The North Korean government
should not show signs of opening up, they should show signs of extinction. Anything else is
just extending the suffering.

But it's not easy. Easy is something else entirely. In actuality Freedom is almost never easy.
It's usually very very difficult, and usually the choice is between hard freedom and
comfortable slavery and that may make things complex (for some people). But in this case it's
hard eat-your-pet-to-live slavery so it's simple, but difficult.

Think West Germany and East Germany reunification, not Romania. With South Korea, there
already is a thriving and very wealthy country (3rd in Asia, 11th in the world) to the south
with what appears to be a stable government. The adoption would be painfull for S.K., but
almost certainly beneficial for the N.K. people.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 15:21 UTC (Sat) by pawnhearts (guest, #49367) [Link]

> And the fault of whom is that? ...

it does not matter whom. it's just a big problem.

> And possibly U.S. for giving up on the war and China ..

War could never bring freedom. It could only bring stuggle. Freedom cannot be achieved through
violence. 

> .. if their rulers all of a sudden just sucked into the sun and dissapeared into it with a
yelp and a flash of smoke.

Not only rulers, but the whole system. Living in Russia i can tell, that despite switching to
free market, changing ideology, etc. very few is changed inside military, police, education,
bureaucrat systems.. Problem is with minds of those people. And it is almost impossible to
change it. Yeah, soviet government tried, for 70 years - the only result than a lot of people
had been in jail and only became worth.

So you suggest genocide? Just execute/put into prison half of country? You really think it is
a way to freedom?

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 21:57 UTC (Sat) by mmarkov (subscriber, #4978) [Link]

"""War could never bring freedom. It could only bring stuggle. Freedom cannot be achieved
through violence. """

This claim, in one form or another, is accepted unquestionably by the leftist-liberals (my
term). And is blatantly wrong. An obvious counter-example is Korea. The Republic of Korea has
MUCH more freedom than the North Korean monstrosity a.k.a. PDRK. That freedom was granted to
the people of the South by force and violence. Had the UN not acted to the invasion of the
North Korea, all of Korea would be nowadays the concentration camp of the DearLeader.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 2, 2007 1:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

WWII is a pretty blatant example, as is any war consisting of a response 
to the military aggression of an authoritarian or otherwise grossly 
inequitable state. Thanks to a lot of people being violent to another lot 
of people in response to attempted (and successful) invasions, the nasty 
group that killed most of my grandparents' relatives aren't around anymore 
and their policies are pretty much universally reviled.

WWI isn't an example (that was just colonialism: neither side was 
definitely `in the right'), but the response to the Napoleonic Wars may 
have been (not at first, but Napoleon got more and more unhinged as time 
went by).

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 2, 2007 1:32 UTC (Sun) by RobertBrockway (subscriber, #48927) [Link]

> War could never bring freedom. It could only bring stuggle. Freedom cannot > be achieved
through violence.

Actually that's not true.  In World War II many people gained freedom through the overthrowing
of dictatorial regimes.  This was achieved through violence.  
The term "never" is a tricky one as a single counter-example will disprove it.

What I will say is that violence often brings very poor results but to say that it has never
brought freedom is not true.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 2, 2007 18:57 UTC (Sun) by roel (guest, #41887) [Link]

Often a totalitarian regime provides security to the people in general - except to those that
oppose it. A war could bring freedom to the latter - if they survive it - but will cost a big
price. War rages, wastes and lasts.

Not all freedom is good. During war in the absence of law, anarchy rules. Those that can and
are willing to use force it grants freedoms, and those that cannot live in fear because of
this freedom.

War, presented as an inevitability to bring freedom to the people, is often used as a cover to
provide freedoms to the force: to steal diamonds, oil or other riches.

After a war, when successful, there are new political opportunities, but also for those groups
that have become law, using force, during the war. The totalitarian regime may well be
followed by the next.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 15:41 UTC (Sat) by pawnhearts (guest, #49367) [Link]

> choice is between hard freedom and comfortable slavery and that may make things complex (for
some people)

And..
What do you think slavery is?
Proclaimed ideals for US and USSR were almost the same - democracy, freedom, human rights etc.
Yep, economical system was very different, and (as a result) there were no free media and no
way to became millionaire.
But for now - all "free" press is in total economical dependency from few magnates who are
controlling resources. So you see almost the same shit - just the polarity of their "opinions"
had changed.
For most people - it was much easier to get university education, interesting job, personal
apartments(the last is almost impossible now).

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 16:23 UTC (Sat) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

I tryed to keep my last comment short on a technical discussion, that's why it may seem a bit
vague. 
Making North Koreans free people (not talking about unification) is neither simple nor easy.
I will sustain my last post making a variaton to what pawnhearts already said. 
As soon as the old regime is gone, ambitious people will take the lead. Ambititious does not
mean they have the skills to lead a country, nor that their first goal is to make other
people's lives better. After the dictatorship is gone other problems come: civil war, people
that cannot adapt to the new law and from there to a high infractionality, mafia.
I fear that a slow transition is better than a sudden evaporation of the current leaders.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 21:49 UTC (Sat) by mmarkov (subscriber, #4978) [Link]

"""The only enemy here is the North Korean government. Get rid of that and they'll quickly
unite."""

As someone said, it is not that simple. Any totalitarian state inevitably possesses a coercive
machine, like the NKVD/KGB of the former USSR for instance. I dunno what the North Korean
analogy is, but sure they have one. When the totalitarianism starts crumbling, the officers of
the coercive machine begin preparing for the new life - so that they are in control again,
although with non-totalitarian methods. And when the wind of change comes and passes, things
go wrong with the new democracy because - what a surprise! - it has turned into an oligarchy.

This scenario is not inevitable but is possible.  That is what happened in my country,
Bulgaria. There is a negative correlation between the vitality of the civil society and the
chances of the former thought police to coagulate into an oligarchy.  In Poland, The Czech
Republic and Hungary they have stronger societies and consequently resisted better the red
cops. In the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia there are no civil societies whatsoever
and as a result they went into 100% oligarchies, ran by strongmen. We are somewhere in between
:)

I am afraid that North Korea has no vestige of society left because their totalitarianism is
exceptionally strong and fanatical and strict. The chances for the coercive machine of the
regime to turn into a rich oligarchy are quite big, IMHO.

Could Linux Help Bring Both Koreas Together? (Information Week)

Posted Dec 1, 2007 18:57 UTC (Sat) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

IMHO what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union was modern communications. Then that meant
the office photocopier that became too cheap for the guard on it to be more loyal to party
interests than those of work colleagues. And telephone ownership extending beyond the 2
percent comprising the upper class i.e. inner party members. Totalitarian states can't
tolerate the masses knowing about reality as opposed to the official party line, and mass
communications takes away this control. The degree of pain that happens in connection with a
transition from totalitarianism in different countries experiencing this is also somewhat
culturally dependent. 

Cooperation on sport, software development and just about anything else with those who speak
the same language but are outside the control of the party can only help transmit a bit more
reality into the totalitarian situation. So this can only be encouraged but should be seen
within a wider context.