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It is always beneficial when a world issue becomes the subject of excited discussion outside of the political realm. Only a snob would be angry that a Seth Rogen movie recently did the trick. A corporate media giant’s data has been hacked with theaters receiving threats of violence in the event that they screen The Interview. To call the U.S. government’s actions “retaliation” would imply a clear aggressor, something for which the FBI has provided no proof. Young Americans are therefore gently prodded to direct their outrage toward North Korea while the details of revenge are worked out in Washington.
North Korea has a funny way of staying out of America’s view until an opportune media story pops up, after which it’s renewed as the poster child for totalitarian dictatorships. Citizens of Eritrea and Myanmar will just have to wait their turns for this scrutiny, perhaps indefinitely. However, with a little effort we can find explanations for the ugly events we see today. We could also get rid of needless half-truths about North Koreans in general—that they are all brainwashed peasants in servitude to their Supreme Leader, or that their entire country is deprived and backwards, for example. Partly out of good will and partly because of these stereotypes, no one would put too much blame on the North Korean citizens themselves. We must remember that a country’s government is not its people.
For us to criticize the North Korean government, we must first understand the circumstances that produced it. We might want to explore mass incarceration and propaganda in the U.S. before we condemn other countries on those issues. North Korea probably feels the threat of nuclear war at least as much as we do, and understanding this will give clarity to its aggressions. Five countries have successfully detonated the bomb, and a total of 11 either have or are suspected to have nuclear weapons. Only the U.S. has ever used it against another country, Japan, with effects that are still felt today. Even if the U.S. government wields its nuclear weapons wisely in the future, the same cannot be said of other countries. This is usually where North Korea takes center stage. Other nuclear states deserve our attention as well. Particularly worrying are India and Pakistan, both of which have nuclear weapons and a bitter territorial dispute with each other over control of the Kashmir region. These conflicts could proceed in any direction. The more negative consequences could result in escalating disaster.
Speaking of brutal occupations, Israel retains a policy of secrecy around its nuclear arsenal. We only know it has one because of a whistleblower who spent 18 years in prison (11 in solitary confinement) for revealing these weapons of mass destruction to the world back in 1986. America’s most important ally in the Middle East would be scary even if it didn’t have nuclear weapons, considering its military assault on Gaza left over 2,000 people dead over our summer break. Seemingly not important to the president is that 57 percent of the Arab world would prefer that Iran have nuclear weapons to counter this extraordinary danger in the region. But what do they know? They just live there.
Much of the world is probably in agreement that nuclear war should be avoided at all costs. Americans often blame North Korea for undermining that struggle, but it would boggle our minds to imagine ourselves in its position. First, you have to accept that there could be two nations more powerful than the U.S. Let one militarily occupy our country in the north, the other, to the south. Now allow them to wage a war mostly on the northern territory, where one side bombs all cities and dams to the ground, floods agricultural land, sprays our population with napalm, and comes within an inch of nuking the whole place. You might have an approximate idea of North Korean feelings toward the U.S. at the end of the Korean War. A couple generations down the line, let that same nation continue conducting military exercises in, say, Florida. Let it also make veiled threats about nuclear war and release a movie in which our current president’s head gets blown off. Now you are up to speed on the experience of North Koreans as we head into more ominous times.
These observations do not serve to shine a positive light on the North Korean dictatorship. Our mass media has made the details of the Kim dynasty’s abuses abundantly clear to us. Focusing all of our hatred on a miserably poor East Asian country, however, does not make anyone safer. Standing by in enchantment while our heads of state bully the world has even worse effects. Perceptive Americans will take everything into account before wearing their stars and stripes to the movie theater.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Jared Conner at jared.conner@colorado.edu.
