The Korean Problem

The North Korean leadership are currently de facto gods.

They have billions of dollars, harems, and absolute power of life and death over everyone in their country.

There's nothing you can offer them that would convince them to relinquish power willingly. It would pretty much have to be an invasion.

Just fucking wait until Kim dies and the country dissolves into anarchy. He's not going to think his succession through and the state will crumble without a cult-of-personality to lead them. NK institutions are nothing without a Heavenly Leader.

Actively support fleeing north koreans in their efforts to get the fuck out. Turn up media smuggling to 11. If it triggers NK enough to break off a war, so be it, the international community will have no choice but to see them as aggressors, otherwise they get on the shitlist themselves. Rub my hands and watch as the numbers of fleeing individuals rises exponentially as the country absolutely goes to shit.
East Germany crumbled at some point aswell and NK does not really have a superpower handling them as a satellite. Their only purpose of that shithole is its existence as a buffer zone and everyone knows it.

These are surely valid, but it seems like Kim is pretty irrational. Who's to say that when he gets old/sick he wouldn't get super belligerent and try to grandstand more with his nukes? Even if all the missile batteries are old, they've got 17000? artillery pieces aimed at Seoul some of those will go through even with a robust missile defense system.

I agree the North Korean leadership wouldn't give up power willingly, but if China had tacit agreement to take over North Korea and all of their accompanying mineral reserves, they may be temporarily dissuaded from progressing in their goals in the South China Sea, or their border disputes with India, or from tightening relations with Russia.

Do you really think his cabinet is as retarded as the general brainwashed population? Thet surely will find a way to find a successor themselves and push him onto the people, they eat up everything anyway. Nobody will ask twice when they are told that the great leader appointed a successor in his endless wisdom.

There is no Korean problem. There are interests of various parties.

Status Quo is the best solution, which is why it is in effect.

The most likely scenario of resolution would be withdrawal of American troops, appeasement of North Korean leadership and absorption of North Korea under Chinese oversight.
They aren't gods, they are old-fashioned aristocracy, and mind you, when Kim Jong Il died, the second most influential man inside DPRK, as well as most influential man outside both were in the Chinese pocket. Young man KJU just happened to be too good, so he immidiately dealt with all that nonsense.

>These are surely valid, but it seems like Kim is pretty irrational.
North Korean politics are significantly more insightful and rational, than, say, American politics. If they are making a scene internationally, it is, too, fully calculated and orchestrated.

Evacuate Seoul for a week and send in some troops

Juche isn't communism.

...

Well, that's a big problem. Anyone who's read Cat's Cradle knows the problem with ailing dictators with a God-Complex. The collapse of North Korea would need to happen very quickly, and very messily.

No, but they are chickenshits when pit against the Great Leader's ire. I don't think the North Korean statesmen, warlords, whatever you'd like to call them, are very unified. I'm sure there's plenty of factioning and dissidence behind the veil of Kim shooting his uncle with AA guns. However educated they are, a real power vacuum would destroy NK once infighting begins.

Over the course of the next 50 years or so, transition the North away from Juche towards a more mainstream feudal monarchy, transferring state-owned assets into direct personal ownership by various members of the Kim family and the senior military officials.

From there, you could reunify with the South easily enough. The Nork elite could seamlessly transition into the role of oligarchs similar to the elite families in the South.

China doesn't want to invade North Korea because

>they would have to send a bunch of One Child generation soldiers to their deaths and deal with the fallout of their grieving families
>the North Koreans would nail a lot of northeastern China with nerve gas, biological agents and maybe a few atom bombs
>rebuilding North Korea would be a colossal pain in the ass
>23 million malnourished, medieval peasants would pour out across the Yalu river looking for an escape from the hell they live in
>they'd have to deal with South Korea (and the UN) repeatedly asking them when the occupation is going to end, and they won't want to tell the truth and just say "never"

Uh... What about China? Muh communist puppet-state and all that. I don't think they'd be too happy to see feudalism reinstated.

Work with fatty to slowly modernize the country in such a way it saves face

>Pic related

China is not an ideologically communist country anymore. They wouldn't care how the North Koreans structure their internal politics as long as they don't host US troops in their territory.

North Korea is a key piece for China when they eventually retake Taiwan (prevent the US from using SK as a base).

At this point there really is no way to beat NK, if things get bad China will just send aid to NK.

Yes the insightfulness and grandstanding of a Leader grandstanding to get better aid deals so his people can pretend they aren’t famished every day

>insightfulness and rationality*

based as always

Nuke the bastards, not China but NK

>muh not real communism

China has ~300 nuclear weapons fielded.

The US has more than a thousand.

If we really wanted to play bloody knuckles, then everyone involved would suffer horrifically, but the US would get its way.

We cant go to nuclear war with China man. 300 is still 300 and our interceptors can’t handle that many. That’s a lot of command and control infrastructure and even cities we can’t just lose.

Well, OP asked "how would you solve this" and most of the answers involve some chance of nuclear warfare.

More people would die in the war than live in all of North Korea, but we would technically be solving the problem. The handful of people on the Korean peninsula who survive would be able to live in a democratic, capitalist wasteland.

Convince USA to stop sending welfare and support to South Korea.
Watch the problem solves itself.

Not to mention is China and US go to war and are hurling nukes at one another, the CSO will be fighting NATO and Russia has more nukes than the US. Pakistan and India will also prolly find some reasons or another to nuke each other and Israel will preemptively turn the middle east to glass. Basically everyone on Earth would be fucked.

China annex North Korea and possibly South also.

Korea annex North China and possibly South also.

Remove all sanctions. Appeal to China to set up trade agreements with North Korea. Allow economic influences to enter North Korea like was done to China. Hopefully they will become a sensible state afterwards.

This operates under the premise that nuclear weapons will not be used. Also we must accept that NK is a nuclear state. Tell them sanctions will be lifted if nuclear non proliferation is agreed to.

This is a really stupid idea. What happens to the nuclear weapons? You think China will allow nuclear korea allied to the US?

What about just roping China in to actually enforcing the UN sanctions? I know China has started to play ball a little on that, but North Korea has just increased trade with India, Russia, Pakistan, and Mozambique instead. Surely that couldn't be beneficial for China, they'd be losing power over their buffer zone.

I dunno about Taiwan, I'll take your word for it. I know the whole reason to even still have a North Korea is to have the buffer state and prevent the US from having troops right next to the Chinese border. After the Olympics here, there's be at least a platitude given towards talk of reunification. Do you think China would agree to let North Korea do that if the US agreed to lessen/limit their troops to only a few forward bases in current South Korea?

What about the concept of allowing South Korea and Japan to develop nuclear weapons to re-balance the region? It'd be huge tensions for a few months while they did so, and it would be counter to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it would blunt North Korean and Chinese ambitions

Bomb one of their big parades
Element of surprise and you get all the military leadership + lots of soldier and missiles
Literally a flawless plan

The thing is, China doesn't want North Korea to fall because

>23 million refugees
>unified Korea would become a major power right next door to them
>don't want US troops anywhere near their borders
>North Korea is a way for them to screw with the yankees without being too direct

And the more countries who have nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that somebody is going to launch one.

Especially being that the hatreds between, say, Japan and China are so much more intense and personal than the problems between China and the US.

Also, it might touch off an arms race, and those are never good for anybody.

We need a Kissinger to do rapprochement to Korea. There can be such a thing as a armed but friendly North Korea. The important thing is accepting that North Korea is a state that will not be removed without nuclear retaliation. If we can be insured that nuclear weapons will not proliferate in the Asian region we should be happy with it.

Norks aren't exactly allied to USA.

whoops i thought you said stop sending welfare to north korea.

the us doesnt send welfare to south korea though. south korea is extremely wealthy. they are military allies. Are you claiming that the us sends welfare to the UK or germany?

Nuke Pyongyang.

Do it in such a way that doesn't let them see it coming, to be sure we get the Kims and the rest of the government.

>Are you claiming that the us sends welfare to the UK or germany?
Yes. But even more to South Korea, they didn't went from middle age to a wealthy country by magic.

assuming it is from an American position.
try and get buddy buddy with the Chinese, then together with them get yourself a doppelganger of kim jong-il and frame young kim jong-un as someone who committed a coup. and then let china handle the new north Korea through the doppelganger. don't think the US would get China to cooperate if the US would get control of NK.

It's mostly because East Asian keynesian crony capitalism is very, very good at economic convergence.

Name another East Asian country that is very, very good at economic convergence.

Japan, Taiwan, and China all did the same thing.

These east Asian Confucian cultures are really good at playing catch-up.

Japan was funded by USA like S Korea, China isn't East Asia and no matter the propaganda it's a hellhole, Taiwan ok, but it's a little tax haven. The "Asian are good at economics" is a cliche.

Well, China sucks, but they converged economically very quickly.

Like 9% a year GDP growth for thirty years.

Hong Kong and Singapore also did really well for themselves, but I'm not sure if they were doing like a 12% a year sprint the way Japan was.

>Hong Kong and Singapore also did really well for themselves
It's like saying Monaco and San Marino are European powers.

million refugees
I never got this, wouldn't they all stay and become citizens of Korea? South already recognizes defectors as citizens. There wasn't a massive influx of refuges East after the fall of the Berlin wall, they were welcomed as liberators.

This makes me wonder: which country experienced the greatest yearly GDP growth in history? And I guess only counting real countries that can't just double their GDP by building a harbor.

>Like 9% a year GDP growth for thirty years.
This is highly relative, they have hundreds million people living in atrocious poverty. I wouldn't call it a miracle.

There is no problem, the USA needs to fuck off.

Well, they both have an GDP of about 300 billion a year.

To put this in perspective, all of Africa is 1.3 billion a year.

But really, the point I'm trying to make is that Asian economies have done a very good job of catching up to western ones in the generations after WW2.

I don't think it's purely because of US help, I think it's mostly because they have a collectivist culture that can make them very effective at business and governance if the people ruling the country want economic growth.

You may shitpost all you want, but it is a fact, which is sufficiently demonstrated by the latest exchange.

As for poor economy and technology - it is just how they roll.

Japan in the sixties was consistently doing double digits. Shit was crazy.

Liberate the occupied South from the American capitalist pigdogs and their Jewish paymasters. Unite Korea under the national socialist Juche banner.

>I think it's mostly because they have a collectivist culture that can make them very effective at business and governance if the people ruling the country want economic growth.
Apparently it only works for micro states.

People like you fundamentally don't understand the problem.

NK is a buffer state between US influence and China. At the same time, China wants a peaceful unity between NK/SK. Transition to peaceful unification means China wins over their neighbor. US cannot allow this as this would mean loss of influence in Korea.

Cut them in half with a saw and let S.Korea become an island.

ship SPAM to the Norkies and flood their food supplies with SPAM to make them fat

The only sensible answer, thank you.

There's already a US client state bordering China (Vietnam)