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Comment by tacheiordache | Hacker News Reader

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There must be some rule on the internet where if some geopolitical thing happens anywhere in the world at least one person will blame Russia.

And a similar rule that at least one person will defend Russia, regardless of how truthful the accusations are. And in this particular case, NK troops fighting in a land war in Europe at Russia's side is a major geopolitical shift, whether you agree or not.

It’s a big shift, but from a NK/SK standpoint probably the bigger issue is what exactly NK got in exchange for the massive ammunition deliveries and the tens of thousands of troops they sent to die in Ukraine.

Whatever it is, it must be pretty big, perhaps advanced missile technology, maybe even new types of nuclear weapons. Either way it’s bound to significantly change the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula.

How about just basic energy inputs like fuel and fertilizer? This is a country that is so abysmally poor the state has a feces collection quota. Peasants must collect their daily dumps and give them to the state for use in the field or suffer the wrath of the local DPRK gangster.[0]

[0]https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/manure-02012022130916...

Perhaps that could have been true for the shipments of shells, but I can't see NK sending tens of thousands of troops to a meatgrinder that they have absolutely no stake in just for some fertilizer and oil. NK has the ability to demand much more strategic things and I'd be virtually certain that they have.

Also, “well being of people” < “military stuff”

> NK troops fighting

Still zero serious evidence of this.

At this point it seems pretty likely tbh. Putin signed a new mutual pact with Kim earlier this year. There are videos of North Korean men receiving Russian military uniforms and signing forms in Sergeyevka. The US, Ukraine, NATO, and South Korea are all reporting incidences of North Koreans fighting and dying in the Kursk region. Putin has given wishy washy statements like "how we utilise the mutual pact is our business".

And another will blame the US president.

> Kremlin's sawing chaos in the democratic world

"President Yoon has taken an overwhelmingly pro-US policy compared to previous presidents," and his "PPP is fiercely anti-communist and advocates a hawkish policy against North Korea" [1]. With "many PPP politicians support[ing] South Korea having nuclear weapons on its own," this is not the man Pyongyang or Moscow want as dicator in Seoul.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Party_(South_Kore...

I doubt this has anything to do with anybody outside of South Korea, but this is precisely the sort of man adversarial states would want.

Think about what's going to happen next! You have an extremely unpopular leader trying to sieze power by force, presumably soon banning opposition parties and more.

It's going to create extreme discontent at the minimum, and civil war at a maximum. And once he's eventually overthrown, his allies and interests often become anathema to the next regime, and the people.

This is is like an enemy successfully carrying out a color revolution on fast forward.

> You have an extremely unpopular leader trying to sieze power by force, presumably soon banning opposition parties and more

By this logic America won when Assad won the Syrian civil war. In geopolitics, power trumps popularity.

Very ironic given the ruling party in SK is called "People Power".

more or less ironic than the official name of their northern neighbor, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea?

What about ism?

Assad had majority approval prior to the war [1] (can't find any more recent adversarial polls, which may be telling) and his family has been in power for decades. The comparison is inappropriate.

It's more akin to saying that states adversarial to the US won after the CIA overthrew a popular secular democracy in Iran, and installed a extremely unpopular puppet monarchy that was obseqious to the US.

In general maintaining power without relatively widespread support is quite difficult - probably even more so in the digital era which makes conspiracies so much easier to organise.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrian...

> Assad had majority approval prior to the war (can't find any more recent adversarial polls, which may be telling) and his family has been in power for decades

"Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war" is not 55% approval rating, it's 55% making the pragmatic choice against civil war.

> maintaining power without relatively widespread support is quite difficult

Strange claim in a thread about the Korean peninsula.

So protestors, and other politicians, rejected his claim of martial law - it's now over, and he will likely be arrested.

Seems there yet remains more to power than titles and declarations.

> he will likely be arrested

He hasn't done anything illegal. Being asked to resign or forced to by impeachment are more likely.

You should check out South Korea's history. Presidents ending up in prison or killed is a national tradition.

If there were a prediction market for this within 3 years, I'd expect the line to be around 70%. He just did a weird spin on the 'if you go after the king, don't miss' and missed.

difficult seems like the right word. it's definitely not a walk in the park to run a brutal dictatorship like North Korea.

I don't think we can blame Moscow or Pyongyang, but I can't imagine they'd be unhappy about the leader of a prosperous wester-allied neighbouring democracy rejecting democracy with the short term outcome likely being him immediately deposed (probably taking a few fiercely anticommunist hawks down with him) or immediately ostracised by the international community

Russians, highly likely ))

Yes, Putin meddling in North Korea should be alarming to South Korea.

Russia having better relationships with NK should have been expected by everyone since the start of sanctions rather than treated like a horrific surprise that nobody could have ever imagined. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and so on.

No. South Korea should be more alarmed about how US is treating their allies. Henry Kissinger quote: “It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

I strongly dislike Kissinger and his legacy, but apparently the full quote [1] doesn't imply being America's friend is fatal:

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

Here Kissinger is advising Nixon not to let South Vietnam's dictator Thieu suffer the same fate as Diem (who was deposed and killed with the US support, or at least, the US turning a blind eye).

[1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/56471/30861

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