@Matt-O117-SV

2 days ago

Some important extra elements. Rhee was a Japanese collaborator. When the US came in they just reemployed the same bastards that had been suppressing Korea for the Japanese, except now they worked for America. Rhee was a devout fascist, and acted like it. Kim il sung, by contrast, was a resistance leader, and a popular choice to lead a reconstruction government after the war. The north did invade the south, but it was in reasonable retaliation, after the south initiated aggression with several attacks into the north. The war killed over two million Koreans, the majority of whom were civilians. Which is what happens when the USA carpet bombs villages and machine guns refugee columns. The south was fascist until about 1989, with US backing. Rhee's government, and their successors, murdered a lot of their own people: trade unionists, teachers, academics, students, people who were believed to have gone to a protest one time, people who accepted a bag of food aid when they were starving, from an organization that was later banned. Rhee killed a lot of people. The north was no picnic either, but the main problem there was starvation, and the war itself. Today, the north is messed up, and not a good place to be for anyone, while the south has reformed, and you can live pretty well there, and probably not be killed by the government. It's important to remember the context though. The north didn't just decide to become a hellhole, it was isolated and brutalized for decades, like a junkyard dog that's been locked in a cage and been poked with sticks until it's starving and crazy. While the south had decades of economic support, and sponsorship into the global trade network. This isn't just about present good guys and bad guys. Historical context matters.

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