North Korea 'executes 80 people for watching foreign films'

[Ash_F]

95. Well that's great that you made some steps to educate yourself.

Your are on your way to getting it. You need to spend some more time reading up on the lead up to the War. In the early days, the South had many revolutionaries, liberals students and academics, who attempted to resist the lord-peasant system that the right wing US and SK power-mongers had in store for them. They were brutally put down and yes it was unlike anything that happened in NK at the time. The atrocities were a major trigger for the war.

NK's regime is actually worse than it was in the 1950's, not the same. The country has moved towards right wing totalitarianism, while SK has moved ironically, and thankfully, to the left. Shifts like that happen in war and politics as time goes on. Consider that Republicans were the party that freed the slaves, and look at what they are now.

But don't confuse these shifts, however fortuitous for SK, with the notion that US has done the right thing for Koreans at any point in its sordid history with them. They did their best to beat down ordinary Koreans, time and time again in the favor big business and feudal lords, right up through the Reagan administration. By then it was the fifth or sixth revolt and most of the culprits had grown old or died. Their kin were diminished and lacked the energy and power to dominate(though they make up what remains of the far right today). Only after that was SK able to claw its way towards first world status.

Once Americans begin to accept what they had done wrong, they can stop making the same mistakes in the present. The major mistake at present would be letting the wealthy few dictate national policy while lapping up inane media soundbites from television intended to make them docile and pliable.