[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Itse

Had US not intervened, we most likely would have a much more normal nation than current North Korea somewhere around there.

The amount of collective devastation and trauma caused on the North Vietnames by the UN/US military should not be underestimated. According to many notes, there was no notable building of any kind left in NK by the time it was over. Among the targets were all major dams in the area, which deliberately flooded large parts of agricultural lands, leading a famine that threatened to kill millions if not for the humanitarian aid from other socialist countries. Every city, town and village was a "valid military target" worthy of napalm and firebombings. The bombing was so brutal even the famous humanitarian Winston Churchill criticized it for excessive cruelty. As wikipedia puts it, "Pyongyang, which saw 75 percent of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets. By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea."

An estimated 12-15% of NK population died during the war.

The bombing of North Korea is right up there with the worst atrocities ever committed by "forces of democracy", and is probably a major reason why the people of that country developed such a twisted relationship to both their own leadership and the outside world.

Of course North Korea was already a totalitarian state who started the war, so there's valid reasons why the UN/US intervened, but the choices made during that intervention were probably extremely harmful to both the longterm reputation of the UN and the US, and the current state of the peninsula.

I can't speak for the rest of the information but Winston Churchill died in 1963, long before the US started bombing N Vietnam