My class was having a discussion in a Comparative Genocide course about how genocides are not so strictly defined by the outright killing of a certain group of people, but should also include regimes that oppress a certain group of people as well. With North Korea's extreme oppression that has happened under the Kim dynasty since the 1950's, would you actually consider them a genocidal dynasty or just an aggressive dictatorship?
What similarities and differences do you see with the more prototypical genocidal rulers like Hitler's Nazis', Stalin's Soviet Union, or even Pot's Khmer Rouge? Also why did these different genocides, including North Korea, target their victims?
What similarities and differences do you see with the prototypical genocidal rulers and their followers like Hitler's Nazis', Stalin's Soviet Union, or even Pot's Khmer Rouge?
Edit: Because I guess I'm a fucking idiot.
I don't think you understand the word "genocide" :
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
I would argue the Kim dynasty is following an aggressive dictatorship. They're not specifically targetting groups, rather people who are disagreeing with them.
Look at the root of the word. The word "genocide" is a portmanteau of the Greek "genos," meaning "kin," and the latin "cidere," meaning "to kill." In modern times, the UN Convention on Genocide defines it as "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group."
North Korea, of course, is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous places on the planet, as Myers' The Cleanest Race makes clear. So, I'm not sure what you mean by North Korea is genocidal. They're clearly not targeting people based on race, color, creed, or national origin. Rather, North Korea targets people who are "opposed" to the regime, their families, and their associates, and there's a massive bureaucratic infrastructure dedicated to rooting out such opposition. (It's political violence on a mass scale, sure, but it's not genocide.)
In comparison, entire classes of persons were targeted by Hitler (Jews, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses), Stalin (Ukranians), and Pol Pot (Sino-Khmers, Buddhists, Vietnamese). There is some overlap with ordinary mass murder with all of these, of course, like with Stalin's purges and Pol Pot's targeting of the intellectual classes, but it cheapens the term to put North Korea in that category.
The difference between genocide and ordinary mass murder is the motivation-- and North Korea doesn't have that motivation.