[qeternity]

> An attack on North Korea, even if a justifiable retaliation, would feel like an attack on the Chinese people for a great many everyday people in China.

I lived in Beijing for a while and I can’t say I agree with this. For sure, China is an enormous country with much cultural surface area, so I could be wrong.

But this does not strike me as an obvious conclusion.

[arcanon]

The Korean War:

USA afraid of communisms spread. Sends MacArthur to Korea. He crushes the Korean communists. USA believes it to be a clean sweep. Mao surprise s USA with massive army encirclement of USA forces. USA forced to flee south and hold the line that became demarcation between north and south.

There is a 0% chance China would allow the USA to take NK.

They also love provoking Japan. Their entire origin story is about fighting against the Japanese in the 30s.

[stickfigure]

I'm not entirely sure that lessons from 70 years ago are strictly applicable today. Sure, there is some memetic carryover, but all the people in charge then are dead now.

If NK actually launches an attack on a "western" country, full war will begin. If China decides to get involved, that's really on them. I wish it were otherwise, but that's how it is.

[arcanon]

Here is a movie from 2020 in China that did equivalent of $173 million in RMB: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrifice_(2020_film)

It is not stale in their psyche.

[stickfigure]

Here's a movie that grossed $482.3 million, and was the highest grossing film in the US that year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Private_Ryan

Yet I don't think anyone here is interested in war with Germany.

[arcanon]

Germany as portrayed doesnt exist anymore. The CCP and USA does.

Also, have you noticed how in the US there arent really any “Saving Private Ryan”s about the Korean War?

[qeternity]

> There is a 0% chance China would allow the USA to take NK.

Agreed. This, however, was not the substance of my comment.

The US would not tolerate an attack on Israel/Taiwan/others. That doesn’t mean that if China attacked Taiwan, the average American would feel like they had been attacked.

[arcanon]

I don’t think it makes sense to go to Taiwan or Israel for analogy; The Average American didnt bleed for either of those places like they did in Korea.

But, I think the Canada invasion analogy is also even too weak; Canada doesn’t exist because of the USA like NK does because of the CCP.