The belief that all people are equal and want peace is comforting. But comfort does not make it true.
The 20th century offered a brutal lesson: whole nations can be reshaped by totalitarian rule until their populations lose the moral instincts of free societies. And unless force intervenes, they do not return to normal on their own.
We see this in the starkest form in North Korea. One bloodline, one culture, and one language split in two by ideology. The result? One half of Korea became a global democracy; the other became a dynastic death cult. Over decades, North Koreans have been deprived not just of material comforts, but of history, truth, even selfhood.
They have not simply been ruled by terror. They have been reprogrammed.
This is not unique to North Korea. It is the trajectory of any regime that fuses violence, ideology, and control. It is Russia, where generations have been raised to see imperialism as pride, lies as patriotism, and trauma as normal. It is Iran, where children are taught to chant death slogans before they can read. It was the Soviet Union, where memory was rewritten, neighbors denounced, and conscience dissolved.
