In this passage, Harden challenges South Korean politicians’ shameful silence on the issue of North Korean prison camps. The brutal reality is that, by and large, governments act in their own best interests—the result is that as awful as the prison camps may be, they haven’t resulted in any concrete changes in foreign policy, either in the U.S. or in South Korea: the camps pose no danger to other countries, and therefore, other countries don’t do much about them.