Isn’t the money we’re giving to NK borrowed from China?
EDIT: Ummm…
One of the few posters in this thread that addresses some of the real issues at hand. Americans always seem to forget that it was an American idea to partition the Korea and it was an American idea to draw a line on the 38th parallel without Korean or Soviet consultation.(I find it strange how men who have never seen a given land find it so easy to draw fictitious lines on a map and divide people with such ease and total disregard, much like Radcliffe would do two years later in British India). At the end of the day, two arrogant world powers decided to play their game of political ideology in the Korean peninsula and here we are today.
School yard comments like “North Korea should step up” or “We should finish the job” are serious and troubling when people actually believe in them. At the end of the day, the North Korean people have suffered a lot at the hands of the West and their own government, and we should never forget that…
That’s an undeniable fact that shouldn’t be ignored, and is a remnant of our colonialism that we had in the Philippines as well, but we also can’t ignore the fact that the American government was fearful of communist rule permeating the entire country. There was a strong communist presence within the Korean peninsula at that point, something that shouldn’t be forgotten. We also had Kim Il-sung in the Soviet Union during WWII being primed for being tapped as the communist leader install in Korea.
So what’s worse? Half of Korea suffering under communism, or all of it?
Honestly, it’s not just our fault, it’s the soviets, it’s the UN for allowing it. But real talk, we do share a major role in what’s happened in Korea, good and bad (let’s not forget that S. Korea’s first president was a terrible, ruthless, leader). By now, we have a major role in seeing this through and trying to right the course.
Let’s not forget that up until the end of WWII, that all of Korea was Japan. They spent quite a long time under Japanese rule, with their language, and culture stripped away, and their women being raped by the Japanese. The biggest finger to point is to Japan for what happened after WWII. This is why, after all the rhetoric about comfort women and Dokdo, Japan’s biggest possible act of penitence for their atrocities would also be to work toward unifying Korea in a peaceful, humanized way.
Have you ever read 1984? It might pay off for you to do so, because the Kim playbook isn’t anything that really escaped Orwell’s artistic scope.
Honestly, they fire up the propaganda machine as a distraction of somewhat of a hate vessel that the people can direct their hate at, so that the fact that the North Korean government isn’t doing its job in providing for the people is overlooked and even blamed on the American and South Korean government. Then they make this provocative statements, and the people cheer loudly, and they hold war parades, and they cheer loudly, then after the threats are done, then the people just watch more propaganda video, no one says anything about the threats anymore, and the people tout how great the Great Leader is that by his simple words, he makes nations quake enough to back away.
But now you have a lot of people watching smuggled/pirated South Korean media. A lot of people cross into China, and find out the truth. A large amount of the military knows what’s going on, but is scared to say anything because they’re scared of what will happen to them. Remember, these are people that also have to conduct public executions of dissenters.
So I don’t think you should believe for a second, honestly, that what you see and what you’re currently perceiving to be the truth of the matter is more than just a turd covered in shoe polish.
South Korea’s first president was a dictator, but set up the country for the economic and political clout it has today, and he wasn’t a full-blown concentration camp and genocide kind of dictator.
Anyway, I’m in Korea right now so I kind of have a vested interest in not getting hit by a missile.
In terms of the actual strategic situation of whether they will or won’t attack, it’s really, really dependent on China. If China is actually honoring the sanctions and North Korea is facing an impending resource shutdown, they basically have to attack, and soon. CNN broke it down pretty comprehensively, with how North Korea has a pretty sizable special ops force that they can deploy quickly to sabotage South Korea’s infrastructure and first responders, do a few hack jobs on, then follow it up with shells before quickly hustling into Seoul with their army proper.
From there they can negotiate with a lot more power, since the US and Asian forces wouldn’t like to get into a prolonged urban skirmish (again).
If China’s still backing them on the downlow, though, then North Korea’s just pushing buttons for deal for food.
I’d say the latter option is correct. I don’t know, even being in China, I have no clue. And of course, they’re not going to go out of their way to publicize that if it is the case.
I’ll say this for a fact, though: The North Korean restaurants around me are still open for business, and their waitress are still calling their motherland Chosun, so you can breathe into that whatever you want.
I think I could have been clearer in my post. I agree that it’s just fear tactics, at least as far as an attack against the US is concerned. I was joking about the fact that there have been two major movies in the past year or so that feature N. Korean attacks against the US, and yet all we ever hear about is their propaganda. The media has been keeping up the war talk against Iran and N. Korea for about a decade now, which is why all these idiots think we need to invade and free the poor people there, or that they have devastating weapons, or whatever combination of the two tests well with focus groups.
As for your second paragraph, that sounds about right. Forget about Orwell, change a few proper nouns and that could describe ancient Greece or Rome, or even earlier.
Gotcha on that.
Well, just to state my stance here, I want to see the NK regime fall badly. I know people in SK that were born in NK and fell victim to its oppression. I know many of them have family still there. So it’s kind of personal to me at this point.
While I don’t think military intervention would cause any act of goodwill, I think it’s catch-22, because the approach we used with the Soviets in just waiting for the inevitable collapse is a bad one, because the humanitarian crisis is FAR worse than it was with the Soviet Union.
So if you were to ask me what approach I think we should use, I honestly don’t know. I’d like to see this regime topple as quickly as possible, and with as few casualties as possible. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to have both. Either the regime falls quickly at the hands of a military coup or an all-out war and tons of people are killed in that for the wrong reasons, or we wait for the inevitable collapse, which may take another year or two, and see the body count rise from malnutrition and gulags.
I can’t comment much on things that happen in Africa are bad, but from what I’ve witnessed, this is one of the saddest stories on the planet. Either way, there’s going to be way too many unhappy endings at the end of it, more than the happy ones.
North Korea is decades behind the rest of the world technologically and socially, their nuclear weapons are so limited that you could accomplish just as much damage through conventional weapons. Their military, large as it is, is malnourished and undersupplied. The war would be over in 24hrs because they would be roflstomped so completely there would be no recourse.
This isn’t a battle hardened Afghanistan Military that has been warring on and off for centuries, this is a barely trained and barely experienced militia with no idea how devastatingly underpowered they are.
God damn, pisses me off that the US could throw the gauntlet down to Iraq on even the slightest hint of WMDs, yet we won’t do anything to a government that is advertising they are proliferating WMDs.
They restarted their reactors in Yongbyon, which is the only place in North Korea they can make nuclear materials. China has already gone on record to say they’re disappointed.
To be honest, I think North Korea realizes/thinks they either die starving, or go all out and go to war to get resources they need, as if it was the 1800’s or some shit. The sad truth, is a regime change is in order.
They won’t listen to anybody, mainly because 95% of the people in the country literally have no fucking clue how the world works. And if you think North Korea can send in Special Ops teams (as if the USA doesn’t have a few satellites chilling above that part of the world keeping an eye out), and accomplish something, you’re sadly mistaken. America would literally just wipe out all their military bases with the quickness.
WORST CASE SCENARIO they might launch some missiles (possibly even nuclear) at South Korea, which would obviously suck, but I don’t see that doing much more than taking out a decent chunk of Seoul or where they happen to land. Which would still suck obviously, but the sooner we can fix North Korea, the better.
Literally, there is zero reason for us to go to war with anybody else until that shit is dealt with.
Trying to find a non-paid link for it, but apparently the S. Korean president gave executive orders to the military to shoot first if they suspect NK will attack.
So wait…you’re pissed off that the USA actually nipped Saddam’s bud before it could become a North Korea? Or…what?
Weren’t those reactors turned off with the idea that we will bomb them if they’re operational?
It’s almost like they’re inviting us…
What? Or how about I’m pissed at the fact that they invaded a country that was stable, not making threats, and had nary a shred of evidence of posing any kind of threat to the outside world, vs. one that clearly has.
So what are you postulating? That they’re inviting us to invade, like they’ve set up some sort of trap?
If that’s what your insinuating, and if you’re right about your facts, then that’s a scarier prospect than them invading Seoul.
But if I remember correctly, those were turned off with the promise of food aid when they were disabled. So you may be off, which I sure hope you are.
Those reactors were turned off because they were producing weapons grade nuclear material, period. The UN told them to shut them down or else, as did the US. North Korea has basically said they won’t allow their nuclear weapons to be a bargaining chip.
They’re basically building a ton of bombs, hoping people will back off of them and let them keep doing whatever they want, and so they can launch them at whatever tickles their fancy, when the shit hits the fan. They literally think that nuclear weapons are their only hope for survival. We need to literally take out their leadership, and educate the people. I could give two fucks less whether they end up communist, capitalist, or whatever political option they get forced with. But to have a country in a region like that, arming itself with nukes and literally threatening every nearby country, is retarded.
When the leader of your country is telling the soldiers to prepare for “score settling war” this is no longer about economic viability (which they’re claiming the nukes will help them with), this is about old grudges that aren’t buried.
The UN has stated that North Korea is basically on a collision course with the entire international community. They’ve already been meeting with the US and a few other countries to discuss what to do.
And China had this to say:
They’re trying so hard to not take sides, but I think as a global super power they do NOT have this fucking option.
No we’re arguing that the US had zero reason to go to war with Iraq, and yet the situation in North Korea is quite similar to the reasoning behind Iraq (crazy leader, armed with WMD’s, threatening the entire region). So if we could go to war for YEARS and piss away billions of dollars and annihilate any shred of American clout, over lies and NOTHING, then why the fuck are we letting this little dipshit do what he is doing. Starving your country, threatening the world and region with nuclear weapons, demanding food and resources to not do this JUST SO YOU CAN KEEP IT YOURSELF AND NOT PROVIDE IT TO YOUR CITIZENS, and all the other dipshit things that North Korea has done, means Kim has gotta go.
To be completely honest, China’s thoughts on this shouldn’t even fucking matter. If you wanna fail your own people, go nuts. But don’t start failing the people of other countries too.
The UN and international community knows that Chubby is inexperience in dealing with the US and South Korea. The US is provoking North Korea to see how Kim Jung Un will react to them by sending B-2 stealth bombers and all the other advance military stuff they show off in South Korea. Its like the US is telling North Korea “Our weapons, planes, and ships is more advance and can take you out anytime”.
China need to grow some balls and tell North Korea to hit the road. China: “Oh, we don’t want to take side”. Mother fucker it too late now you been backing North Korea since day one and we already knows which side you be on.
this is how i picture things going down…
As someone who has half his family living in Seoul, I’d like to find another way.