Senate The North Korea Issue

It's images like this that North Koreans don't rebel: they're taught to fear foreigners, especially Americans, as bloodthirsty invaders. We wouldn't be greeted as liberators, the average North Korean would cry and scream "Don't kill us!".

It reminds me of a quote from the DC Comics series Kingdom Come: "Freedom can be as paralyzing as fascism."

 

Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi, the documentary 'kimjongilia' will provide you all the information you never wanted to know about the DPRK's prison camps.

The Loyal Imperial-I hope so. I just don't really want to think about a population that might literally worship their leader as a god. You think the occupation of Iraq was bloody? Even if it isn't-just the shreds of information we get about how bad it is inside are simply mind-boggling-people eating tree bark/each other/etc..I think we'd need all the world's cooperation for the post-war humanitarian relief effort.

 

Here's a pretty informative interview with North Korean defectors that gives some insight as to how things work on the inside, with regard to the government's expectations of them.

 

Excellent news, TBH.

Still, just the humanitarian effort would be mind-boggling, I think; at least Eastern Europe tried to make a decent go of things prior to collapse; there's zero indication that the DPRK's government has done anything similar.

 

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect that it's not so much that North Koreans faithfully worship their leader, but that they can't find the willpower in themselves to reject him and cast down the regime's propaganda as false.

 

At this point in time, I don't think the regime will fail internally. The majority of the population have absolutely no idea what it means to fight for democracy/freedom. They haven't had it for so long, those "delusions of grandeur" are effectively non-existent. If there were an internal call for regime change, it would have to come from the upper echelons of the military/security service. They're the ones who know what the truth is and how the rest of the world lives. However, if you were in a position of power, would you be willing to give that up? They know if the regime fails, their power/money go with it and they'll likely find themselves in a South Korean prison for crimes against humanity or corruption or any one of the other multitude of atrocities that they've been a part of. The Kim family would have to do something completely outrageous like push for an invasion of South Korea before there were any coup.

Anyone think "Basketball Diplomacy" will work?

 

Time for a bump.

This week. a North Korean general threatened to basically nuke Washington D.C. They can't do it yet, but they did unveil a new mobile ICBM that is capable of hitting the US west coast. Today, Chuck Hagel announced a large enhancement of missile defenses on the American homeland, with deployments of ABM's in California and the addition of 14 new batteries to the existing thirty up in Alaska.

So, more saber rattling, or is the North really up to something? I don't think they'd ever be so stupid as to actually launch a missile at the United States (although they might be under the delusion that China could successfully pressure the US into backing down from a retaliatory strike), but they might be nuts enough to pressure/attack South Korea, and threaten a missile launch against the US should we intervene.

I don't know, this new leader seems bold yet stupid (or maybe it's inexperience); either way, the Pentagon is concerned, and so am I.

Thoughts?

Peace,

V-03

 

uns is a little brat that needs to have his pants pulled down and his bum-bum spanked real, real hard. i just hope that is what we decide to do once the little boy shoots off his missile. right now it's kind of difficult to know for sure.

 

EDIT -- Nevermind. Snopes says it's fake.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/northkorea.asp

 

I think it's just the U.S. being super-cautious... in case anything does happen, they can they they didn't ignore the warnings.

But I don't think anybody expect anything big to happen.

I remember when the North Koreans fired on and killed unarmed South Korean civilians on a South Korean island. Which was terrible, and South Korea would have been fully justified in going to war. But thankfully it was an isolated incident and didn't grow from there. Maybe something like that could happen again, but I hope not.

 

what, like a fake north korean propaganda thing?

 

This video:

It was bandied about as an actual piece of N.Korean propaganda, but was actually a satire by a British humorist.

 

i want to see some real north korean propaganda.

 

ask and you shall

 

i sort of mean anti-america stuff but that is lovely.

 

Look, they're teaching everyday uses for mathematics too!

Well, actually that's probably not strictly propaganda. Maybe this?

 

love that second one

 

I only watched about ten minutes of it myself. It looks like it could very well be fake or the uploader mistook it for genuine PDRK propaganda. I'm not smart enough to know and my head hurts atm so whatever. Interesting in its own way nonetheless.

 

Un had a coup attempt last November; unhappy generals the sabre-rattling is just a repeat of what Il did when he became president, but amplified, as there's apparently real threats to his power. We of course can't really ignore it just in case he is a nutter; plus not reacting might be taken as a signal we don't really care what happens-Saddam tried to use that as justification for invading Kuwait by claiming the ambassador at the time gave him a signal that invading Kuwait was A-OK as far as we were concerned.

 

did you guys know that obams has a taster? i wonder if uns has a taster.

 

According to good old Christopher Hitchens, a country should lose its sovereignty if it's guilty of regular aggressions or occupations of territory, violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, violation of the Genocide Convention, and international terrorism.

Obviously, NK (not to mention China) doesn't recognise all those treaties, but it certainly qualifies under all those conditions.

Sanctions haven't worked, China doesn't care about the human rights of the countries it deals with (much like America in that regard) and as long as NK doesn't threaten China, it's indifference will continue. Nukes pretty much rule out an invasion unless you carpet bomb (or nuke) every inch of the country, or have faultless intel on the locations of the nukes for a tactical strike... I don't know if I'd support an invasion of NK or not. Under the right conditions it might have my sympathy, but I just can't see it ending well.

I think it would be worth dropping millions of clockwork radios over the country so the people could at least tune in to hear international news (especially news from the south). Clockwork satellite phones with free internet access would be ideal.

 

I'm not sure the DPRK's nukes are actually capable of being fit onto a missile yet-everything we've heard (which is admittedly little) suggests that they're not at that point yet.

I think the main stopping point is actually the post-war scenario; I don't doubt that China and the South are hesitant about the enormous nation-building issues that would come from absorbing North Korea. Just look at the struggle Germany had after reunification-getting Eastern Germany up to a Western standard of living was expensive as hell, and that's with a country whose former government at least tried to provide basic services. The DPRK seems to look on its citizens as basically a living labor source, and has issues with just keeping people fed. It's gonna be expensive.

 

Better than the Chinese building thousands of skyscrapers and malls with no one to live or shop in them, Might as well put their construction workers to do something that will actually affect people.

 

Except Iraq is easier to bully that N. Korea. America only goes after the small countries we can "easily" push around.

We wrap it up in a bow called "nation building" or other propaganda catch phrases.. "Occupation" is another good one. If collateral damage blew up my family id think "Occupation" was a poor choice of words as well.

 

I thought that the mobile ICBM thing was a hoax or something? Just a prop they put together for a parade to maybe fool the West or something? Last I heard the North only has liquid-fueled rockets, which need to be brought to a launch pad and fueled before they can be fired. The launch pad also means you've got a fixed target that you can easily destroy with an airstrike, as opposed to mobile launchers which can move around. Mobile ballistic missiles have to be solid-fueled which is more stable and allows the fuel to be stored in the missile itself...and supposedly they're not at the level where they can make these yet.

A coup attempt, huh? So any idea whether we'd have been better off with Kim in power, or the coup plotters?