North Korea is threatening nuclear war again

Yup. I knew it. Yellow as a frog belly. We should smoke them anyways, just so they don't go all bi-polar again.


North Korea Gets Cooperative
Newsweek - Sun Aug 1, 8:25 am ET

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has been full of tough talk lately. His regime threatened “retaliatory sacred war” in response to recent joint U.S. and South Korean naval exercises, and that was only the latest threat against Washington and Seoul since they blamed the North for sinking the warship Cheonan in March. But despite the belligerent stance, North Korea seems to be growing desperate for talks. At the outset of the Cheonan crisis, Pyongyang said it would never deal with Seoul as long as President Lee Myung-bak remained in power. That threat seems forgotten now. Even as it rattles its sabers, the North says it will “make consistent efforts” to negotiate a peace agreement and disarm its nukes.

North Korea rarely, if ever, softens up to this extent, so why now? One theory is that Kim Jong-il doesn’t want a crisis while he is trying to choose a successor. Others think it’s a negotiation ploy: Pyongyang could seek the moral high ground by claiming it sought peace only to find war games in its backyard. Washington and Seoul insist there’s no point in talking until the North starts behaving. And with new sanctions and another military exercise slated for later this month, Kim’s sweet talk may not last long.

 

Which is why the newest proposed sanctions aimed at pressuring NK to disband it's nuclear weapons program are based on denying access to luxury goods, which are only available to the ruling elite, and not the commoners anyways.

You mean like Kim Jong-il? Nah, he may be a stupid fanatic, and he may well some day sell one of his nukes to Al-Qaeda, but as Necro's last post shows, he's not that suicidal at the moment...

 

"denying access to luxury goods" means "making access to luxury goods cost more", so elite just needs to take more money from the people. Trust me, elite will not let itself live without luxury...

No, I did not mean that guy, I meant others, who blow up houses and buses for no reason, often being killed in the process. They do not care about future obviously.

 

^North Korean people indeed deserve to be defended. They deserve to be defended from its own regime. The roguish regime needs to be obliterated and the Koreas united whole. South Koreans are not alone in that sentiment as thousands of North Koreans who now defect to Korea each year, and millions more who would also do so if only they could without being killed, are shown to be in ardent agreement with them, through not just words but actions.



The North Korean government deserves to die. Its people deserve to be saved. The greater Korea is trying to do it through the least violent means possible, and any person with straight sense of judgment will understand that, what the Republic of Korea is doing right now to wage its war with the rebel Korea to free its people - enlisting the help of its allies for unified implementation of sanctions - is completely the best thing to do.

The only alternative method to defeat North Korea aside from sanctions is war. The North Korean regime will not peacefully unify with ROK through peaceful economic and political integration because they don't want to lose their petty abusive power to the greater power of democracy. But if there was a war to remove those dictators forcefully, many of those who are supposed to be rescued will be killed before they could be rescued. And if you don't want them to be rescued just because you wanted to worship and protect your ideals, you are fit to be imprisoned forever in the plane of Baator in happy company with the morons from the North Korean regime. But alas, I'm an agnostic.

 

Is it me, or the graph tends to stabilize at approximately 3000 per year?
If so, it just reflects border security measures were lightened, or the borders were opened, and now all who want can leave... (And that is may be due to the fact "new" NK leader is softer than his father. Maybe his successor will be a western-type democratic guy, who knows.)

And weiwei is a spammer.

And I again repeat, that, in my opinion, sanctions harm people, not government elite, nor can they remove the government. ([EDIT] I did not mean nukes/weaponry trade sanctions, they are good, I support them.)
Now, tell me, which government ever was removed because of economic sanctions?

 

It's only you.

Aside from a momentary drop between 2004 and 2005, the graph shows a continuously increasing trend of North Korean defection to the South. North Koreans want to get out of the country more and more badly as time passes.

And this graph includes only those who were able to arrive in ROK. The figures don't include other North Korean defectors who are still stranded in other countries in their present process of defection, those who died in their journey, or North Koreans who attempted to escape but failed. Number of people who want to abandon North Korea is a lot higher than what numbers in the graph indicate.

These people don't leave through the DMZ. Anyone who tries to escape via inter-Korean border and get caught are shot to either submission or death. If you are dead, you are dead. If you survive the submission, you do forced labor. Most North Korean defectors defect via asylum provided by Western/South Korean embassies and consulates after human-trafficked into Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia etc) after having successfully eluded North Korea-China-Southeast Asia border security. When they are detained in Russia or China while trying to defect, they are deported back to North Korea to either die or do a lifetime's forced labor.

Sanctions hurt a country's military infrastructure without killing a greater number of people. It makes the country less able to commit acts of belligerence or pose security threat to other countries, especially to a country that it vowed to disintegrate. As shown by the case of Cuba, countries don't become poor and die out just because of sanctions. The sanctions were only designed to weaken Cuba's strategic ability to provoke a military conflict, and work as designed it did. Cuba is not a threat to US security. Cuba is not a threat to any of its Caribbean neighbors. US did this without resorting to violence. US-ROK aims to do the same.

I'll ask you Sergio, how exactly should the US-ROK alliance respond to North Korea's killing of 46 South Korean sailors last March, 2010, with as little bloodshed as possible, while still punishing North Korea for its transgression, and curbing its ability to do the same act again? How should US-ROK further weaken North Korea's military force, in order to strategically deter North Korea from killing another scores of ROKN sailors, without actually starting a war that can make the 1991 Gulf war seem like a pee in the ocean, which will only make this world a more sober place?

 

Just let them be, that is.

Fortify the border even more.
Support another anti-aircraft force detachment for South Korea.
Prepare missiles aimed right into North Korea's artillery sites.
Send more agents into the North Korea.
This will assure they will not attack. Or that South will not be unprepared*.
*just be sure to not repeat the situation with Iraq's mass destruction weapons, about which agents said they are not existing, yet some politicians (I will not point with my finger, but you know them) lied to all the world knowingly.

Do not sell weapons to them.
Do not sell weapons to those who could sell to them.
Watch your former (then "commando" and presently "terrorist") allies whom you trained to fight against other world powers.
This way you will limit their ability to war.

Do not say every 5 minutes they are rogue state, terrorist supporters, corrupt fanatics, illegal splinter province...
Do not demonstrate your willingness to attack them.
Allow their officials to visit "civilized" countries.
Give them gifts. Like free participation in training programs in your universities for their young people.
This way you will reduce their desire to make war (if any.)

To change their ways of life, well...
Make life in South Korea so good, no one could deny it and say it is better to live in the North. (I do not think this is possible.)
Remove corruption in South Korea. (When you do, tell everyone else how you did it.)
Remove homelessness in South Korea.
Remove social disparity. In SK and in your own place.

But when you say that they are "rogue state", that you wish to change their government etc., you just FORCE that very government into making more weaponry and increasing military budget. And into decreasing social programs.

And I do not think Cuba with its half dozen (or is it half hundred?) T-34 tanks was EVER a threat to USA.

[EDIT] As for incidents with firefights and deaths - first prove (to yourself) that they started it. Then make a complaint to UN. UN will move it to some court*. That court will decide who is guilty and what punishment is due. then UN will ask, or that court will ask NK and SK to give guilty to the court. And they will, or they will not. That will be all. Civilized.
You should not "punish" all nation or even its government for actions of one trigger-happy lieutenant. (And it could easily happen, that mentioned lieutenant was not on the side, you wish to punish.)

*or will not. Then the matter is over. Legal action is taken, no one is guilty.

[MORE EDIT]

Is this the incident you described earlier here?
They were not just sailors then, they were military men. They knew what they could expect when defending corrupt and oppressing rule of South Korean government, turning their weapons on their North Korean brothers. (This sentence is just a reverse of what you are saying about NK government, but I bet it is true to some extent. I personally, do not wish ANYONE to be killed, including any misguided North Koreans, or any misguided South Koreans, or any misguided North Caucasian natives even (disciplined maybe, by life-long forced labor in the uranium (or asbestos) mines). On the other hand, if someone tries to harm me, I usually try to remove that someone permanently, as permanently as my abilities and Russian law permits.)

[EVEN MORE EDIT] And was not that incident a retaliation for some other offence US-ROK alliance committed? No? Really? Are you SURE? Maybe your TV just does not tell you all the facts? (Mine does not, so I do not watch news. Or, rather, watch them very rarely.)

[CAN NOT STOP EDITING !!!] And the graph definitely shows less steep slope in the last years.

Green coloring is mine - S.M.

Maybe they (the North Koreans) do not want to be rescued? Especially after Iraqi people were "rescued" from Saddam just to have many times increased death rate, or even after Afghani people were twice "rescued" (first by USSR, later by USA) to the same result?

[AAAAA !!!] Again I ask, which government was EVER removed by economic sanctions? (Let us limit that to modern history.)

 

Well maybe everyone noticed that I am posting too much in the last days, this is because:

1. I am on vacation.

+

2. I have some disagreements with my bosses. Basically, I left them to work in (literally) hot time, and they are not SLIM people, so imagine how unhappy they must be, hehehe. So, I do not have anything work-related to do as I would in usual time.

 

You cannot possibly be this naive.

Already done to pretty much the extent possible without actually shooting at them... which I think you said would be bad.

Oh, good - let's be just like them.

Again, this is basically the policy that has been in effect for 60 years, and it hasn't stopped them from attacking so far. A good definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

I hope you have some pull with your government to accomplish this goal.

Not sure I understand what this means.

Even though it's true?

See thread title.

Did you notice Darkjedi's comment that most NK defections occurred out of the Korean peninsula? Ever wonder how those defectors got there? Not many walked over the northern border...

Again, you cannot really be this naive.

It already is, and they deny it anyways. Without access to uncensored news media, their people have little idea how much they are lied to by their own government.

This would be a good start - any ideas how to accomplish it?

Homelessness exists in every country in the world - how do you think South Korea could change what no other nation can?

Never been done by any system of government in the history of the world.

Pretty sure the North Korean government is responsible for their own budgeting.

True, but Cuba with its half dozen Soviet controlled nukes was a pretty big danger to the USA in 1962.

Civilized, happy, and completely unrealistic. The UN has about 20 resolutions already passed and an equal number of decisions from the World Court and every single one of them is ignored by the North Korean government. This is basically why they are called a rogue state - because it is exactly what they are!

Not even when that lieutenant is under specific orders from the highest level of his government to fire a torpedo into the side of a South Korean vessel that was simply sailing around in it's own territorial waters?

See my comments above.

OK, lets change the participants in this tragedy and then you tell me how you feel. Suppose the Kiev was sailing in the Black Sea, and with no warning whatsoever an American attack submarine fired a torpedo or three at her, sinking the ship and killing several hundred or more Russian sailors. Would you not want justice for the lives of those Russian sailors and punishment for the American bastards that killed them? Or would you simply think "They knew what they were getting into when they allowed themselves to be drafted and put on that ship by the Russian government. They may have even deserved it for defending the corrupt and oppressive Russian government in the first place." Somehow I doubt you'd be so ready to let the incident pass...

The free press in the Western democracies is not perfect, but it certainly does a much better job of presenting all the facts than anywhere else in the world. Especially when dealing with the US military. So yes, I am pretty darn sure the North Koreans were not retaliating for an offense committed by the US-ROK alliance.

The graph also is way too small of a timeframe to draw any reliable conclusions as to trend. If the graph had ended 4 years earlier, it would look like the trend was reversing completely. Put up a graphic depicting the trends over the last 60 years and we'll talk. (By the way, did you know that in 1953 almost 70% of the captured North Korean soldiers wanted to stay in the South when the ceasefire was signed? They were cared for better in ROK prison camps than as "free" men in the North. What does that tell you?)

According to this website: http://www.piie.com/publications/newsreleases/newsrelease.cfm?id=136 sanctions have been successful in 25 of 80 cases, for a success rate of 31%. One of the best examples of sanctions leading to political change or the collapse of a government without external military interdiction is the fall of apartheid in South Africa in 1990 - in large part due to economic sanctions from the UN and Western democracies.

 

DERAIL!! oke: Statements and Declarations!!

Anyways, I think it's clear that most people here think something needs to be done with korea, except Serg who wants to make sure korea will have many more future dictators!oke:.

I think in order to remove future problems with these whack jobs, China just needs to stop !@#$%^& around and annex all of korea and incorporate it into their everloving embrace. The problem is that korea thinks it's a bigger power than it is, causing it to play mind games with itself. If they were a part of China proper, they would have to answer to the big asian dog and wouldn't have the little man's complaint anymore. This would settle everything forever. If anything like this happened again, it would be an internal issue for China and their government would probably come down pretty unconditionally on whoever thought they were going to start causing problems for the country, like threatening to bomb the US with nukes. Chinese government would send a detachment of shao-lin monks in there and give them a HA and a HAI-YA! Or worse yet, just send Pei-Mai in there to TCB.

 

I agree with Gaear, Sergio. Your posts are welcome. Obviously, my opinions differ from yours, but yours are well-reasoned.

North Koea's activities are clearly a bid for attention, like an unruly child acting out. They do not deserve the respect that's being extended to them.

I hope your job situation is worked out.

 

to Gaear and GuardianAngel82 - Thank you.

Erkper wrote:

"...OK, lets change the participants in this tragedy and then you tell me how you feel. Suppose the Kiev was sailing in the Black Sea, and with no warning whatsoever an American attack submarine fired a torpedo or three at her, sinking the ship and killing several hundred or more Russian sailors. Would you not want justice for the lives of those Russian sailors and punishment for the American bastards that killed them? Or would you simply think "They knew what they were getting into when they allowed themselves to be drafted and put on that ship by the Russian government. They may have even deserved it for defending the corrupt and oppressive Russian government in the first place." Somehow I doubt you'd be so ready to let the incident pass..."

Looks like you are a mindflayer, for this is exactly the thing I would think (in the current time and state of political affairs). I will want justice, of course, but I have already described the only way to get it - an appeal to international court. Some justice can also be gained by investigating high commanding officers actions which lead to inability to detect and evade the torpedo launch.

Erkper also wrote about South Africa.
I thought that "white power" regime fell due to the struggle of black people, not because of some sanctions.

Erkper also wrote that "that did not prevent them from attacking", but we were talking of a full-scale war, not some small provocations. There are always provocations in such places, but wise one should avoid making them a full war. (You guys were serving, I had only one month of army, so you must know better.)

I do not think NK must keep its "dictators" forever, but I do not see how sanctions or forceful removing of them would make life there better. If we really think about "saving" NK people, we should wait until they save themselves.

To Necroticpus - Sorry for derail! You can punch me.
Here: Necro -> unch: <- Sergio
Owww! My eye!

 

What confuses me is that the saudis & company drive a couple planes into our buildings, kill, how many was it, 3,000+? For that, we declared war on them, hung their leader and killed his sons.

Another whack job threatens to blow nukes over nothing and we sit back and do !@#$-all. I think it's way ridiculous to sit back and let the enemy fire first after them telling us they are going to. What does it take for the US to grow a pair and stop wearing pantyhose? Do we need an actual body count before we act?!

 

Almost some Saudis flew some planes into a building and for that you invaded Afghanistan.
Then you dusted of some old plans Runsfelt had kicking around since 1985 and invaded Iraq hung the leader and killed his sons.

Interesting fact before the invasion of Iraq all the contracts to run the utilies and infrastructure inIraq where awarded to American Corperations chief amongst these were Haliburton, When British forces took over Basra and tried to hand control of the port to the civilian authorities they were told no way dude my buddy Billy Bob owns that. When a Swedish company tried to restore comunications and set up an emergency mobile phone network same thing.

The invasion of Iraq was more like a hostile corperate takeover.

When things didn't pan out as planned it became part of the war on terror.