North Korea is....

[jody]

Reportedly Entering 'State Of War' Against South Korea. Worrying times ahead. What is wrong with humans who live to dominate.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/north-korea-state-of-war_n_2982025.html?ncid=webmail1

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea warned Seoul on Saturday that the Korean Peninsula was entering "a state of war" and threatened to shut down a border factory complex that's the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

Analysts say a full-scale conflict is extremely unlikely, noting that the Korean Peninsula has remained in a technical state of war for 60 years. But the North's continued threats toward Seoul and Washington, including a vow to launch a nuclear strike, have raised worries that a misjudgment between the sides could lead to a clash.

North Korea's threats are seen as efforts to provoke the new government in Seoul, led by President Park Geun-hye, to change its policies toward Pyongyang, and to win diplomatic talks with Washington that could get it more aid. North Korea's moves are also seen as ways to build domestic unity as young leader Kim Jong Un strengthens his military credentials.

On Thursday, U.S. military officials revealed that two B-2 stealth bombers dropped dummy munitions on an uninhabited South Korean island as part of annual defense drills that Pyongyang sees as rehearsals for invasion. Hours later, Kim ordered his generals to put rockets on standby and threatened to strike American targets if provoked.

North Korea said in a statement Saturday that it would deal with South Korea according to "wartime regulations" and would retaliate against any provocations by the United States and South Korea without notice.

"Now that the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK have entered into an actual military action, the inter-Korean relations have naturally entered the state of war," said the statement, which was carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency, referring to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Provocations "will not be limited to a local war, but develop into an all-out war, a nuclear war," the statement said.

Hours after the statement, Pyongyang threatened to shut down the jointly run Kaesong industrial park, expressing anger over media reports suggesting the complex remained open because it was a source of hard currency for the impoverished North.

"If the puppet group seeks to tarnish the image of the DPRK even a bit, while speaking of the zone whose operation has been barely maintained, we will shut down the zone without mercy," an identified spokesman for the North's office controlling Kaesong said in comments carried by KCNA.

South Korea's Unification Ministry responded by calling the North Korean threat "unhelpful" to the countries' already frayed relations and vowed to ensure the safety of hundreds of South Korean managers who cross the border to their jobs in Kaesong. It did not elaborate.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said the country's military remains mindful of the possibility that increasing North Korean drills near the border could lead to an actual provocation.

"The series of North Korean threats – announcing all-out war, scrapping the cease-fire agreement and the non-aggression agreement between the South and the North, cutting the military hotline, entering into combat posture No. 1 and entering a `state of war' – are unacceptable and harm the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula," Kim said.

"We are maintaining full military readiness in order to protect our people's lives and security," he told reporters Saturday.

Naval skirmishes in the disputed waters off the Korean coast have led to bloody battles several times over the years.

But on the streets of Seoul on Saturday, South Koreans said they were not worried about an attack from North Korea.

"From other countries' point of view, it may seem like an extremely urgent situation," said Kang Tae-hwan, a private tutor. "But South Koreans don't seem to be that nervous because we've heard these threats from the North before."

The Kaesong industrial park, which is run with North Korean labor and South Korean know-how, has been operating normally, despite Pyongyang shutting down a communications channel typically used to coordinate travel by South Korean workers to and from the park just across the border in North Korea. The rivals are now coordinating the travel indirectly, through an office at Kaesong that has outside lines to South Korea.

North Korea has previously made such threats about Kaesong without acting on them, and recent weeks have seen a torrent of bellicose rhetoric from Pyongyang. North Korea is angry about the South Korea-U.S. military drills and new U.N. sanctions over its nuclear test last month.

Dozens of South Korean firms run factories in the border town of Kaesong. Using North Korea's cheap, efficient labor, the Kaesong complex produced $470 million worth of goods last year.

[Deleted]

The Nth Korean people do not know any better being brainwashed as they are, and could trigger a whole series of events if Nth Korea goes off....hopefully commonsense prevails.

[pim]

Not sure, Spindrift, that to describe the North Korean people as "brainwashed" quite does them justice.

People are just people. They have needs and wants just like people everywhere: food, clothing, shelter, warmth against the cold weather, and they try to take care of their families. Aren't these the great human univerals?

And isn't the economic problem everywhere basically the same? The need to satisfy these human wants of food, clothing and shelter is unlimited but the resources to satisfy those wants are limited. So the economic problem everywhere, and I mean everwhere as well as everywhen (to coin a phrase) ever since an ape climbed down out of the trees in Africa and began a long shambling walk across the savannah that resulted in it grandually losing its knuckle-dragging shambling gait and becoming bipedal and ultimately human, has been how best to allocate limited resources to satisfy unlimited needs.

Where North Korea is unique is that it's developed a caste system based on a leadership that's grounded on a hereditary principle so it's a type of absolute monarchy (not a feudal monarchy for a very important reason that I'll come back to in a moment) that's completely self-serving and sheds light on why the North Korean people are not "brainwashed" as you incorrectly put it.

The North Korean people, outside the ruling caste of party apparatchiks, aren't "brainwashed". They're just starving. The reason that they're starving is that they have absolutely zero economic role to play in this grotesque system that even George Orwell couldn't have imagined and which represents Stalinism in its ultimate grotesque degenerate form. Unlike the feudal monarchies in the Middle Ages in Europe in which there was an immense poverty-stricken peasantry supporting a feudal aristocracy (the baron in his castle), church and monarchy, the North Korean people have no economic role to play so they starve. At least in medieval Europe the glue that bound together the web of relationships between feudal serfs and the baron in his castle was the set of obligations that each owed to the other: the serf tilled the land, lived miserably and died young, and gave up a part of his produce to the baron. If there was a famine and the crops failed, tough luck, he still had to pay up. In return, if Vikings were rampaging through the land, the baron had an obligation to shelter his peasants behind his castle walls and to defend them. It kinda worked and as a system it lasted for quite a few centuries so it wasn't a bad model. Everyone had a place - except for the Jews and the gypsies but that's another story.

But in North Korea the people don't have a "place" in the North Korean scheme of things. The North Korean ruling elite are in the international arms trade and the drugs trade. They're basically a criminal syndicate who find that the "people" are an inconvenience to be suppressed if they get antsy. The NK elites need nothing from the "people" except for them to STFU and get out of the way. I guess you have three options if you're one of the North Korean "people":

1. You accept your lot and watch your children starve because there's not much nutrition if all there is to eat is grass

2. If you spot a chance to get out and become a refugee, you grab it with both hands and feet, and don't hesitate. This one's a no-brainer: if you're on the banks of the Yalu River and visibility is poor because the weather's bad so there's an outside chance that if you try to swim over that river onto the Chinese side you just might - just might - avoid the North Korean searchlights, you don't hesitate. Of course even if you make it there's also the strong chance that the Chinese pick you up and send you back but the risk is worth it. After that it's try to get to Hong Kong and from there to South Korea however you can. Once you're in South Korea and you can demonstrate you're a North Korean (your accent in the Korean language would be a giveaway) you're automatically given Korean citizenship and you're home & hosed. Lots of North Koreans take up this option, Spindrift. Lots fail but they keep on trying. Doesn't sound "brainwashed" to me. Sounds more like thinking independently and critically.

3. There is the "brainwash" option and I guess it works for some. Better than starving on grass at any rate. What have people who live in poverty always done to escape from poverty? Join the military! You get fed, housed and clothed. Mind you it also means you're at the beck & call of the aliens who run the whole rotten edifice but it's worth it if you eat three meals a day and get to sleep in a bed under a roof.

[Deleted]

Quite so Pim, I'm sure that all those people out waving flags and clapping for their leader Kim Jung-un do so more out of fear than love. A net work of informers keeps dissent down, yet there still must be a number of Nth Korean's who beleive in all the brainwashing crap they get from childhood to adult life that supports Kim and approve of his sabre rattling with nukes.

Once there was no Nth and Sth Korea, just one Korea.

[pim]

"Brainwashed" is a term that's used very loosely on discussion boards like this one, Spindrift.

Routinely, on this board, people who disagree with the rusted-on political views of one group of people, and instead hold an opposing set of rusted-on views, are called "brainwashed". Those who try to think independently and exist in thought zones that are grey and full of nuance get their motivations and personal characters held up to derision and slander. I'm not so sure that "brainwashed" applies to the North Koreans. Not when it's about survival.

Regarding "just one Korea", I don't think there has ever been a nation State called "Korea". The Japanese ruled it from the 1870s until the Jap surrender in 1945. Before then it had been a part of the various dynastic and Buddhist to-ing and fro-ing of North Asia. I'm not as familiar with Asian history as I am with European history but I understand that there were several Korean kingdoms. The fact that the Korean peninsula has formed a cultural unit for over a millennium with a common language, common script and Buddhist culture (until the arrival of Protestant Christiainity since WW2 in the south) has never translated into nationalist aspirations. For example the US developed into a single English-speaking nation. So did Australia. But the Spanish-speakers of Latin America never coalesced into one nation. Just because people speak the same language and share the same culture doesn't necessarily mean they'll become a nation. If that were the case then there would be a nation with 30 million people called Kurdistan in Central Asia instead of those 30 million people being parcelled out among Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

There has never ever been "just one Korea".

One more thing: I know this sucks and this would be a shit sandwich for the North Koreans, but if the North Korean regime were to collapse in the way that East Germany collapsed and 17 million former East Germans liquidated themselves into West Germany which moved in to take over the territory that had previously been East Germany, in the Korean context the responsibility for the North Korean people would fall on the shoulders of the South. I need Google to tell me the population figures:

South Korea: about 50 million
North Korea: about 25 million.

The reunification of Germany in the early 1990s was bankrolled by West Germany. Once East Germany collapsed its old communist currency - the "Ostmark" - became as worthless as Monopoly money. The West Germans, very generously may I add but what choice did they have, agreed to exchange one "Westmark" for one worthless "Ostmark". The Westmark was the mighty Deutsche Mark, the strongest currency in Europe and internationally recognised as a negotiable currency that was worth having. Talk about a cash splash! Making a gift of billions and billions of DM to 17 million former East Germans blasted a hole in the German economy big enough to drive a fleet of Mercedes Benz trucks through - all driving abreast! It was as if you, Spindrift, were forced to swallow a coconut whole, husk and all, and then wait for the massive indigestion as your metabolism tried to cope.

If that scenario is visited upon the Korean peninsula and 50 million South Koreans absorb 25 million North Koreans whose infrastructure and standard of living are not far above the Stone Age, and those South Koreans have to bankroll it by themselves, it would cause the South Korean economy - one of the giants of Asia - to collapse and the ripple effect would be more like an economic tsunami than a mere "ripple" which would be felt all around the world and in particular in the Asa/Pacific. And that means us.

[Deleted]

Well it ain't all bad in Nth Korea...

Modern Buildings..
[/IMG][/URL]

Babes..


Happy families politely clapping...


Kim having fun...


Well yep seems I was mistaken into thinkin' Nth Koreans are brainwashed ...

[garfield]

Apparently the North Koreans Are very environmentally conscious also, their Earth hour go's for 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, Julia would be very proud of them.

[slartibartfast]

Go's?

Do you drive a goggomobile?

[Deleted]

Garflunkie drives a hand painted black hyundai Getz with a hot dog muffler, shiney chrome clip on mag wheel's, playboy seat covers he bought from Kmart..

[pim]

Apr 1, 2013 19:22:08 GMT 10 @spindrift111 said:

Garflunkie drives a hand painted black hyundai Getz with a hot dog muffler, shiney chrome clip on mag wheel's, playboy seat covers he bought from Kmart..

Does it come with those big cloth dice thingies that bogans like to hang from their rear vision mirror?

[Deleted]

Yep and a CD stacker with 2 x 12" woofers ...doof doof doof ..ding.

[slartibartfast]

Fluffy would have anything with 12".

More like 4 x 3".

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Kim Jong Un is a pudgy punk with the power to create great misery

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Wednesday, April 03, 2013



KIM JONG UN is an absurdly comical figure. If he were not holding the fate of millions of people in his hands, the North Korean dictator would provide us all with nothing but laughs.

He runs a country that, thanks to the ruinous communist policies of his father and grandfather, is an economic basket case where mass starvation is always as close as tomorrow.

He has almost no friends in the world, except for the similarly outcast nutcases that run Iran. His closest allies, the Chinese, are so disgusted with him that they have signed on to United Nations sanctions against his country.

And yet, Kim acts as if he is master of a mighty nation, not king of a hermit kingdom that survives only by imprisoning its people in an Orwellian alternative reality.

In recent days, Kim's regime has renounced the 2007 six-nation disarmament deal that was supposed to curtail North Korea's nuclear ambitions. The North Koreans have declared they will be "bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quantity and quality."

They have also canceled the armistice with South Korea that has sustained a chilly peace on the Korean peninsula since 1953, and announced that a state of war now exists between the fraternal neighbors.

Kim and his cohort have issued a variety of threats in past months that are largely beyond their power to act on, and their rhetoric is as goofy as it is florid. An example is their pledge to "break the waists of the crazy enemies, totally cut their windpipes and thus clearly show them what a real war is like."

Though they have not been entirely successful at getting a missile to stay aloft even a few miles from their own shoreline, Kim's regime warns of nuclear strikes against the West Coast of the United States. In response, the Pentagon is beefing up missile defenses in Alaska.

The United States has also sent nuclear-capable stealth bombers and B-52s on practice missions to South Korea as a signal to Kim that there will be hell to pay if his bellicose words turn into action.

Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, played a provocative game during his years in power, but he was clever enough to know which lines he dare not cross. Foreign affairs and military analysts in the U.S., Japan, China and South Korea are not at all certain that North Korea’s new, unseasoned leader knows when to stop. Kim Jong Un may not actually understand his power is built on illusions.

It has always been assumed that North Korean leaders rattled sabers now and then simply to solidify their own power by stirring up the patriotic passions of their captive people. As warlike as they may have sounded, the old leaders generally did not seem crazy enough to provoke a war with the United States in which their regime would almost certainly be toppled.

The new Kim, surrounded by a huge army and a horde of sycophants, may not understand the precariousness of his position. Living amid a Stalinist fantasy as he does, Kim might actually think war would be a glorious fulfillment of his own exalted purpose on the planet, instead of a horrific, blood-soaked end to his family’s wicked dynasty.

It would be gratifying to see the pudgy-faced punk of Pyongyang meet an ignominious end. Unfortunately, it is not likely to happen without a cruel war that would be disastrous for Koreans, both North and South.

Kim Jong Un is a caricature of a tyrant, a person too silly to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, he is a fool with real power to destroy, and the misery he could bring about is no laughing matter.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-pudgy-punk-20130402,0,5498167.story

[Deleted]

So they want more aid and this is the way they go about it? Threaten war, roll out the tanks, assemble the armies for mass displays. I say bring it on! We're sick of waiting for lil kim to give the order. Of course procrastinating is all he's got at the moment because surely even he knows that once they fire that first missile, they're dead.

I hope this is the target for the Americans when and if they retaliate ....

[Deleted]

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[volk]

I doubt we'll be hearing anymore from the North Koreans.

[slartibartfast]

Chucky!

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Kim Jong Un is a bratty, brutal prince from a darker era

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Wednesday, April 10, 2013



NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong Un seems like a fictional character out of a satirical doomsday movie — maybe a sequel to “Dr. Strangelove”. That fact that this immature brat and his gaggle of grim, aging generals actually rule a country and have the capacity to disturb the international order seems absurd in an era of global interdependence.

In the 21stcentury, humankind should have moved beyond this, but apparently we need a few more centuries of progress before all countries are led by comparatively rational, democratically elected leaders — or at least by boring, one-party bureaucrats whose main goal is to preserve stability and promote economic growth.

Kim is a throwback to medieval times when young, cocky princes claimed a divine right to lord it over defenseless peasants. The only reason those princes could claim that power, in truth, was because they were surrounded by troops of big guys with swords, armor and horses with a license to kill any peasant who complained too loudly. It really had nothing to do with God’s blessing and everything to do with which family was ruthless enough to take from the poor and make themselves rich.

The great royal houses of Europe and the dynasties of Asia were very much like the Mafia or the street gangs of Los Angeles. They got wealthy and powerful because they were prepared to kill anyone who stood in their way. Only later did they take on the trappings of respectability and cloak themselves in royal mythology. From a distant perspective, Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great can be appreciated as great conquerors and masters of men, but, to the thousands of people slaughtered by their marauding armies, they were genocidal thugs stealing lands and treasure for no better reason than that they could.

Little Kim’s belligerent threat to start a thermonuclear war that would consume South Korea, Japan and various outposts of the United States is the tough talk of a tyrant in the ancient mold. But Kim is all bluff. He does not have the bombs or the missiles to carry out his threats. His country is a geopolitical pipsqueak and an economic charity case. If the real world powers, China and the United States, chose to make it happen, his regime could be snuffed out.

There are plenty of complicating geopolitical factors that would make that result difficult to achieve, but one still has to ask: why? Kim is a hereditary ruler who oversees a brutal prison state. Why allow such a leader and such a system to exist in the modern era? It would be a true advance of civilization if the world community were to come together and get rid of this throwback to humanity’s darker times.

www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-kim-jong-un-bratty-20130409,0,7438832.story

[pim]

Reading through the thread puts me in mind of a "Young Turks" video on YouTube which poses the question: given that North Korea has nukes and Iran doesn't have nukes (yet! But this is about now and not some time in the future), doesn't it strike you as odd that North Korea is considered a joke by many Americans while it's Iran that's considered a threat?

[Deleted]

Key difference between the two countries is Israel who perceives their neighbors as a threat to their expansionary vision and do not want countries like Iran being powerful enough to resist that goal.

Where as Nth Korea is a insular state where the people perceive the outside world as monsters wanting to annihilate them.

While the media may play NTh Korea and Kim Jung un a prat....the threat is very real to, be sure Sth Korea and world governments would take that threat very seriously.

[Deleted]

Iran has a HUGE proportion of the world's oil reserves.

North Korea has nothing of the sort.

Kinda explains it all.

[pim]

That's only part of the picture. To say, as you do, that it "kinda explains it all" makes me kinda glad you're not in charge of strategic policy or foreign affairs ...