Simple Question of International Import

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

What are the odds that this gets a LOT worse by the traditional spring time offensive season when a young general's fancy turns to invasion?

Brief timeline:

North Korea is accused of torpedoing a South Korean warship.

South Korea fires at North Korean fishing boats crossing the maritime border North Korea refuses to recognize.

North Korea is revealed to have highly modern facilities for nuclear material enrichment.

Not to mention, North Korea is facing the challenge of passing along the regime to a third generation of the Kim family.

North Korea is known for rattling its sabre and demanding to have attention paid to it when it is being ignored, but this is looking like a very different than recent years -- South Korea really has to retaliate...and half of South Korea's population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area within artillery range of the DMZ.

So a question -- is North Korea suicidal or are they betting that this behavior can get them some more winter grain shipments?

Comments

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

They drag their feet because N. Korea was their doing, and their ally. They wanted more countries like that, but this one is turning in to their own little political disaster. They've come around quite a lot about N. Korea, because Lil' Kim be crazy, but they'd really rather not have to, because sticking the political knife in N. Korea means they aint getting any other little dictator allies as friends.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is what I've said: the humanitarian and economic crisis is already there but like SA they're choosing to ignore it as opposed to addressing it when the solution would have been simpler. In that sense it's also like the USA's complete willful ignorance of the disaster NAFTA's proven to be for Mexican farming at the same time as the xenophobes here attribute the mass immigration to everything *but* that.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, North Korea was the doing of the Soviet Union. The USSR occupied Korea north of the 38th parallel in 1945 and *it* was the one that propped up Kim Il Sung, who was solidly in power before the Maoists had even won the Chinese Civil War. China nowadays props it up because the migration crisis and the economic collapse would really be unpleasant for it. And their motivation for ignoring it is a basic (and base) human one, not that they're inherently evil.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

Gigantic army?
NK military budget: $1,7bn (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/North_Korea.pdf)
SK military budget: $29bn (according to Wikipedia)

Who is victim?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

South Korea's military, counting all reserves: 3,000,000.

North Korea's military, counting all reserves: 9,000,000.

Who is the greater threat to whom?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

As with most huge, monstrous and deadly international conundrums, dodging the tough issues just make things worse.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And as with most societies around the world, the PRC's leaders prefer to ignore them until the point of no return is reached. And any attempt to actually integrate North Korea into South Korea would be a lot more painful than integrating East Germany into West Germany was.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

That's some pretty blatant history revisionism, IMO. DPRK's main sponsor and supporter has always been China. Reference: the Korean War.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

1. The total military reserves of SK: 5209000 with 12,5bn potential military workers
2. 9bn soldiers with shovels and axes -- that's really frightening to death

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Except they probably use coal when they cannot use electricity.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually he's right. The USSR created North Korea before the Chinese Communists had even really won the Chinese Civil War. North Korea was founded in 1948, while the Chinese communists did not win their war until 1949. The PRC *did* intervene in the Korean War not out of a reservoir of kindness for Kim Il Sung but instead out of fear that the USA would try to reverse the barely-won Chinese Civil War with an invasion across the Yalu.

During the Cold War, after the Sino-Soviet split North Korea chose to side with the Soviet Union, not the PRC as Kim Il Sung preferred a Soviet-style system to Mao's more peasant-based system. And these days the PRC props it up out of fear of and avoidance of a catastrophe, not anything broader or deeper than that.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Not yet.

But your twin did.

:P .

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually North Korea's troops have 60s-era weapons, though Kim Jong Un would no doubt try hurling all 13 million (if you count the entire manpower pool North Korea *still* comes out superior to South Korea) troops at once, plus there's the reality that wiping out Seoul is equivalent to disemboweling South Korea while North Korea's still too much of a shithole for bombs to do anything significant to it.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

Check out NK history overview. Sovet weapons, soviet-like economics, soviet-like industry with soviet-build factories and plants etc.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

OK he's right.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Only on that. In everything else he really, really minimizes how evil North Korea's dictatorship is, and how it's only propped up for fear that the economic and refugee crisis will get dramatically worse. The PRC's never particularly liked the Kim family dictatorship. It's one thing that actually cannot be blamed on them.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Most sensible comment on this entire thread.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

At this point the PRC and the ROK have to weigh the pain of integrating DPRK on their terms versus allowing the DPRK to integrate itself on its own chaotic terms.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They've needed to do that well before this point, IMHO.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

Why do you hate DPRK so much?

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Lol, excellent./

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Definitely seems like it at least plays a role.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I hate it because it gets away with blatantly holding another country hostage and that it does so is entirely the result of *both* Cold War superpowers never trying to actually resolve the situation. North Korea by this point is beyond salvaging.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I agree with you except that the USA, Russia, China, Japan has a lot of different geopolitical interests in this region. Kim Jong Il drives the country in truly independent way, while South Korea being exclusively American satellite and has no independence de-facto.

Even if that's true (and I disagree, based on American-SK divides, specifically with how to deal with DPRK), which would you rather have: Independence and crushing poverty, insane and hypocritical leadership, and political oppression, OR relatively free, modern life with advantages that even the US can't match (for instance, our definition of "broadband" is about 20% of the AVERAGE Korean internet speed)?

Independence has costs. IMO the costs imposed on North Korea are too high, especially considering that its people don't actually have any choice in the matter.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

+1