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

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

+1

The latter.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

Plus paving the way for Kim-the-third.

Besides, if DPRK gets too out of hand the Chinese will help the rest of the world turn them into pink mist.
Question being, at what point does China (and thus everyone else) step in? My guess is after it's too damn late.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

There IS one Russia (former USSR+Finland+Poland), its just temporary broken, that is no problem to us. You'll see it in 2012. It is because we have the geopolitical idea.
DPRK have the geopolitical idea. USA have the geopolitical idea. United Kingdom have the geopolitical idea.

ROK DOESN'T have the geopolitical idea. See the point?

[ofbg.livejournal.com]

Could it be you've never experienced true democracy in a Constitutional Republic combined with true Liberty?

We used to have that here.

We remember!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, there is one Soviet Union. Russia was broken almost a century ago due to the stupidity of its own leaders. The ROK by this point has a legitimate government that has the backing of its masses and more importantly is geared to parliamentary rule. It was not that way in 1950, but 1950 was a faraway time.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And in any case, Russia will never assume the political power it had in 1945 in any of our lifetimes. Its soft power is weakened due to the overall political crisis, its hard power is a pale ghost of what it was in the 1980s.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

What about democracy? Since 1991 there is only one superpower in the world. Russian president don't have any idea what Russia should do on Korean peninsula. Why don't USA just leave ROK alone? Why forcing NK to surrender with world trading embargo? Developing nuclear weapons? Hahaha! Ask Israel about it!

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

Did you forget that Russia is the only country that has more then 16-century victorios history? This crisis is sad but necessary time to rearrange and adapt the idea. Ideas make nations. Remember the Roman Empire. They occupied a huge territory but then they lost their initial idea and couldn't adapt it in time. And barbarians squashed the Empire.

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed I've never experienced and don't have to. Thanks a lot. The nearest few years I'd better stay away from USA as I can see from here, it's planned to be collapsed

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

...and don't want to. -- that correct

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

North Korea's eventual intention is to conquer and enslave South Korea. For the moment, however, I think that they are just throwing a tantrum to collect more blackmail from the rest of the world.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

That doesn't make China worse than the US, though. The US will use the same tactics when it feels they are necessary. That was the issue at stake - we both know that China is a vile totalitarian regime.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

So how's that go for them right now?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Oh I see. You're just one of the hordes of Russian nationalists who believe the world is gonna be turned on its head in 2012 and Russia has a special mission in the Galaxy.

I'm done here.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Would this not suggest that China has approved, or at the very least, acquiesced, to the current situation? This latest incident comes at a time when the United States and China are butting heads over currency policies and after the Democrats have suffered election reversals. This issue will distract and embarrass the United States and its allies in the region, possibly resulting in a new, humiliating round of appeasement toward North Korea. As long as the situation doesn't get out of hand, China stands to gain from it.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

I don't really disagree with your expanded analysis here. What I take issue with is your characterization of China as "unique" from the US in disinterest in civilian life, and extending that to policy production.

For one thing, you assume a democratic model in both nations (or at least in the US, with your "uninterested" subject in China being the leaders who "wont be hand wringing"). But I don't think that liberal hand-wringing has done shit in the US. And the recent history of the US and its campaigns prove that bombing civilians and supporting Genocide are valid options.

I think you're right that the US has no political capital to be the invader in N. Korea. But this has very little to do with any difference in the relative treatment of human dignity, and everything to do with the particular characteristics of the region, its history, and the history of the US in the region.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

China's involvement with N Korea is vague and China appears - outwardly - to have little control over the regime. But I think a lot of these political maneuvers are done in collaboration with China, if not to cause them, to schedule them around appropriate time-lines in the furtherance of providing value for both regimes.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> This is undoutebly a South Korea provacation (see Reuters:

So, firing into the ocean is a provocation for firing on people?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I don't suggest anything. I assert it as an obvious fact. North Korea's existence is wholly predicated on PRC's complicity and whatever North Korea does is with the tacit approval of Beijing. As long as the situation doesn't get out of hand is, of course, the sticky question.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I can see it now. NK decides on invasion and sends their troops, but are they met by SK's standing army? NO! instead they are met with millions upon millions of little remote-controlled robots. Little do they know that SK's military has actually been sponsoring this StarCraft training in order to create an unstoppable force of remote operators to control their robotic army via click and drag GPS map interface.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

LET THEM COME!!!

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[rasilio.livejournal.com]

The fact that we have not placed automated gun towers on the US Mexican border shows just how false this statement is.

The US is far from a saint but in the last 40 years it has grown very squeamish about civilian casualties on either side and clearly does not have the stomach to actively commit genocide even on a small scale any longer.

If there ever is a WW3 you can rest assured that there will be no more Tokyo's or Dresden's.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Yes and my eventual intention is to have a 3some with Scarlett Johanson and Jessica Alba any I have a hell of a lot more chance of realizing my intentions that NK does.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Kim Jong Il is the captain of a pirate ship nation. His 'government' is an abject failure, so he periodically threatens the South with "give me more food and goods or I'll flatten Seoul". He is no different than a Somali pirate; he just has more weapons. If he succeeds in producing nuclear weapons, he will have no problem selling them to whoever may wants them.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Cute.