North Korea: What to do?

@JTT,

Quote:

In addition, the two South Koreans killed were marines, not civilians, stationed in a military town.

In your heirarchy of lives that have human value and lives that dont, where do you fit in ?

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@JTT,

True. Like I said, I'm pretty convinced that whatever makes its way to the public is propaganda, and that includes that published by conspiracy theorists. The best bet, IMO, is not to believe anybody; just watch and see. For me, that means keeping my ears open for booms and an eye on the horizon for bright flashes. I'm about 90 km south of Seoul, out in the rice paddies. No reason for the North to be aiming their **** out this way, eh?

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@failures art,

Quote:

Pyongyang is desperately trying to manage this situation they created. They are looking for any excuse to justify what they did to cover the fact that they are losing control. They love people like you who are so eager to find any way to blame the USA.

Which talking head did you steal this bit of propaganda from, Art?

Sounds just like all the bleating around the time of the Gulf of Tonkin. Ya gotta wonder just who it is that might be trying to manage the situation.

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@FBM,

No. Of course not. NK is not going to launch into full scale war. They can't do it. They can't slap their military brass on the wrist either because it would be admitting that they can't control them. As JTT will surely agree, those types get parades. The difference being he's not offended when those parades are in Pyongyang.

You're right to wonder what happens next. My guess is that more small skirmishes will happen every few months initiated by northern Generals trying to pose as being the toughest against the "southern aggressors" (and the US). These individuals will pay their hand when Kim Jong Il passes away, and they will be the same people who will attempt to take control in the new regime. I do not believe it will come to full scale war, but I do anticipate various attacks on SK, and Japan.

I'd say it's good meter on this is to watch how China positions itself. They will pose as ally to the DPRK, but it will be lukewarm at best. They are more focused on building their empire via the economy, and won't want to jump in to bail NK out. When the time comes that NK uses these acts to try and leverage some sort of trade deal (like they always do), I believe we'll see China rush in to be a peacemaker to keep the region stable.

A
R
T

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@JTT,

You're the violent propaganda aficionado, you tell me. I'm hardly concerned with your petty ad hominems. You're selfishly trying to transform this issue into your only issue. You aren't being an advocate for the victims of war by bogarting the camera and forcing them backstage. You live in false virtue.

A
R
T

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Quote:

South Korea's military officials said this week's exercises would be more intensive than initially planned.

"The intensity for the Yellow Sea drills will be higher than planned," said another official at the South's JCS. "Participating troops will conduct live-fire shooting and bombing drills."

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/11/113_77060.html

I see this as, among other things, a message to China to STFU.

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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

I do not believe it will come to full scale war, but I do anticipate various attacks on SK, and Japan.

Japan?

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@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

failures art wrote:

I do not believe it will come to full scale war, but I do anticipate various attacks on SK, and Japan.

Japan?

Perhaps merchant marine vessels or fishing boats. The type of scenario where they will claim the Japanese crossed into their waters, etc etc. In the end, the story will sound familiar: That the DPRK is on defense/under siege/under attack and simply trying to defend itself.

It doesn't have to be Japan, but given the history between the countries, I think that the Japanese make the short list in terms of targets to do a show of power. My theory is that this is about internal military politics.

Certainly it was not unintentional that Taepodong-2 (their second attempt at an MRBM) flew over Hokkaido. They probably knew that the rocket would fail to demonstrate any global range, but passing over Japan was a way to assert military might. It worked to that extent. In NK, their public no think they have two satellites in space (one playing the national anthem), and to the rest of the world, they preemptively took offence at when we said they crashed in the pacific. They used this in their national media to say that the world was jealous and terrified of their mighty technology.

A
Rinse. Repeat.
T

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@failures art,

I think your chances of being right are fairly high.

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The local TV news just ran a story about Japan beefing up its defenses. They don't have an outright military, just something like a 'civilian defense force', but they're being deployed in the waters between Japan and NK. NK hates Japan worse than they hate the US, btw.

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@FBM,

Japan may not have an "outright military," but isn't it likely that they would be quicker to respond than SK (at least under the former defense minister)? I suspect that the U.S. would not keep as tight a rein on Japan, but I can't say why that might be.
Thanks, Failure Arts, for joining in. You seem to know a bit about this. I am still learning.

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@realjohnboy,

But what would they respond with? They'd be powerless against the North without US support. Whatever response Japan came up with would essentially be the US's response. That said, I do think that response would be stronger than the response to that island shelling, tho. I sure hope so, anyway. There are protests in the streets of Seoul about the SK military's flimsy response and even though the defense minister stepped down, the people and the military are holding Prez Lee responsible.

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@failures art,

It was your propaganda, Art. I just wondered where it came from.

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@Ionus,

Quote:

You talk about war crimes committed by one side and any attempt to discuss war crimes by BOTH sides results in shock and awe from you.

Awww, does that knock the itsy bitsy tin soldier off his game?

What are you waiting for? Knock yourself out; post as much as you want about any old war crimes the world over.

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@Ionus,

Quote:

What about two civilians in peace time killed by artillery shells by a belligerant NK ?

Yes, it's sad about those two.

What about 600+ thousand butchered in Iraq in peacetime, who knows how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan, again in peacetime. How about the illegal invasion of Nicaragua, the slaughter of 40 to 50 thousand innocent men, women and children, but not before many were raped and tortured, again in peacetime?

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@failures art,

Quote:

I already mentioned the USNavy's presence in the Yellow Sea. Catch up. I already knew that we were there. None of this justifies NK's attack on SK.

Aren't you one confused little puppy.

You have forgotten to mention, even though it was pointed out to you a number of times, the 30% of the Korean population [North only?] that was slaughtered by a bunch of madmen who had just come from slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in targeted attacks. You can't say that they weren't practiced.

You have forgotten to mention that North Korea has been constantly vilified/terrorized by the USA since 1953. Does 'Axis of Evil' ring any bells for you. Ironic isn't it, when the evil came from the very man, and his country, that uttered those words.

And you think NK is overreacting? The USA would be shitting its collective knickers if they were in any type of similar situation. Even when there is no threat to the USA, one or two or ten are manufactured to get the largely idiotic populace to start whining for revenge.

Much like you are doing here in this thread, pretending that you know the facts.

Quote:

For you, I suppose it does. But you're just as vile and desire the exact kind of violence that you claim to despise. You just think it's different because you feel morally superior to Americans, and when Americans die to you it's just desserts. Never mind that it wasn't even Americans that died--they were Koreans--you've got to make the USA the center of all geopolitical conflicts.

Nice try, again, Art, but you're out to lunch, again.

It's not little ole me that makes the USA the center of all these war crimes, it's the USA, itself that does that.

Quote:

World Court of Women on US War Crimes

January 18, 2004 World Social Forum Mumbai, India
www.globalresearch.ca 18 March 2004
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/WOR403A.html

The Asian Women’s Human Right Council and El Taller International in partnership with several regional and international organisations held the World Court of Women on US War Crimes on January 18, 2004 during the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India. The Court that drew the support of more than 140 organisations and networks from all over the world, was the nineteenth in the series of Courts of Women being held since 1993 in different regions - Asia, Africa, the Arab world, Pacific, Central America and the Mediterranean. As Corinne Kumar, the International Coordinator said in the opening session when sharing the vision that informs the Court "The Courts of Women are an unfolding of a space, an imaginary: a horizon that invites us to think, to feel, to challenge to connect, to dance, to dream. It is an attempt to define a new space for women, and to infuse this space with a new vision, a new politics. It is a gathering of voices and visions of the global south, locating itself in a discourse of dissent: it is in itself a dislocating practice, challenging the new world order of globalisation, crossing lines, breaking new ground: listening to the voices and movements in the margins"

This Court was held in the context of the many genocidal wars initiated, instigated and ignited by the USA, in its insatiable greed for global hegemony and control.. Wars, whose violent memories it seeks to sanitise and erase through recasting them as crusades for civilising and bringing in freedom, democracy and justice to ‘brutal’ and ‘authoritarian societies’.

The Context

The World Court of Women on US War Crimes was therefore an act of remembering; And in that act of remembering, resisting. Remembering that in it’s righteous battle of freedom over authoritarianism, the United States of America over the past few decades, has left few regions of the world untouched- Central and Latin America, Africa, Asia, Pacific. Remembering that it has not only destroyed an incalculable number of lives through it’s wars of invasion, occupation, military coups and assassinations, but destroyed generations to come through the kinds of weapons of mass destruction it has made and marketed to the rest of the world; chemical, biological, nuclear.

Remembering for instance the invasion of South Vietnam and the experiment with Agent Orange that killed a few million and maimed generations to come; the extensive terror operations against Cuba from the early 1960’s that continues till today through the sanctions; the operations against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua through the 1980’s; the support of the racist rulers of South Africa and the Zionist rulers of Israel whose genocidal policies against the Palestinians it continues to condone; the installation of puppet regimes in Iran, Indonesia, Nigeria and Somalia – all of who killed thousands of innocent civilians ; the assassination of Nasser in Egypt and of Patrick Lumumba in the Congo; the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of Filipinos at the turn of the century; the violent balkanisation of former Yugoslavia, in which was reborn yet another weapon of war that targets very specially the women – gynocide or rape as a strategy for ethnic cleansing.

Remembering that perhaps the killings in total of two and a half crore civilian people all over the world since 1947 in overt and covert operations of the CIA is perhaps the price worth paying by the world’s only surviving superpower to protect this way of life even while maintaining, by the way, global domination. As also the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as stated by Madeline Albright when justifying the cold blooded violence unleashed by another weapon of mass destruction – that of economic sanctions.

"It was a hard choice but we think the price is worth it", she said.

This number of course does not take into consideration the horror of a Hiroshima when the Atom bomb was dropped by America not only to crush Japan, but also to conduct an experiment using human as guinea pigs; as it did when it tested nuclear weapons against the indigenous people of the Pacific 1957. Remember the famous lines of the US official who came to Chief Juda of the Bikini Islands asking him to lave the island with his people saying "We are testing these bombs for the good of mankind and to end all wars". And so to end all wars 66 bombs were tested by the US, stronger than those they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sometimes the burden of these memories are also too much to bear.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/WOR403A.html

I'll bet that you haven't read hardly any of the links that I've provided. You're starting to sound like a little kid who's been told that his old man is an axe murderer.

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@FBM,

Japan has a military. They are called the JASDF (Air), JMSDF (Maritime), and JGSDF (Ground). They number a quarter of a million and are very professional, well organised and well trained.

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@FBM,

One of the possible consequences of an aggressive North Korea with nuclear capabilities is the remilitarization of Japan.

At some point, any and every nation that depends upon the US for its defense must assess

1) The threats it faces in terms of severity and imminence
2) The resolve of the US to defend it against these threats, and the limits to which the US will go even with the firmest of resolve
3) The degree to which the US will attempt to limit the nation's own response to the threat

The more imminent and severe the threat the less likely the nation and the US will completely align on limitations.

It is to be greatly hoped that North Korea will not attack Seoul with long range artillery or rockets, but let's say they do. Given that NK has nukes, and the US has interests and allies other than SK within NK's strike zone, how far would it go in retaliation, and how far will it allow SK to go?

According to GlobalFirepower.com Japan is ranked 9th in the world in military strength. By comparison, South Korea is ranked 12th and North Korea is ranked 20th. Nuclear capabilities are not considered in the rankings.
Despite the relative rankings, it would seem that South Korea is in a much better position to retaliate against NK than Japan if only because of geography.

Japan could likely manage retaliation to the sort of relatively minor provocative attacks referred to by Diest, but in the case of a more serious attack, it's probable that they would heavily depend on the US.

The likelihood that North Korea could deliver one of its nukes against Japan is very slim and against us, even slimmer. Of course Japan is a lot closer to NK than we are, and even if NK has the capabilities to shoot a nuke armed missile anywhere near US soil, we would probably pick it up on our defense systems and be able to intercept it. Still, there is a chance, albeit very small, that NK could nuke the US.

At the same time, we can't be sure how China will react in a situation where severe retaliation against NK might be called for.

In any event, the US is going to be very concerned about possible escalation and, in my opinion, more likely to downplay than overplay retaliation against any further NK attacks.

In the short term, Japan is pretty much stuck with its reliance on the US, but this is not a brand new turn of events and we can be certain that NK has been seen as a significant security threat by Japan for some time. If Japan has perceived or now perceives that the US has become less resolved or more limited in terms of defending Japanese security or, just as importantly, that North Korea believes this to be the case, it may decide that it needs to assume more of the capability and decision making in terms of its defense.

A remilitarized Japan has implications for a new arms race among Japan, China, North and South Korea and Taiwan.

I don't believe the world needs to fear a remilitarized Japan in terms of a return to military imperialism, but emotions about the Japanese still run hot in that part of the world and any build up of arms anywhere creates instability and increases the probability of a disaster.

At this point I will once again return to Iran because the current state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula underscores both the threat and the opportunity presented to us in the Middle East.

North Korea is a basket case. Its economy is in ruins, its culture is stagnant, its society has regressed to something quite dark and despairing, it has virtually no friends on the globe, and even if it has expansionist fever dreams there is no chance that they will be realized.

And yet look at how it is able to destabilize an entire region of the world, increase the probability of massive death and destruction, and foil and frustrate earth's greatest superpower... all because it possesses a few nukes.

Now think about this situation transported to a region of the world that is already the most explosive, is sitting upon, arguably, the engine of the global economy and is in closer geographical proximity to far more of America's interests and allies.

Then rest it in the hands of a regime that already considers us its greatest existential threat, has, for decades, been developing strong strategic alliances not only in its region but within our own, (as well as the rest of the world), and has very clear expansionist designs.

What mischief and mayhem will Iran make with only a few nukes?

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@JTT,

Quote:

Awww, does that knock the itsy bitsy tin soldier off his game?

No, it doesnt. Thanks for asking.

What about the prisoners of war tortured by NK or the civilians massacred when they took over an area...no doubt your inability to add up has them killed by the USA.

Which country are you on the payroll for ?

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@JTT,

I am not going to justify any of American war crimes and you are right to say that the words about stability, peace, security etc. in the mouth of the only country which used nuclear weapon against living people and civilians in Hiroshima and wages constant wars trying to solve by them the problems they created itself -- these words in the mouth of America sounds like hypocrisy. But see, this in no case justifies what N.K. did. We could say that we can understand that, but to say that was right is actually the same as to justify American war crimes. I think that's the main thing that your opponents want you to admit.

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North Korea: What to do?

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