When the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR was dismembered in 1989, there was a peaceful transition to democracy in my country, Hungary.
A lot of people say that "we should have made a revolution", what they mean is that the "free", externally imposed peaceful transition may not have been the best thing in the long run.
Now that I'm older, approaching 30, I'm learning what this mean. Basically, we got rid of the soviets, we got ourselves a democracy, but the political and economic system hasn't changed enough. We have very high levels of debt, we don't have good politicians or political parties, we have lots of corruption, high and constantly changing taxes, high administrative overhead, the so-called redistribution factor is 50% (meaning every second dollar produced is eaten up by the gov't and then redistributed to its network of "friendly" companies through gov't jobs, projects and grants or sent abroad to pay interest). Yesterday I went to a meeting where I learned that the buzzword "innovation" is defined in hungarian state documents as getting a gov't grant and then doing something with that.
We're doing a startup, and one of the first question we usually get is "which grant did you get?". When we say we didn't, that we bootstrapped ourselves people think we're crazy.
I don't know whether we would have been better off with a not-so-peaceful transition, and nobody wants violence in their country, but we definitely need some kind of politico-economic "revolution". Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think we don't have the necessary political resources (good people on the state side) for that. I don't think a smart and good-intentioned person today goes into politics here.
So, based on my experiences here --- given how much they're behind economically, politically and technically --- unless the North Koreans overthrow Kim Jong-il themselves, they're pretty much fucked for the next 50-100 years, because no externally imposed force will magically fix their system for free. Their best bet is to unite with South Korea in a painful way (eg. forget their own laws, taxes, gov't agencies and crappy gov't run companies, which means tons of people loose their job, and adopt what they have in South Korea), the way East Germany united with West Germany.
Of course, I'm just a programmer, so what do I know =)
> I don't think a smart and good-intentioned person today goes into politics here.
I don't think this is a localised phenomenon. PG mentioned in one of his essays that following the industrial revolution and the rise of modern-day capitalism, a lot of the driven individuals who would have gone into politics, now decide to go into business.
Here in the UK, we had a lot of noise made about political reform this year after a fraught, tense election. Talking with friends about it though, we feel that nothing is likely to change until the type of politicians we have changes, and that seems unlikely to happen. All the people we think would make good politicians don't want to go into politics, and we end up with a situation where we just get career politicians who grow up with a particular way of thinking and a particular mindset regarding politics.
All the clever, driven people are busy running startups. Who'd take politics over that?
While I was reading your excellent comment, I realized I could simply replace "Hungary" with any country of the former eastern block or the Balkans and still get a correct view of how things are over there. Many ex-Yugoslavians are, just like yourself, wondering if a revolution could have sped up the transition. I must tell you I don't think it would have. Just look at Romania, for instance: They had a violent revolution and things aren't actually peachy over there even after 20 years. I think it is hard for us to admit to ourselves that the process is going to take much longer. IMO, generations that were born and raised during communism have to leave this earth before anything can truly change.
That said, the problem of government-sponsored innovation, which you mention, isn't exclusive to post-communist countries. It is an (extremely wrong) EU policy.
What you're talking about is a problem of the political culture (that takes centuries to establish) and of the legitimacy of the core institutions and of the political system (democracy).
I don't see how a revolution instead of a peaceful transition would help in any sense.
If it's any consolation, Austria got rid of the Soviets in 1955 and yet the situation you describe sounds extremely similar to the one here. The main difference seems to be overall wealth - GDP per capita is about 3.3x as high here, despite being neighbours. Neighbours on the other side of the Iron Curtain for 3-4 decades.
I don't know what the answer is, but I have a feeling it's not violence. The countries of former Yugoslavia to me don't seem to be doing better than those that emerged from Soviet rule peacefully. It's hard to judge from the outside, but the societal problems there seem even deeper.
> A lot of people say that "we should have made a revolution", what they mean is that the "free", externally imposed peaceful transition may not have been the best thing in the long run.
I think you are concentrating on the wrong word: "peaceful" instead of "external". A revolution need not be violent, and either way it implies that there is a real chance a sufficient percentage of citizens is ready to move on from the current system although both violent and peaceful revolutions are prone to slipping back toward the old system or some other form of authoritarianism, for different reasons: violence also attracts the wrong elements whether in itself or as opportunists whereas a peaceful transition may not be able to remove all the remnants of the old system.
The fundamental idea, though, is that the society needs to be ready and willing to change internally. In a way, as much as it infantilizes people, when most of a nation has grown up with a powerful authority, it is hard if not impossible to go straight to relative liberty. Part of it is cultural, part of it is the seeming evolutionary human trait of being either submissive (most people) or dominant (few people). It takes some time for a submissive person to learn to fend for themselves, and as we see with "highly developed" societies today, many are still highly susceptible to needing leaders.
Of the famous recentish revolutions, it should for example be remembered that Marx stipulated the "communist revolution" should happen in the highly industrialised nations (ill-advised as the idea of armed revolution is). Russia in particular, a backwards agrarian empire, was about the last place he thought would be ready for it. And turned out he was right.
Edit: clarified wording of drawbacks of violent/peaceful revolutions.
I've always wanted someone smarter than me to compare the US to Canada as a case study for or against revolution. It seems one could learn a lot by comparing the violent revolution that created the US and the slow and peaceful transfer of power that created Canada. Since the cultures are so similar, it's striking that the 49th parallel created such different paths to statehood.
Reading this only makes me wonder one thing; Do you really think it would have been anything different had there been violence in you revolution ?
Do you think anyone different would be running the country now ?
Do you think years of violence, revenge and deeply nested hatred would make things better ?
You can probably tell, but I think not.
Violence thrown into the fray only makes matters worse. IMHO
I've just been rereading de Tocqueville's recollections of the 1848 revolution in France. He remarks on the pervasive corruption of the July Monarchy, which came about--how else?--through a revolution. Not an especially violent one, but a revolution even so.
> Their best bet is to unite with South Korea in a painful way (eg. forget their own laws, taxes, gov't agencies and crappy gov't run companies, which means tons of people loose their job, and adopt what they have in South Korea), the way East Germany united with West Germany.
Who knows. The German unification is still a work in progress today.
There are 4 most likely scenarios for how the whole North Korean situation can work out.
1. Continuation of the status quo. The DPRK stays a basket case and continues lashing out locally but nothing major happens.
2. Hot war breaks out (precipitated by the DPRK or the South or the US), the North loses fairly quickly, there are catastrophic civilian casualties in the South and the North and perhaps elsewhere (e.g. the North launches a nuke or chemical weapons or what-have-you against Japan or the US, just 'cause it can), American military losses are comparatively minor in comparison to everything else. Ultimately, the industrial base and economy of the Korean peninsula is in shambles and is all the worse for having to deal with bringing the North into the 20th (let alone 21st) century, despite lots of foreign aid it's still a shitty situation for a lot of people for a long, long time.
3. The DPRK regime falls from within relatively peacefully. The North and South reunite and a crap-ton of effort and struggle is necessary to bring the North out of the dark ages. It's a crappy situation except for the Northerners who had been abused and/or starving, but it's still a hell of a lot better than option 2.
4. China forces the DPRK regime to step down through some means and takes over control of North Korea (either via direct annexation or through proxy control). Hostilities in the region diminish greatly and conditions improve for the North Koreans. It's a crappy situation but still better than option 1 or 2.
There are lots of other things that could happen, of course, but I think these options take up the bulk of the probability space.
5. China topples the NK regime and offloads the starving nation onto South Korea. That would ensure the end of Korean competition for decades, as the economic price of reunification would be humongous, yet the Koreans would not be able to turn this offer down.
Unfortunately your option 4 is the wishful thinking the starry-eyed idealists in our foreign service and media have been whispering among themselves for 20 years. The Chinese coms like the regime in the North very much, thank you. It keeps regional rivals Japan and South Korea off guard, and keeps the U.S. tied-up. The Kim dynasty could not even exist without the backing of the PRC. We let slip the window of opportunity to exert pressure to change the situation in the early 90s. Instead we sent nuclear technology, oil, and food, which Kim tells his people is tribute from the U.S.
2. Hot war breaks out (precipitated by the DPRK or the South or the US), the North loses fairly quickly, there are catastrophic civilian casualties in the South and the North and perhaps elsewhere (e.g. the North launches a nuke or chemical weapons or what-have-you against Japan or the US, just 'cause it can), American military losses are comparatively minor in comparison to everything else. Ultimately, the industrial base and economy of the Korean peninsula is in shambles and is all the worse for having to deal with bringing the North into the 20th (let alone 21st) century, despite lots of foreign aid it's still a shitty situation for a lot of people for a long, long time.
Not so fast. The North has millions of trained, ready soldiers and nukes, and a single-minded determination to fight to the end. A full-blown war would cost millions of lives on all sides, and a win for us is not certain at all. It could easily end with a bloody stalemate and new truce after they've conquered most of the south and we lose the will to send >100,000 US soldiers to die. Just look at how it went the first time. The army of North Korea is quite formidable.
Propaganda is so effective in NK that the people believe their leader is the good guy and that the rest of the world is evil. Bombing them will only get rid of the leaders, set the country a few decades back wasting time rebuilding everything, but these corrupted ideas will remain in place amongst the survivors.
I believe the only long-term solution to NK is education of their people, which will hopefully lead to either progressive reform of the regime, or even revolution.
Education is happening right now with Internet slowly penetrating the country, notably via black market cell phones. Edit: as one of the child posts point out, propaganda is eroding. Change is on its way!
Given the past history of how that panned out in other countries, maybe it is actually naive to think bombing will solve anything, no ?
Also, maybe neither the US, S Korea or China want to see a collapse of the region with all refugees that would ensue ? Comparison with east germany is out of touch IMO: difference between south and north korea are much, much wider (not to diminish East Germany shortcomings, but most of its population was not dying from hunger AFAIK), and whereas German reunification happened after Soviet collapse, China is not about to collapse.
Also, West Germany was the top economy of western Europe, and much bigger in population than East Germany (14 millions vs ~ 60 millions in 1990, whereas N Korea is around 25 millions for 45 in South Korea).
Rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion several years ago that North Korea is completely China's problem. That is, although the rest of the region and the world has to deal with an increasingly belligerent and unstable North Korea, it's the Chinese who provide them food and are uninterested in any change in the status quo. Not only do the Chinese not want a change, they're more than happy to let Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. continue along with the farcical arms talks that have been going on for decades.
In this case, I'm not yet convinced that there is anything going on here besides North Korea yet again yanking everybody's chain. I sure hope that's what it is. I'm watching for further escalation and China's response.
And as much as I hate to pointlessly rag on China -- its not clear to me that the Chinese have purposely caused this as much as they've just been distracted and neglectful -- somebody pointed out the other day that wherever in the world you find gross human rights abuses and festering problems nobody seems to be able to fix, somewhere in the background there's always China.
I think you're 100% on the mark here. Also, it may be to Chinas advantage to have North Korea the way it is now because it gives them bargaining power.
As I understand it, it's a case of the status quo being less-bad for China than the fall of the state. Right now, they don't have a refugee crisis on their border, mostly because the North Korean state manages to keep a lid on things. If the regime falls, they will.
The people of Seoul are pretty relaxed about this sort of thing. I, however, am a foreigner and thus am terrified. People keep stopping me on the street to explain to me just how terrified I am.
> People keep stopping me on the street to explain to me just how terrified I am.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that you look scared and lots of people are pointing it out to you? Or are you saying that the fear of the Korean people is suppressed and projected upon the foreign nationals living within the country?
IMHO, one way to see how this situation will develop in mid- to long- term perspective is to look at interests of China and, to a lesser degree, Russia. If China wants Taiwan more than it wants to have an argument to bring up during currency negotiations, they'd be inclined to make a deal: control over TW for control over NK, in one form or the other. If the currency negotiations are more valuable to them, they'd be inclined to keep the status quo, within some reasonable limits. There maybe some other interests worth looking at, which I'm missing.
Russia wants an upper hand in European missile shield negotiations. There's also a Russia-Japan situation, where both countries are still in de-jure state of war, and they've been positioning themselves recently to finally sign the peace treaty. It's worth noting that Russia's role in this conflict seems to be smaller than China's.
There's a new perspective is opening up with a new Supreme Leader taking over any time now. He has not seen the war, neither he has seen much of human suffering, and that's a dangerous trait to have while having control over nuclear weapons. To me, this is the scariest part of the puzzle.
I find it difficult to believe that the US would have any real capability of planting agents into that region, let alone the upper echelons of the dprk. Last I checked our intelligence agency were light on manpower especially in the field of developing human assets and all attention was being diverted to the middle east.
Secondly I don't think that any military action in north korea is possible without huge consequences, huge number of casualties both South Korean civilians and coalition forces. The dprk has been watching our moves for the past 60 years and despite what our media wants us to believe, we are not as invincible as we think we are. For one we westerners don't have the stomach to accept the sheer number of casualties, time and time again this has always been one of our critical weaknesses as evidence by the current war in iraq and the vietnam war. The US would never accept another Vietnam. Our military planners know this and have geared our troops for surgical strikes and precession. North korea has built countless number of tunnels and underground bunkers. If you watched one of the videos from the reporters who sneaked in a camera in, their subway systems are designed to double as troop bunkers.
I'm inclined to believe that for whatever reason the western media always seems to downplay the the north koreans. Very few countries have the organization and the will to carry out total war with the US. What a lot of people don't get is that they've been playing this defense game for over a millenia. It been well known suspicion that the DPRK export their trench/tunnel warfare tech to Vietnam.
It's a shame the koreas being sandwiched between china, russia, japan and the us with each vying for their own interests. It's a shitty situation which plays to NK's advantage.
Is our intelligence so poor that we do not know where the top 100 or 1000 leaders of the DKRP are? Is our ability so degraded that we could not execute a blitz strike on all leadership centers within minutes? We have so many assets in the region it isn't even funny. Not to mention the South Koreans.
Imho, the only solution is a blitz decapitation. Allowing the petulant DKRP to steer the course of events by violence whenever they feel like it is insanity. Allowing them to enhance their war making capabilities is also insanity.
It is as if Canada were belligerent towards the US and would sink our ships and lob artillery at Detroit without regard. All the while building a nuclear weapons stockpile. I do not think the American people would let that stand.
On the other hand there has been 60 years or so of cold peace with far less casualties than full blown hostilities would incur. The only problem is that the South has lived under a threat of constant war in that time.
Why do you think it's so easy to track North Korean officials? Decapitating the leadership in Iraq didn't happen quickly, why would it so much easier in North Korea, a country with far lusher vegetation?
Seoul is only 35 miles from the border with North Korea. The North has artillery which can hit Seoul, hence the South needs to be very careful not to provoke the North. Any engagement would be costly.
Have we seriously learned nothing from Iraq? Take out the leadership, and you are left with a failed country and a population that is likely to be hostile.
Next you'll tell me that we'll walk into NK as liberators...
The problem as we found out in the 50s is not in defeating the DKRP, it is in defeating China.
Canada is much different geographically and geopolitically than North Korea, also North Korea ISN'T on the US doorstep.
As a better example of what would happen to North Korea if it were on the US doorstep, look towards Cuba. The US by and large tolerates Cuba to exist in it's current form as long as it does not pose a significant threat to US interests. If Cuba decided to stockpile nuclear weapons you'd see a much different reaction.
Since the 50s the DKRP has been essentially in China's hemisphere of influence under it's own unwritten version of the monroe doctorine.
It's likely all the guns they have aimed at Seoul have a fail deadly fall back in the case of an attempted decapitation attack. In which case, we would be blowing off South Korea's head off.
Hell, the Soviet Union and the US during the cold war assumed it would be retard hard, if not impossible to wipe out each other's entire chain of command. And they had nukes. And they tried REALLY hard.
South Korea is a very wealthy, well educated country with a very well equipped, well trained modern military and tech thats on par with anything else in the world. And they've been sitting on one of the most volatile borders in the industrialized world for the last half century+. I guarantee there is nothing they don't know about or don't anticipate coming from DPRK.
The only reason they let DPRK get away with these types of attacks is that the cost of reunification would be so great as to cripple the south korean economy for decades. From an economic perspective it costs less to maintain the status quo than to force a reunification. Ditto from China's perspective, they will pay a steep price for reunification as well.
The situation is in good hands without the US meddling. If the S. Koreans and the Chinese aren't freaking out, that means its under control.
Does anyone else view the Koreas to be worlds cranky Aunt and Uncle and whenever either of them says something wrong the other starts an argument about it?
I think its more the crazy drunken, unpredictable bull of an Uncle that at any moment could beat the Aunt. The only thing holding him back is that the rest of the village hates him and would string him up if he did it.
[+] [-] Maro|15 years ago|reply
A lot of people say that "we should have made a revolution", what they mean is that the "free", externally imposed peaceful transition may not have been the best thing in the long run.
Now that I'm older, approaching 30, I'm learning what this mean. Basically, we got rid of the soviets, we got ourselves a democracy, but the political and economic system hasn't changed enough. We have very high levels of debt, we don't have good politicians or political parties, we have lots of corruption, high and constantly changing taxes, high administrative overhead, the so-called redistribution factor is 50% (meaning every second dollar produced is eaten up by the gov't and then redistributed to its network of "friendly" companies through gov't jobs, projects and grants or sent abroad to pay interest). Yesterday I went to a meeting where I learned that the buzzword "innovation" is defined in hungarian state documents as getting a gov't grant and then doing something with that.
We're doing a startup, and one of the first question we usually get is "which grant did you get?". When we say we didn't, that we bootstrapped ourselves people think we're crazy.
I don't know whether we would have been better off with a not-so-peaceful transition, and nobody wants violence in their country, but we definitely need some kind of politico-economic "revolution". Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think we don't have the necessary political resources (good people on the state side) for that. I don't think a smart and good-intentioned person today goes into politics here.
So, based on my experiences here --- given how much they're behind economically, politically and technically --- unless the North Koreans overthrow Kim Jong-il themselves, they're pretty much fucked for the next 50-100 years, because no externally imposed force will magically fix their system for free. Their best bet is to unite with South Korea in a painful way (eg. forget their own laws, taxes, gov't agencies and crappy gov't run companies, which means tons of people loose their job, and adopt what they have in South Korea), the way East Germany united with West Germany.
Of course, I'm just a programmer, so what do I know =)
[+] [-] NickPollard|15 years ago|reply
I don't think this is a localised phenomenon. PG mentioned in one of his essays that following the industrial revolution and the rise of modern-day capitalism, a lot of the driven individuals who would have gone into politics, now decide to go into business.
Here in the UK, we had a lot of noise made about political reform this year after a fraught, tense election. Talking with friends about it though, we feel that nothing is likely to change until the type of politicians we have changes, and that seems unlikely to happen. All the people we think would make good politicians don't want to go into politics, and we end up with a situation where we just get career politicians who grow up with a particular way of thinking and a particular mindset regarding politics.
All the clever, driven people are busy running startups. Who'd take politics over that?
[+] [-] rodp|15 years ago|reply
That said, the problem of government-sponsored innovation, which you mention, isn't exclusive to post-communist countries. It is an (extremely wrong) EU policy.
[+] [-] Revisor|15 years ago|reply
I don't see how a revolution instead of a peaceful transition would help in any sense.
[+] [-] pmjordan|15 years ago|reply
I don't know what the answer is, but I have a feeling it's not violence. The countries of former Yugoslavia to me don't seem to be doing better than those that emerged from Soviet rule peacefully. It's hard to judge from the outside, but the societal problems there seem even deeper.
[+] [-] rue|15 years ago|reply
I think you are concentrating on the wrong word: "peaceful" instead of "external". A revolution need not be violent, and either way it implies that there is a real chance a sufficient percentage of citizens is ready to move on from the current system although both violent and peaceful revolutions are prone to slipping back toward the old system or some other form of authoritarianism, for different reasons: violence also attracts the wrong elements whether in itself or as opportunists whereas a peaceful transition may not be able to remove all the remnants of the old system.
The fundamental idea, though, is that the society needs to be ready and willing to change internally. In a way, as much as it infantilizes people, when most of a nation has grown up with a powerful authority, it is hard if not impossible to go straight to relative liberty. Part of it is cultural, part of it is the seeming evolutionary human trait of being either submissive (most people) or dominant (few people). It takes some time for a submissive person to learn to fend for themselves, and as we see with "highly developed" societies today, many are still highly susceptible to needing leaders.
Of the famous recentish revolutions, it should for example be remembered that Marx stipulated the "communist revolution" should happen in the highly industrialised nations (ill-advised as the idea of armed revolution is). Russia in particular, a backwards agrarian empire, was about the last place he thought would be ready for it. And turned out he was right.
Edit: clarified wording of drawbacks of violent/peaceful revolutions.
[+] [-] nostromo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cskau|15 years ago|reply
You can probably tell, but I think not. Violence thrown into the fray only makes matters worse. IMHO
[+] [-] cafard|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eru|15 years ago|reply
Who knows. The German unification is still a work in progress today.
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
EDIT: As pointed out we do not have the longest working hours in europe, but we do in "western" europe.
And I was too hasty to describe the UK has having never had a revolution, I should perhaps constrain it to "the English."
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|15 years ago|reply
1. Continuation of the status quo. The DPRK stays a basket case and continues lashing out locally but nothing major happens.
2. Hot war breaks out (precipitated by the DPRK or the South or the US), the North loses fairly quickly, there are catastrophic civilian casualties in the South and the North and perhaps elsewhere (e.g. the North launches a nuke or chemical weapons or what-have-you against Japan or the US, just 'cause it can), American military losses are comparatively minor in comparison to everything else. Ultimately, the industrial base and economy of the Korean peninsula is in shambles and is all the worse for having to deal with bringing the North into the 20th (let alone 21st) century, despite lots of foreign aid it's still a shitty situation for a lot of people for a long, long time.
3. The DPRK regime falls from within relatively peacefully. The North and South reunite and a crap-ton of effort and struggle is necessary to bring the North out of the dark ages. It's a crappy situation except for the Northerners who had been abused and/or starving, but it's still a hell of a lot better than option 2.
4. China forces the DPRK regime to step down through some means and takes over control of North Korea (either via direct annexation or through proxy control). Hostilities in the region diminish greatly and conditions improve for the North Koreans. It's a crappy situation but still better than option 1 or 2.
There are lots of other things that could happen, of course, but I think these options take up the bulk of the probability space.
[+] [-] varjag|15 years ago|reply
5. China topples the NK regime and offloads the starving nation onto South Korea. That would ensure the end of Korean competition for decades, as the economic price of reunification would be humongous, yet the Koreans would not be able to turn this offer down.
[+] [-] jackfoxy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbb|15 years ago|reply
Not so fast. The North has millions of trained, ready soldiers and nukes, and a single-minded determination to fight to the end. A full-blown war would cost millions of lives on all sides, and a win for us is not certain at all. It could easily end with a bloody stalemate and new truce after they've conquered most of the south and we lose the will to send >100,000 US soldiers to die. Just look at how it went the first time. The army of North Korea is quite formidable.
[+] [-] berntb|15 years ago|reply
If that is true, then don't hold your breath for too much of changes in the NK status quo.
[+] [-] tomjen3|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrb|15 years ago|reply
I believe the only long-term solution to NK is education of their people, which will hopefully lead to either progressive reform of the regime, or even revolution.
Education is happening right now with Internet slowly penetrating the country, notably via black market cell phones. Edit: as one of the child posts point out, propaganda is eroding. Change is on its way!
[+] [-] cdavid|15 years ago|reply
Also, maybe neither the US, S Korea or China want to see a collapse of the region with all refugees that would ensue ? Comparison with east germany is out of touch IMO: difference between south and north korea are much, much wider (not to diminish East Germany shortcomings, but most of its population was not dying from hunger AFAIK), and whereas German reunification happened after Soviet collapse, China is not about to collapse.
Also, West Germany was the top economy of western Europe, and much bigger in population than East Germany (14 millions vs ~ 60 millions in 1990, whereas N Korea is around 25 millions for 45 in South Korea).
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|15 years ago|reply
In this case, I'm not yet convinced that there is anything going on here besides North Korea yet again yanking everybody's chain. I sure hope that's what it is. I'm watching for further escalation and China's response.
And as much as I hate to pointlessly rag on China -- its not clear to me that the Chinese have purposely caused this as much as they've just been distracted and neglectful -- somebody pointed out the other day that wherever in the world you find gross human rights abuses and festering problems nobody seems to be able to fix, somewhere in the background there's always China.
This situation bears some concern and watching
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbooth|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamii|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theycallmemorty|15 years ago|reply
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that you look scared and lots of people are pointing it out to you? Or are you saying that the fear of the Korean people is suppressed and projected upon the foreign nationals living within the country?
[+] [-] RomP|15 years ago|reply
Russia wants an upper hand in European missile shield negotiations. There's also a Russia-Japan situation, where both countries are still in de-jure state of war, and they've been positioning themselves recently to finally sign the peace treaty. It's worth noting that Russia's role in this conflict seems to be smaller than China's.
There's a new perspective is opening up with a new Supreme Leader taking over any time now. He has not seen the war, neither he has seen much of human suffering, and that's a dangerous trait to have while having control over nuclear weapons. To me, this is the scariest part of the puzzle.
[+] [-] findm|15 years ago|reply
Secondly I don't think that any military action in north korea is possible without huge consequences, huge number of casualties both South Korean civilians and coalition forces. The dprk has been watching our moves for the past 60 years and despite what our media wants us to believe, we are not as invincible as we think we are. For one we westerners don't have the stomach to accept the sheer number of casualties, time and time again this has always been one of our critical weaknesses as evidence by the current war in iraq and the vietnam war. The US would never accept another Vietnam. Our military planners know this and have geared our troops for surgical strikes and precession. North korea has built countless number of tunnels and underground bunkers. If you watched one of the videos from the reporters who sneaked in a camera in, their subway systems are designed to double as troop bunkers.
I'm inclined to believe that for whatever reason the western media always seems to downplay the the north koreans. Very few countries have the organization and the will to carry out total war with the US. What a lot of people don't get is that they've been playing this defense game for over a millenia. It been well known suspicion that the DPRK export their trench/tunnel warfare tech to Vietnam.
It's a shame the koreas being sandwiched between china, russia, japan and the us with each vying for their own interests. It's a shitty situation which plays to NK's advantage.
[+] [-] siculars|15 years ago|reply
Imho, the only solution is a blitz decapitation. Allowing the petulant DKRP to steer the course of events by violence whenever they feel like it is insanity. Allowing them to enhance their war making capabilities is also insanity.
It is as if Canada were belligerent towards the US and would sink our ships and lob artillery at Detroit without regard. All the while building a nuclear weapons stockpile. I do not think the American people would let that stand.
On the other hand there has been 60 years or so of cold peace with far less casualties than full blown hostilities would incur. The only problem is that the South has lived under a threat of constant war in that time.
[+] [-] cpearce|15 years ago|reply
Seoul is only 35 miles from the border with North Korea. The North has artillery which can hit Seoul, hence the South needs to be very careful not to provoke the North. Any engagement would be costly.
[+] [-] andymorris|15 years ago|reply
Next you'll tell me that we'll walk into NK as liberators...
[+] [-] fleitz|15 years ago|reply
Canada is much different geographically and geopolitically than North Korea, also North Korea ISN'T on the US doorstep.
As a better example of what would happen to North Korea if it were on the US doorstep, look towards Cuba. The US by and large tolerates Cuba to exist in it's current form as long as it does not pose a significant threat to US interests. If Cuba decided to stockpile nuclear weapons you'd see a much different reaction.
Since the 50s the DKRP has been essentially in China's hemisphere of influence under it's own unwritten version of the monroe doctorine.
[+] [-] icegreentea|15 years ago|reply
Hell, the Soviet Union and the US during the cold war assumed it would be retard hard, if not impossible to wipe out each other's entire chain of command. And they had nukes. And they tried REALLY hard.
[+] [-] Kliment|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varjag|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwhitman|15 years ago|reply
The only reason they let DPRK get away with these types of attacks is that the cost of reunification would be so great as to cripple the south korean economy for decades. From an economic perspective it costs less to maintain the status quo than to force a reunification. Ditto from China's perspective, they will pay a steep price for reunification as well.
The situation is in good hands without the US meddling. If the S. Koreans and the Chinese aren't freaking out, that means its under control.
[+] [-] TamDenholm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hammerdr|15 years ago|reply
Doesn't mean he won't, though.
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedBlosser|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyre|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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