[MsSparkie]

Some thoughts on N.K. I am following:


"In North Korea, the control by the Kim regime is so absolute that televisions and radios by law are soldered to be pre-set to approved TV stations and radio stations, with the death penalty for anyone found to have overriden them.

Just one small taste of how bad it is.

Everybody--absolutely everybody--is required to wear a pin carrying Kim's face. Also, they're required by law to smile when in public, and failure to so smile is a crime.

Pregnant women are not allowed within the city limits of Pyongyang, the North Korean capitol. Why? Because they're ugly and disturbing and should not sully the perfect image of the state there. I swear I am not making this up.

Children can be jailed for not being sufficiently happy.

I repeat: children get jailed for being insufficiently happy. Along with their parents of course. Although they're imprisoned separately for the offense, so they quite likely never see each other again.

Even Castro is not this crazy horrible. It's like something out of Madelaine L'Engle's Time Quartet books in their portrayal of how Satan works: even children and how they must play and behave is governed by the state, with the most horrible of results for those who refuse to comply.

It's not that the North Koreans are inhuman. Far from it. But they've been dehumanized. As I say, even the people under the Taliban had it bettter.

It's horrific. And I don't know any easy answers to it, but I do think there are simple ones. They mostly, in my view, start with this: find a way to kill Kim. Yes, just kill him."


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"Kim is a joke. He probably doesnt even know whats going on. The real power - like in the Soviet Union - is held by the oligarchs and the hidden elites who have avested interest in remaining beyond the spotlight."


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"Nice idea, but, as others point out, it is simply impossible to communicate with the population of NK. Plus, it would take more than communication, it would take massive deprogramming to a level that might cause insanity. Imagine the shock of reaching adult hood and being told that everything you know is wrong. I can't imagine how one would mentally process such a thing.

I saw a former NK soldier on a history channel program a few years back. He was explaining how he regularly put whole families in gas chambers and released poison gas, and watched.

He was struck by how the parents, themselves dying, puking, choking, and convulsing, still made desperate attempts to perform mouth to mouth on their own dying, puking, choking, convulsing children. But, at the time, he felt nothing for them because he truly believed, as he had been told to believe his whole life, that these were the brutal enemies of the N. Koreans. He did this all the time.

In reality, their f***in Kim Jong Il pins probably just fell off, or one of them didn't smile enough. That's a lot of brainwashing to overcome in an incredibly isolated society."


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"Note that Kim jong-il has a brother, Kim Pyong-il. He has a favored son, Kim Jong-chul. He also has a disfavored son, Kim jong-nam. There are even reports of over a dozen illegitimate children.

There are figureheads a-plenty to keep the machine running."


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"The "Happy Ending". Kim falls and another bad dictatorship doesn't take over. Let's say they reunite with SK. SK is screwed. Look at Germany and now imagine an even more oppressed civilation, in greater numbers, being absorbed by a weaker, less numerically superior nation. The GDP of SK would probably at least halve just trying to feed people who think grass soup is a meal.

And all of that is discounting what China will do. People talk about the Korean War, but partway into it it wasn't us fighting the Koreans, it was us fighting the Chinese. They like their buffer states. Look at the map of the world. We have bases in many of the 'stans. Mongolia likes us. South Korea likes us. Japan likes us. We have China surrounded and they don't really like that.
In other words, whatever happens, China is not going to just go along with a free Korea on their border. Heck, they have shown that they don't mind having a, possibly, nulear-armed, lunatic state on their border.

Killing Kim could cause chaos and most likely result in the death of millions without any good resolution.
I would say that a war between the US/South Korea (maybe Japan) and China (maybe Russia) is much more likely than a reunited Korea."


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"Much as he deserves it, I doubt merely removing Kim would help. The next thug in line would just take his place. Consider what Iraq would look like had we simply removed Saddam.

No, the fact is, Kim Jong Il will go on raping beautiful 15-year-olds till he's sufficiently enfeebled that someone else seizes the reins.

And that next ruler will probably be even worse."


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"NK can be brought down by an economic blockade, but that isn't possible without cooperation from China, and so far China hasn't been willing to participate.

However, that may have changed, very recently. The NK government may have succeeded in doing that which American diplomacy has largely failed.

Some Chinese aid to NK has been going in by train, and the last six times NK kept the trains as well as the aid. China is demanding the trains be returned, but NK is claiming that the trains are part of the aid. Apparently the Chinese are not going to send any more until NK starts returning its empties.

The real question is the pipeline that China has been using to send in heating oil. That is NK's lifeline. If it gets cut or shut down, NK collapses in short order. China has applied pressure to NK in the past by shutting it down for a day or two, and the question is whether they'll do it now, possibly for much longer."


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"China will keep NK afloat at all costs. They might slap the dog down for discipline from time to time, but NK is useful as a client state in a region that is overwhelmingly pro-US. China is indeed surrounded on the pacific seabord and NK is their ace in the hole. They will never fully sever the oil pipeline. The trains flap is a minor price for china to bear for teh strategic benefits; watch for the chinese to let the matter drop quietly. Its theater, pure and simple.

And I think that morale-wise, the NK army is indeed ripe for psychological warfare. Its not like we havent done it before; look at the 91 gulf war. but the NK army is even more pathetic in straits; their soldiers risk life and limb to stray into the DMZ looking for food (!!). Yes, soldiers so desperate that they will go fishing in the most heavily mined strip of land on earth!

it takes just one spark of anger in one breast to lead men in search of justice. remember john brown? the sepia mutiny? yes, elites tend to be the bearers of that spark, but 'tis the proles who keep the flame alight once lit. Thats the Amerian Revolution itself in a nutshell.

live free or die. how does that get translated to Korean? would make for a fine cover on a pamphlet, airdropped in by the millions on the army barracks in the dmz."


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"They feed/heat the army first. If they're no longer able to feed/heat them, anything could happen.

Unfortunately, they've already proven they will let everyone else in the country starve/freeze to death first. The world does not have the will to impose that.

Sad as I am to say it, I think the NK regime will persist indefinitely, right up until the AI nanobots take over the world."


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"give japan, taiwan, and sk some deterrent nukes too."


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"But in the meantime, if Uncle Sam isn't prepared unilaterally to flatten Kim il-Sung's vicious and crazy kid, then just stop bleating about them. Lest this turn into another South Viet Nam, Haiti, Somalia mission of mercy and democracy. Or another Iraq, for that matter. "