I’m not going to Google slamming bulgoki but if it means what I think it means I wonder if you might have something here… Jong Un has been to Switzerland. He has lived in a nation where most people are prosperous and happy and no police-state dictatorship was necessary. He’s seen thriving retail culture, traffic jams, criticism of the local government. He knows that (non-nuclear) nation is strong and has good relations with the neighbors. So is it possible that he might seek to recreate some of that in NK? Is it possible he might realize that his neighbors don’t really give much of a shit about his country at all, beyond keeping a wary eye in case of unscheduled craziness? A year ago I would have said such was impossible but reading about Myanmar and how the President there is putting reforms into place gives me some hope.
He’s a child of privilege who was surrounded by children of privilege. I found the Switzerland thing interesting when I first heard about it, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for him just based on that. I hope things improve over there, but it’s hard to even imagine what a good outcome looks like.
Same as most of the world leaders.
Of course. I’m just saying that it doesn’t mean anything about how he’ll run North Korea.
Just to be clear, I was never trying to excuse the human rights abuses. Internal abuse was never the result of the foreign policy challenges.
My point is that the way ahead is unclear, and rather dismally challenging.
Well, we’ll see if it’s true what they say: the first generation conquers the country, the second carries on the traditions, the third fucks it all up.
Well, in this case, the first generation screwed up the country, the second generation screwed it up even more. What’s the outlook that the third generation won’t continue that proud tradition?
Being a creation or a product is not the same as being a “victim.” Sexual abusers are often experienced abuse in their own childhood. This doesn’t make what they did less heinous, but it does gives us some ideas of how to approach and treat then.
But yeah, Congo might have had a different story if Lumumba hadn’t ended up dead in the back of a CIA car. The Cold War put a lot of nations on some very fucked up tracks. There are reasons why the world’s current crop of “fucked up nations” are where they are- it’s not just that people in certain areas of the world happen to be more evil. There are circumstances in history that allow evil leaders to flourish.
Seriously. reading the reactions from various states, every one who isn’t North Korea’s explicit friend harped on the nukes. It’s not going to happen. North Korea has eyes and saw Iraq and Afghanistan. Why would we think they’d even consider ending their nuclear program when they know for a fact that they are easily next in line? They are not justified, but given that any power structure’s goal is its own survival, there really isn’t any other option that is acceptable from their perspective.
Well, if the principle Bryan Ekers mentioned is true, the new guy will lead NK to freedom and prosperity by sheer accident. 
The men in that video look like they are laughing to me…and isn’t this a case of “You’d better look sad for the cameras, or else!”?
Heck, even if the rhetoric against foreign nations and their imperialistic designs against the “People’s Republic” are ratcheted down a couple notches, maybe most if not all North Koreans can actually get a decent meal now and again.
The population eating would be a start.
BTW, the SK government seems very embarrassed that its spies did not know Kim was dead before it was announced on NK television.
Well, if your last dictator was as crazy as Kim Jong-il, you’ve at least got regression to the mean working for you.
BBC interviwed some sort of prominent defector in Seoul who said that in 1994 – he was in NK at that time – many of the people were laughing to make it look like they were crying. Said some people had to pinch themselves hard to obtain that little extra suffering look.
I doubt he was a figurehead but he didn’t command the same loyalty that his father did and his son will command even less.
All of them. They all desire a unified Korea under communist rule.
Yeah but the North kloreans couldn’t get the South Koreans to agree to surrendering to them.
North Korean defectors are used to telling authority what they want to hear. I wouldn’t even be so sure that he was in a camp, how the heck did he get out of the camp and then manage to leave the country? Exaggeration for effect is not unfamiliar to them. There was a restaurant here in Virginia that was run by defectors from a North Korean dance troupe (it was wierd, they would run out of things like soda and food by 8 pm).
Drop shipments.
If you had to cry on command while standing at attention, you might not do much better.
YES!!!
Remember things were not always as bad as they were during teh famine and they have not stayed that bad. You can get people to accept pretty deplorable conditions if you tell them that their country needs them to make those sacrifices and besides, its all America’s fault.
Israel also finds itself ina pretty hostile neighborhood. And yet they are able to get their people to accept sacrifice and a large military without trampling on the rights of their non-arab population. So, yeah, maybe you can understand their militarism but it was never necessary to let their people starve unless maintaining power at the top became more important than the welfare of the country. That is where democracy seems to consistently outperform despotism. The good of the few can only outweigh the good of the whole for so long.
I always said that MTV won the cold war for us. Now we have the internet.
Not to derail the thread but some people might say that 1967 was an act of preemptive retaliation as well.
Yes, not giving a shit gives you a lot of options. Not giving a shit and having nukes makes everyone behave very politely around you.
The artillery pointed at Seoul wouldn’t last much more than an hour, but in that time they could shoot off a millions shells.
I think they decided which side they were willing to disappoint a long time ago.
The police state is about the only way to keep a country like North Korea under control.
They saw what happened to Qaddafi. What possible benefit do they think they could get from giving up nukes that wouldn’t largely be enjoyed by the general population. The folks in power are pretty well fed and live pretty good lives.
On the flip side they see what is happening with Pakistan and it isn’t hard to conclude that their nukes are providing with them with more than a little bit of immunity.
On the gripping hand, they see that Israel’s nukes has reduced itsneghbors to sabre rattlig and even then, just mild sabre rattling.
Why in the world would they ever give up their nuclear program?
Probably. There is a strata of north korean society that lives considerably better than the rest of north korea and they might legitimately believe that the current situation is the best thing for them.
I imagine most of the tears are real- not really out of what we’d call greif, but out of fear and anxiety for what is coming next. Picture all of the crying after 9/11. Most people weren’t exceptionally mournful for the specific people who lost their lives, but they were shaken by the attack and the uncertainty it brought.
And if the US and the Western world suddenly collapsed and evolved into a mafia state with tinges of Islamo-Fascism, leaving Israel basically the lone outpost of freedom in the world, do you think that Israel would be able to continue the way that it is?
They live in fucking North Korea. I don’t think they have a lot of trouble bursting into tears.
Regards,
Shodan
That makes quite a deterrent, doesn’t it?
It’s a bargaining chip. Not a deterrent. The North already has a powerful deterrent – the fact that the 11th most populous city is within artillery range. Nuclear weapons and long-range missiles do not make North Korea more secure: the sale of those technologies brings in much-needed cash and are useful levers to pull to try to extract things out of the United States. Just as they have in the past, they will continue to play games with their nuclear programs (“We’ve suspended all activities! Oops, they are back on again!”) if the new Kim regime is anything like the former ones.
I’ll bet it is. But I’ll also bet that the North Korean leadership knows that nuclear weapons are not essential to their deterrence policies.
You mean Kim Kyong-Hui, the mean drunk “evil sister”?:
[QUOTE=Philip Shenon]
Korea scholars and diplomats who specialize in Korean affairs say they have no particular reason to doubt reports in the press in South Korea and Japan that Mrs. Kim arranged a traffic accident in June 2009 in which a rival party official was killed…They also have no reason, they say, to question reports that she is a raging alcoholic whose relationship with her own children has been poisonous. Last year, a South Korean newspaper reported that she had been hospitalized due to complications from alcoholism, possibly falling at one point into a coma and suffering brain damage. According to South Korean reports, her only daughter committed suicide in France in 2006—a decision some news accounts linked to her frayed ties with her mother. These press accounts have, on occasion, referred to Mrs. Kim as “evil.”
[/quote]
I guess this means it’s time to call in James Bond.
Are you saying that Israel had had superpower sponsorship where NK has not? Do you think Israel would start doing to its people what NK did to its people if the US decided to cut them loose? I think Israel politicians generally do things that they believe will be in the best interests of non-arab Israelis. Its the product of being an open democratic society. I’m just saying that you can be militaristic without standing on the collective throats of your population (you might have to stand on the throats of some arab refugees but you don’t have to stand on the throats of your own people).
A credible threat to Seoul is one thing. A credible nuclear threat to Tokyo and Seoul is another. You will never get me to believe that north korea will attack Seoul because the US would destroy North Korea. But if North korea also presented a credible nuclear threat to Tokyo then they can destroy one and deter retaliation with their threat to destroy the other. Or do you think that either Tokyo or Seoul would be willing to take the hit to allow the US to exact retribution for attacking the other? Yeah crazy, I know but people have thought out these scenarios and having a nuke with missile technology makes the threat more credible because the US could not retaliate on behalf of the victim.
I think that having nukes gives you a lot of wiggle room and negotiating power.