# N. and S. Korea firing artillery at each other **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 23, 2010, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645 "2010-11-23T06:29:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/421 "2010-12-05T06:27:48Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Nope, it is your position the one that is absurd and most readers clearly do not agree with you. It’s kind of funny. Caught in the fact that he’s claimed NK’s military action was “justified” and “appropriate” but being totally unable to prove that by referencing either international law or international custom showing that SK’s actions constituted a valid casus belli, he is insetad repeatedly trying to invent some sort of “assertion” that I have made that I won’t back up. Naturally, the fact that the “assertion” only appears in his posts where he claims I’ve made it and not in any of my own just shows how tricky I am. It’s a very interesting example of turnspeak. He can not (or will not) provide a shred of proof that NK’s actions were “justified” or “appropriate” under international law or international custom, so instead he’s trying to change the subject by making up a claim, pretending that I’ve made it, and demanding that I support it. I’m still not sure how he believes that shows that NK had a valid casus belli to respond to, but I guess that’s why it’s turnspeak. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/422 "2010-12-05T06:35:16Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > I’m curious now. If the water surrounding the island is claimed by North Korea, then why did the North wait until some shells were fired into the water before killing people on the island? After all, there’s a Naval base there and it’s not unknown for ROK Navy ships to actually go to the place. You’d think that actually traversing the waters in a warship would torque someone. As weird as the UN recognized maritime boundary is (it seems to hug the west coast of north korea), The NK version is a bit weirder still, it basically takes the water boundary that would have existed if we were drawing those maritime boundaries today and draws little circles around the islands along with a narrow corridor from the South Korean side of the border and calls that the boundary. It was linked earlier in the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/423 "2010-12-05T06:39:03Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Give me a break. Do you believe that if a North Korean soldier got so much as a cut finger from picking up an empty can of South Korean beer, or if North Korean mermen and mermaids had been killed during the latest incident, that fact would not be trumpeted to the hills? Your detachment from reality is simply astounding. The North Koreans are not really big on that sort of thing. They would pretend that they didn’t suffer any casualties during the Korean War if they could get away with it. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/424 "2010-12-05T06:41:58Z")
Commissar’s behaviour in this thread is making Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon a lot more comprehensible to me. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/425 "2010-12-05T06:44:17Z")
> [@Commissar](#): > > The link was for the benefit of F **innAgain** and those of a similar persuasion - namely, people that see this whole scenario as a black-and-white tale of a demonic North and an angelic South. As the link demonstrates, the truth is much more of a grey area. Both sides engage in repetitive acts of aggression and provocation, some accidental, some less so. Clear-cut villains and heroes exist in Disney movies; in the real world, not so much. Yeah, but in this case, its a pretty dark grey. Sure, NK was provoked when SK exercises challenged contested waters and sure SK attitude towards have deteriorated but NK’s attitude towards South Korea hasn’t been very friendly over the last few years either and apparently a more appropriate response to a provocative shooting of a patch of water is to line up your guns and shoot that same patch of water rather than shoot at a military base. I just take issue with the characterization of this incident as an unprovoked attack on civilians. The incident was in fact provoked by Sk artillery fire. Yeah civilians got hurt but they were aiming for the military base and if their aim was better there wouldn’t have been any civilian deaths. Some people think none of that matters because NK responded inappropriately and that may be but it doesn’t make the facts go away. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/426 "2010-12-05T06:49:11Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > in NK’s own words they ended human lives “in self defense” Where does it say self defense? I’m not doubting you but I haven’t read the NK claim self defense in the sense that they did it because they thought NK lives were in danger. > [@](#): > > dictatorial regime which starves its own people to death Do you think they would starve their own people if they had the food the food to feed them? They starve their own people because they don’t have food and they will feed their military before anyone else gets a single grain of rice. This isn’t like Saddam Hussein gassing the Kurds or anything like that. Aside from that claim I don’t see how anything else you mentioned undercuts their credibility. Their consistent failure to do what they say they are going to do, and their failure to negotiate in good faith is what undercuts their credibility. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/427 "2010-12-05T06:57:29Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > One side has routinely starved their population into submission This implies that they have the food but are using starvation as a tool to subjugate their population. Can you cite to something? > [@](#): > > while spending what little money they have on building up a ridiculously over armed military…while the other has not. Surely you don’t think that NK spends more on its military than SK. Aas a percentage of GDP, probably but not on an absolute basis. > [@](#): > > One side locks up literally 10’s of thousands of their citizens into concentration camps where some large non-zero percentage of them die…the other side has not. SK was a military dicatorship until a few decades ago. Stuff like this used to happen in SK: > **[Gwangju Uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movement)** > > South Korean Government > Gwangju citizenry > Chun Doo-hwan Roh Tae-woo Jeong Ho-yong Lee Hee-seong Hwang Yeong-si Yoon Heung-jung Ahn Byung-ha\[a\] > [@](#): > > while the other side chose to fire on a village full of civilians, killing several of them. THIS!!! This is the impression I was trying to correct. The NK attacked a military base, civilians got killed but they weren’t aiming at the civilian homes that dot the hillside, they were aiming at the military base that conducted the military exercises. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/428 "2010-12-05T06:59:49Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Intelligent people are able to read maps. Intelligent people are able to recognize the difference between propaganda and factual reporting. Intelligent people are able to recognize the difference between one country firing shells into its own waters and another country firing shells into a different country’s populated center actually killing people. Intelligent people are also able to recognize that I “side with South Korea” not because I like it more than that terrible blight on this planet, North Korea, but because South Korea is not constantly engaged in attacks against the North. > > And I’m also not impressed at all with what you call logic. OK this is the second time you say populated center" Do you mean military base that conducted the exercise?? You do realize that the waters are contested right? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/429 "2010-12-05T07:01:28Z")
> [@Camus](#): > > This is going around in circles. From North Korea’s perspective, the mere presence of any South Korean nationals, both civilian and military, was an intrusion on their territory, since it claims the island and the surrounding area as its own. However, it was only after (four hours to be precise) South Korea had engaged in an obvious military exercise that North Korea decided to deliberately target both civilians and military in order to kill. > > The sovereignty of countries are infringed all the time - [last year](http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/08/10/two-russian-bombers-fly-over-icelandic-airspace/), Russian bombers infringed on Icelandic airspace during their now-routine maneuvers to test Western military responses. They weren’t shot down and now shots were ever fired. The mere infringement of sovereignty, even if you accept North Korea’s territorial claims, is sufficient to lawfully exercise their right to self-defense. Again, particularly if you accept North Korea’s claims since technically the infringement on their sovereignty was on-going so long as that island was occupied by South Koreans. I believe that NK recognizes the islands as being part of UN mandate. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/430 "2010-12-05T07:03:16Z")
> [@Commissar](#): > > Which would be a good analysis, were you correct in your assertion that the two Koreas agree on the underlying facts. You are not. > > North Korea’s position, which I linked to earlier, is that the South bombarded the North’s current territory (i.e. not the “claimed” territory). The South has generally disputed this. Thus, we have a fundamental disagreement concerning the facts. If the South is correct, then it was indeed the victim of an unprovoked and unjustified attack. If the North is correct, then it took a heavy-handed yet appropriate response to Southern aggression. I haven’t really been following this thread that closely. Where does NK claim that SK bombarded anything other than contested waters BEFORE they retaliated? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/431 "2010-12-05T07:10:13Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > SK was a military dicatorship until a few decades ago. Stuff like this used to happen in SK: > > [Gwangju Uprising - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movement) And that is why if this exchange had taken place in the past then I would join you, but the fact that SK has moved forward and NK backwards does weight heavily on my position (Incidentally, I’m still convinced the USA was wrong in Vietnam and almost killed us all (for considering using nuclear weapons) in the past Korean war, but Russians were the ones that propped a puppet regime that still follows a system that should had died with Stalin) > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > THIS!!! This is the impression I was trying to correct. The NK attacked a military base, civilians got killed but they weren’t aiming at the civilian homes that dot the hillside, they were aiming at the military base that conducted the military exercises. This is less likely if unguided rockets were used by NK. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/432 "2010-12-05T07:12:51Z")
> [@Commissar](#): > > I see. In other words, you have no proposed test for determining the justifiability of retribution. Rather, you choose to assign blame based on your feelings. Since your stance is devoid of any logical arguments, I’ll just leave you alone with your hate. My time is better spent debating those that employ reason rather than emotion. I think he would apply the same standard if NK had attacked some uninhabited SK island and SK had responded by attacking the ship that launched the attack on the island. Sure it shouldn’t surprise you that a country that you have been at war with for 60 years will attack you for attacking their sovereignty (even if noone actually gets hurt) but its not exactly proportional. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/433 "2010-12-05T07:18:22Z")
> [@Commissar](#): > > This was an escalation, and clearly not a proportionate response to the North’s peaceful behavior. I don’t know if there is an expiration date on these sort of things but you remember when NK sank that SK ship? Internal NK broadcasts basically took credit for it without asserting they were responsible. > [@](#): > > See above. Also, I doubt that most nations would ignore your hypothetical scenario. Imagine that a North Korean submarine pulls into San Francisco’s harbor and disgorges a platoon of heavily armed soldiers. Said soldiers harm no one, but march around menacingly while brandishing their weapons at civilians. Would the American army be justified in responding with lethal force against the invaders? I maintain that it would. That’s not what happened here. A better analogy wold be if NK shot a bunch of artillery almost exactly where the SK shot their artillery, what sort of response would SK have given (based on their response to the sinking of that ship, I’m going to guess a lot of people issuing stern and menacing warnings on TV. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/434 "2010-12-05T07:25:32Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And that is why if this exchange had taken place in the past then I would join you, but the fact that SK has moved forward and NK backwards does weight heavily on my position (Incidentally, I’m still convinced the USA was wrong in Vietnam and almost killed us all (for considering using nuclear weapons) in the past Korean war, but Russians were the ones that propped a puppet regime that still follows a system that should had died with Stalin) NK was not doing horribly until Kim Jong Il took over. The worst thing Kim Il Sung did to NK (and therewere a few doozies) was leave his son in charge of the country. > [@](#): > > This is less likely if unguided rockets were used by NK. The attack may have been reckless but the evidence seems to indicate that the civilians were not targetted as has been implied by several posters. The target was clearly the military base. Being that reckless can still be a war crime but they don’t appear to have actually targetted the civilians. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/435 "2010-12-05T07:26:40Z")
[QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi] This implies that they have the food but are using starvation as a tool to subjugate their population. Can you cite to something? [/QUOTE] Cite what? Your interpretation of what I was saying, or the fact that millions have starved under the North’s tender ministrations of their people? > [@](#): > > Surely you don’t think that NK spends more on its military than SK. Aas a percentage of GDP, probably but not on an absolute basis. 😛 Seriously man…do you always go through all these twists and turns? NK spends less in absolute terms because they are a dirt poor country that only exists because the Chinese prop them up. The fact is they spend a ton of money that they don’t have while their people have starved in the past. Even in GOOD times a large percentage of their populations under nourished. > [@](#): > > SK was a military dicatorship until a few decades ago. Stuff like this used to happen in SK: Even if true and compatible, so what? That was over 20 years ago. What have you done for me lately? > [@](#): > > THIS!!! This is the impression I was trying to correct. The NK attacked a military base, civilians got killed but they weren’t aiming at the civilian homes that dot the hillside, they were aiming at the military base that conducted the military exercises. They fired (without justification) into an area with a significant civilian population using unguided rockets. I’d say that this constitutes ‘the other side chose to fire on a village full of civilians, killing several of them’. If you want to nit pick, then they fired unguided artillery indiscriminately and in an unjustified manner in an area known to have civilians in it. You can twist and turn all you want, but the bottom line is that they had no justification what-so-ever to fire, even if the island was only populated by SK military types. We all know the score here…at least those of us who are even remotely reality based. The NK’s did this to once again put pressure on The West™ to make concessions to them politically and open up the goody bag for more appeasement, and also because lil’ Kimmy wants to strengthen the position of his son as heir apparent to the God Thrown. This was obviously yet another calculated move on the NK’s part…really no different than many of their actions over the past decades. -XT ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/436 "2010-12-05T07:34:18Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Where does it say self defense? [ > [@](#): > > the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK on Nov. 23 took a decisive self-defensive measure to cope with the enemy’s reckless military provocation of firing shells inside the territorial waters of the DPRK side around Yonphyong Islet in the West Sea of Korea. ]([Statement Released by Spokesman of DPRK Foreign Ministry](http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/dprk/2010/dprk-101124-kcna02.htm)) They called an unprovoked act of naked aggression “self-defense”. Barring a cite of North Korean merfolk populations, it’s obvious that their claim of self defense is the most cynical kind of dishonesty. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/437 "2010-12-05T07:45:49Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > This implies that they have the food but are using starvation as a tool to subjugate their population. Can you cite to something? > > [snip] > > SK was a military dicatorship until a few decades ago. Stuff like this used to happen in SK: > > [Gwangju Uprising - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movement) In regard to the food stuff, here’s a [Human Rights Watch report on the topic (Warning! PDF!)](http://hrw.org/reports/2006/northkorea0506/northkorea0506web.pdf): > [@](#): > > North Korea has long used rationing as a means to control its population. By banning people from buying and selling grain, it has forced them to rely on the state for their most basic needs. (Note that the report was written in response to North Korea reintroducing/re-enforcing that policy.) > [@](#): > > Hunger in North Korea has a strong state policy dimension. While topography and environment surely contributed to the famine of the 1990s, a critical factor was the government’s willingness to sacrifice the rights—and lives—of those it perceives as disloyal or class enemies. > [@](#): > > In addition to the inadequate amounts of food delivered through the PDS, many North Korean escapees have claimed that rations were distributed on a discriminatory basis, first to elite residents in Pyongyang—such as members of the political leadership and their families, and preferred classes, such as high-ranking members of the Workers’ Party, military, intelligence, police officers, prosecutors and other law-enforcement personnel—and only then to the rest of the country.12 This meant the non-elite classes received not only far less food than needed during the food crisis in the 1990s, but proportionally little compared to the elite and preferred classes. > The government also failed to discharge its responsibility to adequately feed those under its care, such as prisoners. According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, the amount of grain provided to prisoners through the PDS equaled that for children between two and four years old (200 grams per day) under an old food rations scheme.14 (A chart showing the amount of food rations under the old rationing system can be found in the appendix.) Nutritional experts believe an adult needs at least 500 grams of grain per day to maintain a normal level of health… These accounts show that North Korea not only institutionalized discrimination in access to food, but also used food as a way to reward and punish the population. In regard to human rights stuff in general, you can take a gander through HRW’s [North Korea section](http://www.hrw.org/en/asia/north-korea). There’s a nice quote from [here](http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/03/16/north-koreas-cruelty): > [@](#): > > A 42-year-old woman from Haeju said she was deported from China in December 2003 and served 18 months in a North Korean labor camp. “Every day, I saw someone dying. We were given a fistful of powdered corn stalk, three times a day, and people had trouble digesting it. Many people died after having diarrhea for a week,” she said. “They left patients in the hallway outside toilets. So many people died, they wrapped bodies in plastic sheets and buried them in a mountain.” > > North Korean authorities often subject people who have been detained to cruel and inhuman treatment, including punitive strip searches, verbal abuse, threats and beatings. A 50-year-old woman who had a scar on her left cheek shared her story with Human Rights Watch: “They arrested me for selling clothes, which was banned. I served nine months in prison for that. They gave prisoners a fistful of powdered corn stalk for each meal. My health deteriorated so much that I was once unconscious for 20 days. A doctor revived me. I stole a spoon with which to kill myself, but they caught me. A guard kicked me in the face.” After she was released from prison, she fled the country. A [quasi-unrelated article](http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/03/31/indonesia-bad-company-defending-north-korean-rights-abuses): > [@](#): > > A look at the situation in North Korea tells you everything you need to know about whether the government of Kim Jong-il should be condemned. North Korea does not allow religious freedom, for example. Indonesians might be sympathetic to the plight of North Koreans, who are subject to arrest and imprisonment, even for life, if they practice Islam, Buddhism, Christianity or any other religious belief. > > North Korea executes people for even nonviolent crimes such as theft of state property - in a country where the authorities can claim virtually everything as state property. When they carry out such executions, usually by shooting, they force the family of the condemned to stand in the front row to watch their loved ones die. > > North Korea also runs large labor camps where an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people are imprisoned, almost 1 percent of the population. The reason they have so many prisoners is that they lock up not only the people accused of political offenses but their entire families, including young children. Worse still, when babies are born inside such camps, they inherit their parents’ prisoner status. Such children grow up inside the camps and are subjected to forced labor at an early age, with little hope that they will ever be released. The inmates in these camps resemble slaves as well as political prisoners. I’m trying to find a bookmark about Camp 22, the biggest of those “labor camps”. I apologize for using an American source (esp. since it quotes the government), but [this will have to do](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466/): > [@](#): > > At one camp, Camp 22 in Haengyong, some 50,000 prisoners toil each day in conditions that U.S. officials and former inmates say results in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year. > > [snip] > > Forced abortions are carried out on pregnant women so that another generation of political dissidents will be “eradicated.” > > Inmates are used as human guinea pigs for testing biological and chemical agents, according to both former inmates and U.S. officials. > > [snip] > > Prison guard Ahn’s memories are, like the others’, nothing short of gruesome. Every day, he said there were beatings and deaths. > “I heard many times that eyeballs were taken out by beating,” he recalled. “And I saw that by beating the person the muscle was damaged and the bone was exposed, outside, and they put salt on the wounded part. At the beginning I was frightened when I witnessed it, but it was repeated again and again, so my feelings were paralyzed.” Yes, once upon a time, South Korea was a bad place for human rights —and they still have a number of freedom of speech issues. But they don’t have anything on North Korea — and they never really have, at that. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/438 "2010-12-05T07:49:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > NK was not doing horribly until Kim Jong Il took over. The worst thing Kim Il Sung did to NK (and therewere a few doozies) was leave his son in charge of the country. Still time is the key here, it is thanks to the current leaders that currently NK say so’s can not be trusted at all. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The attack may have been reckless but the evidence seems to indicate that the civilians were not targetted as has been implied by several posters. The target was clearly the military base. Being that reckless can still be a war crime but they don’t appear to have actually targetted the civilians. The point was that they did not care if civilians where in the way. NK charged that SK civilians had been used as “human shields”. ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/439 "2010-12-05T07:52:09Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > NK was not doing horribly until Kim Jong Il took over. The worst thing Kim Il Sung did to NK (and therewere a few doozies) was leave his son in charge of the country. Kim Jong-il is worse than his dad, but this really isn’t true. The food distribution system, the bad economy, the prisons, and the political repression all predate the current Dear Leader, the sabre-rattling has been happening since the Korean War (which Kim Il-sung started), and the open famine had more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the accompanying loss of support than the regime change —in fact, the famine probably started before Kim Il-sung was dead, although the DPRK didn’t request food aid until afterward ('94, I think?). So no, not the salt of the earth, Kim Il-sung, and his country has been a pretty dire place since before he passed on. ---
**Author:** ![Commissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c68b51/32.png) [@Commissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commissar)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645/440 "2010-12-06T01:08:17Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I haven’t really been following this thread that closely. Where does NK claim that SK bombarded anything other than contested waters BEFORE they retaliated? I found North Korea’s official position on its media site, which can be found here: > **[News From KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK](http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm)** For some reason, the site won’t allow for links to individual articles, but here is the pertinent part: “… the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK on Nov. 23 took a decisive self-defensive measure to cope with the enemy’s reckless military provocation of firing shells inside the territorial waters of the DPRK side around Yonphyong Islet in the West Sea of Korea.” As you can see, the North is not saying that rounds were fired into contested waters. Rather, the position appears to be that this military provocation occurred in North Korean waters proper. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/n-and-s-korea-firing-artillery-at-each-other/561645.md?page=23)