Just because the game-playing Commissar is engaging in is amusing:
Of course NK didn’t describe the waters as disputed. Saying that they were disputed would mean that NK was admitting that there was a dispute, NK just says that they’re theirs.
And as already pointed out several times, even in the same sentence where NK describes murder in response to splashes in the open ocean to be “self defense”, Commissar is still willing to credit other claims valid on their face. (I believe this is the point where he claims that we can’t possibly know who’s telling the truth so we have to reserve judgment, before he states in a dozen different ways that the South is to blame and NK’s account is true).
Ah, I see. In other words, when the North Korean government says X, we are to assume that it means Y, Y conveniently being the one thing that you would like X to mean. Interesting. Do you have any proof that the plain language of the North Korean statement was actually a veiled reference to disputed waters? Or is this simply yet another in a long line of unfounded assertions on your part?
It’s not an assumption. “Contested waters” means both sides think it’s theirs —so when one side refers to the waters as their own, that does not qualify as evidence against it being contested waters! Particularly not when we’re talking about North Korea, whose public news media (as even you must realize) does not usually try to see the other side’s point of view.
Speaking of proof, have you found that proof, in international law or custom, to back up your claim that NK’s military response was a “justified” and “appropriate” response to a valid casus belli?
And speaking of assertions (real ones, that can be quoted because they’re not made up in an attempt to fling strawmen), how many cites can you provide that show NK referring to the disputed waters as “disputed” rather than their property? Because this is what NK actually refers to as the maritime boarder. Got that cite, friend-o-rama?
Or I guess, speaking both of how you haven’t provided proof for any of your claims and the fictional assertions you’ve invented and claimed I made, care to cite those assertions that you claim I made about treaty violations or, whatever else you’ve invented?
You seem to be missing the point, my friend. Currently-recognized boundaries put Northern waters just 12 kilometers north of the island in question. This is easily within modern artillery range. When the North claims that Southern artillery violated its territorial integrity, what basis does an observer have for trying to change that statement to read “violated contested waters?” Why disregard the plain meaning of the assertion? Remember, you can still disagree with the underlying claim, but this hardly justifies twisting the other side’s words for your own benefit. A plain reading of the Northern press release is that Southern artillery crossed the border. What is the basis for assuming that the press release means something else entirely?
Nope, I caught your point. It’s just silly —what North Korea said was exactly what they would say in the case of contested waters. And since everyone else said it was contested waters, there’s no disagreement, and your objection has no factual basis. It’s just wishful thinking. IOW, “the basis for assuming that the press release means something else entirely” has a false premise —the press release does not suggest that the waters were not contested, and its “plain meaning” is consistent with the other press reports.
And none of this should be allowed to obscure the fact that we’re talking about water.
Oh so when you said “One side has routinely starved their population into submission” you didn’t mean to imply that starvation was being intentionally used as a mechanism to control the population?
You’re simply going overboard. If NK had enough food to feed their entire population they would and they would credit Kim Jong Il with being able to provide that food for everyone. They can’t so they blame the west for the famine.
You said: “while spending what little money they have on building up a ridiculously over armed military…while the other has not.”
Was i quoting you out of context. SK spends more on its military than all but ten other countries.
So what?!?!?!? I’m trying to tone down the hyperbole about NK. They’re bad enough as it is without having to make shit up.
No its NOT the same thing. You are imputing intent where intent did not exist. They CHOSE to fire on a SK military base with the artillery they had on hand and civilians got killed. They deserve criticism for every single death but the characterization of this incident as an attack on civilians is incorrect.
You may not like the justification or think its good enough and thats fine but you can’t say they fired on civilians because that sort of lie creates doubt about everything else you say.
Why isn’t it enough to say that they responded to the firing of SK artillery into contested waters with deadly force and civilian casualties resulted?
Are you afraid that someone might analogize the dead Korean civilians with collateral damage of dead civilians in Afghanistan or something?
I don’t entirely disagree. So why do you have to misrepresent the facts? Can’t you get to your conclusion without effectively saying “NK chose to attack civilians over nothing”
OK, I see where thats coming from. Did you read that to mean that they meant self defense in the same way that people use it as a defense in a murder case? Because I don’t think they meant that they felt like they were imminent danger of harm when they initiated the attack. I ask because some of your posts indicate that is what you thought.
Yeah I agree. NK is run by bastards who gorge themselves while their countrymen starve to death. They punish political prisoners brutally and inhumanely but IF NK had enough food to feed the entire population, are you under the impression that they would STILL starve the general population as a method of subjugation?
I’m not trying to say SK is worse than or just as bad as North Korea during the past present or future. I never meant to give that impression but if you read the post I was replying to, it was painting a dichotomy between SK and NK that whitewashed SK and unnecessarily attributed bad actions to NK just to make the comparison that much starker.
Sure, I agree, so? Why does that make it OK for some posters to just make stuff up?
I understand that they didn’t really give a shit if an artillery shell landed somewhere they didn’t intend but that is not how it was being painted by posters who claim that NK “chose to fire… on civilians”
I’m not saying they are being intentionally deceitful but their enthusiasm has carried them away from the truth.
My understanding is the economy fell apart in the mid 1990s there was a confluence of events but you can’t point to the collapse of the USSR and ignore the fact thet they share a border with China. Their famine is the result of grossly reduced food production. An honest to goodness famine (which i agree probably starteed before Kim Jong Il died but not lonog before he died, and I posit that the famine was at least partly the result of reallocation of resources by Kim Jong Il).
Yeah and SK claims that it was their waters. Thats why they call it contested, both sides claim it is theirs but the waters into which the shells were cast are contested.
The island is within artillery range of guns on NK proper. In fact those are the guns that exchanged fire.
I don’t know for a fact but all the evidence points to the notion that SK fired into contested waters. SK doesn’t consider the sovereignty of those waters any mroe in doubt than NK considers their sovereignty in doubt. Its kind of how that soret of thing works. I think its pretty clear that NK responded to an infringement on its sovereignty with deadly force.
No. They could of had enough food a long time ago if they were willing to make some changes, they didn’t. North Korea is foodless by the sole choice of the government.
Further, Commissar seems to have missed my question so I’ll restate it for him.
Do you honestly think the North Korean people would tolerate that insane monster’s government for more than 5 minutes if they knew what they were missing and had the tools to remove him from power?
I also don’t get why the NK government doesn’t get full blame for the starvation. We blame Stalin for the starvation of forced collectivization in the USSR in the 1930s, after all. It’s like a cult where the leader has systematically isolated the followers, then blames outsiders for the lack of access to medical care.
Oh, is this the part where we make unsubstantiated claims about alternative futures based on nothing more than our political beliefs? Well, then, ahem: “If not for the socialist government of North Korea, the Koreas would have been reunified under Imperial rule, at which point the peninsula would have become one vast sweatshop for the Imperial overlords. Thus, socialism saved both Koreas.”
Yeah, I have nothing to support that claim, but it sounds good to me.
The question is unanswerable, as we have never been able to predict human behavior. Revolutions and coups always seem to catch everyone by surprise.
Two observations, though:
First of all, you have a condescending view of North Koreans. What makes you assume that they have no knowledge or power? In the modern age, it’s not all that difficult to modify TVs and radios to pick up signals from the near abroad (especially when you live in a relatively small nation). Moreover, they are subjected to a constant barrage of balloon-borne printed propaganda from the South. I think they have a pretty good idea of what’s happening on the outside. Also, don’t underestimate the power of the masses. When enough people join a cause, that alone is enough to give them all the “tools” needed to overthrow any government, no matter how entrenched.
Secondly, don’t assume that revolutions are ensured by the presence of an “insane monster.” Not all that long ago, the Imperials were ruled by just such an insane monster. Not only did they not rebel, they voluntarily reelected it in 2004. Go figure.
Just to remind you as I’m sure the lack of cites is just a coincidence:
-Found that cite yet to prove your claim that under international law or custom, NK’s military response was “justified” or “appropriate”, seeing as how that was your claim and you’ve never provided any proof for it?
-Found that cite yet to prove that North Korea routinely (or ever) refers to territories that are claimed by SK as “disputed” rather than simply North Korea’s territory?
-Found that cite yet to prove that I have made assertions, that I did not then cite, about any of the things you’ve invented and claimed I’ve said?
Your schtick is slipping.
First, it was a claim about the past, not the future. The past is easier to analyze because most of us have access to cites. Some, evidently, do not.
Second, it’s not unsubstantiated, it’s correct. *Yet again, your ignorance is not a fault on someone else’s part my-dearest-life-long-friend. *