South Korea is a shithole too, just for the record. My mum went on a business trip there in 1999, they get paid virtually nothing by the companies they work for, all their clothes, food and accommodation is provided by the company and taken out of their wages, they get five days holiday a year and they can’t be taken consequetively and the government feeds them bullshit propaganda. Someone said to her “water costs more then fuel in Britian.” clearly amazed about how shit things must be in the UK, she told him that only bottled water costs more then fuel but you can drink water from the tap for free, he was baffled by the concept. When she told him she got weekends off work plus 30 days paid holiday he couldn’t believe it " Not possible, Susan San!". And these people say they’re the lucky ones, they dread getting sick because they know the company will turf them out and they’ll be on the street, starving just like North Koreans do.
They are forced to join the army at around 20 and go through brutal training just like the Noth Koreans. The country is a puppet of the US and only gets positive media coverage for that reason.
Let’s start with an average of 25 days of vacation per year, and that figure was from 2007, 6 years ago. I don’t imagine it was that much worse 8 years before that.
#33 on Wikipedia’s IMF list by per capita GDP. USA is #11. #36 on the UN’s 2011 list, where the USA is #18. Not exactly rich, not anywhere near as poor as you make out.
Where do you get the idea that South Korea is going to start a shooting war with North Korea? I mean, besides in a dream.
You’re an imbecile if you actually believe that.
You need to check a calendar or two, preferably not that old one you seem to have hanging on the wall. It’s now 2013 AD. South Korea is one of the OECD countries and has quite a few modern conveniences.
That’s funny. It’s also untrue. There is, just like in your country, a range of salaries, going from minimum wage for unskilled tasks to a heck of a lot of money for people with viable degrees and actual skill. Just as on example, I know of a public school teacher who was getting about five thousand dollars a month. That’s because she worked in the public school system. Some private school teachers and some private tutors regularly pull in more than that. And these are Koreans I’m talking about.
Whatever job you have now, if it’s not stand-up comedian, please consider changing your job. Why? Because this you just posted is comedy gold. And it’s not true.
Bullshit.
More bullshit.
Yet more bullshit.
South Korea is an actual democracy. If you had any clue what you’re talking about, you’ld even realize that South Korea just had an election and voted in a new President. The country also has a free press and other basic freedoms people take for granted in most free countries.
Now, for a change of pace, you’ve provided horse manure. When I lived in South Korea (I left in June of 2012), I was paying about $30 a month for apartment maintenance fees, which included water. If I bought bottled water at the store, I’d pay about $0.75 to $1.25 per liter. The store-bought thing was for hikes and other trips. Usually, I’d simply run my tap water through a filter just like the South Korenas do.
Quite a few outfits have both Saturdays and Sundays off. They even get national holidays off. The most recent changes for off-days in South Korea occurred last year when public schools ceased mandatory classes on Saturday mornings and this year when Hangeul Day (the day to celebrate the promulgation of the Korean alphabet) was reinstated as a national holiday. For the number of vacation days not counting government holidays, that number depends on how long a peson has been working at a company.
Bullshit.
Only males are required to perform National Service. And it’s not always in the Army. They have Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, too. Oh, the conscripts can also be assigned to the national police force (there is no local police force, it’s all national), not to mention being assigned as a worker at a company designated as essential to the national defense. While there are some problems regarding treatment of conscripts and other soldiers, the training itself is not brutal.
This shows more than anything else how much of a fucking moron you are. And it shows your incredible bias in the matter. South Korea is not a puppet state. If it were, there wouldn’t be all those trade and diplomatic issues the US and ROK have right now.
When they become hungry enough they will invade South Korea. And all involved parties know it (China, NK, SK and USA). For the record, though the NK military eats “better” in times of famine than the civilians, the average North Korean soldier is still shorter, of smaller stature and has less muscle mass than the average South Korean. They’ve endured famine as children, and they still eat reduced rations when NK is under famine conditions.
So understand, the “starve them out” policy you are espousing is basically going to start WWIII on the Korean peninsula. You may want to reconsider your stance.
I think China could restrain North Korea, but I’m not sure anyone would like the methods they’d have to use to do so - it would be a pretty high body count.
Just about an hour ago, I heard on CCTV (China’s State-run television “news” station) some high mucketymuck in their government. She said that “all parties are encouraged to keep stability on the peninsula.” That’s what China wants. Stability. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with how communist/liberal/democratic/paradaisical/American/whatever the country next to them is. China has democracies right now on their border and they’re not bent out of shape–or bent at all-by their presence. What China wants is one thing and one thing only in North Korea: Stability. That’s Stability as in lack of change.
What China’s most concerned about is the North Korean population overrunning part of China. The PRC is already insistent on returning North Koreans they find to that hell-hole.
Human rights issues in North Korea? China doesn’t care. Starvation of the majority of the population in North Korea? Again, China doesn’t care. They want Stability with a Capital S. Of course, one of the reasons for that, besides the obvious drain on China’s resources (government, civilian, and natural), is that it just wouldn’t do for a couple of million people who have fled communism to be hanging out in one area of the PRC.
The west coast military hotline is still operational, as is civilian air traffic control
And, the one central point of China is “Fear of Chaos” - no matter who’s butt in on the throne - from Qin to Communist.
China, as I keep pointing out, has a small oil pipeline into DPRK - and currently doesn’t supply enough aviation fuel to train the Air Force. Another “technical issue” with it will mean its scheduled exercise (after which it will announce that has repelled the US Aggression and that of its “puppets” in Seoul) will consist of a few overflights of the capital and a parade of light tanks.
You can bet that China, Russia, and US have bunker busters dialed in on the nuke test site - and the new kid knows it
It’s not alone in conscription, either. Finland, Israel, Austria, Greece, Denmark, Switzerland, Venezuela and Norway all maintain the practice. Jon Stewart actually called for conscription to be reinstituted (with alternative paths like the peace corps for those with qualms about serving in the military, IIRC).
Not to mention, with good English skills your National Service conscription can be as a KATUSA, or Korean Augmentation To United States Army. these folks helped us when we had to go into the local environment. For us it was as reporters, covering part of the local area, it was nice to have someone in uniform who spoke Korean and knew all the customs and courtesies we may have missed.
And unlike those countries (except Israel) South Korea has an enemy nation on it’s doorstep and a realistic prospect of being attacked /invaded. Or at least more realistic than Denmark or Switzerland.
My daughter spent two weeks in the ROK. She loved the place, but maybe because she’s not accustomed to luxury.
She found things more militaristic than the USA and had a laugh when they told her to dress up nicely for her visit to the border since the PRK telephoto cameras took photos of poorly clad visitors and then used them as propaganda.
Really? During the last famine they lost about a fifth of their population and the survivors were stretching their rations with weeds and treebark (which can be edible, but are pretty poor quality food). How much hungrier would they need to get? Half the population dying? In that situation would the living even have the strength to march south?
Now, if the leadership ever gets that hungry they might decide to invade, but Og knows if there would be enough cannon fodder left to do the deed.
I’ve been reading Nothing to Envy. If I had to sum up the book in one sentence it would be: “Someone read 1984 and said, wow, there are some really good ideas here for building a society, but they didn’t take it far enough”.
