They had no choice to be deferential to China for most of their short history, as China was literally responsible for their existence as an independent state. It was only Chinese military power which kept us from squashing North Korea like a bug in the Korean War, and China which has been their most reliable supplier of fuel and food. Now Kim seems to think North Korea’s position as a Chinese client state has somehow changed due to his regime’s possession of the bomb. He couldn’t be more wrong, but I don’t know if he’s going to come to his senses fast enough to keep from learning that lesson the hard (and for him most likely fatal) way.
Monty:
Well, at least Kim Il Sung had the good sense to realize that if China hadn’t pulled his fat out of the fire, his subjects would be deifying MacArthur instead of him.
The next two generations of Kims were raised in much more of a danger-free bubble, logically making them more crazy and with less of a sense of restraint.
Somehow, the increasing craziness as the Kim bloodline descends calls to mind the descendants of Jesus protected by the Grail organization in the “Preacher” comic series.
Oh well at least the Hussein Crime Family won’t do anything like that to the United States. The Bush/Cheney Administration saw to that. Maybe it’s time to thank them for that.
Based on the reading I’ve been doing on medieval European history, I’m not surprised at all by this. Smart, successful kings and emperors seemed to be, fairly consistently, followed by heirs who sucked because their comfortable, privileged upbringing led them to think they were invincible.
Ibn Khaldun’s cyclic theory of history was based on that. In Ibn Khaldun’s thought the first generation of a regime came from mean and lean conditions which made them learn to be smart and strong and competent, which is how they would get control of a country. Subsequent generations of that dynasty would be raised in easy conditions that left them progressively unfit to rule, until another group that had been on the outs got smart and strong enough to overthrow and replace them. Saudi Arabia is another such example.
The old expression was “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations”
Where manual laborers worked in shirtsleeves and bosses didn’t.
Grandpa built the business; son spent the income AND ran the company into the ground, leaving grandson back to manual labor.
And, there are different size nukes - we have nukes that fir on artillery shells - not all are the megaton strategic weapons.
For appreciation of the sheer insanity of the arms race - the US, at one time, admitted to owning 17,000 (yes, thousand) nukes. Hell, how many missiles does a boomer sub carry? Figure at least 5 warheads on each of those - how many nukes/sub? I believe there were 18 such subs.
We could nuke the capital (too lazy to look up spelling) without dropping radiation on China or ROK (unless unfortunate winds prevailed).
SLBMs are going to be strategic level nukes. Those are going to give you some fallout problems. There are smaller, more ‘tactical’ level, nukes, but they’re going to be air or tank based.
It’s not necessary, anyway. Level the city with conventional bombs. Even in Iraq, we weren’t going to fight WMDs with our own WMDs. Our conventional forces were quite sufficient.
Re: cyclic kings - obviously some confirmation bias going on here. Several kings, businesses, etc have had success over multiple generations. It’s just more historically fun to focus on the ones that flare brilliantly for a short time and fade away. Nobody really wants to hear “they were unremarkably good administrators for 15 generations”. We’d rather remember the incompetent children/grandchildren who squandered it all.
Did not mean to imply the subs launched tactical - I was just pointing out how we had so many “nukes” crammed everywhere that getting the count to 17,000 was not really difficult.
It’s been 48 hours and the twit hasn’t made any threats - you suppose his collar got yanked?
I saw an announcement that indicated that he had enough jet fuel for his exercises after all, and that “reported fuel shortages were incorrect”?
Um, does anyone know what is going on in there? I saw 2 or 3 separate reports of not enough fuel for flight training, not enough fuel for maneuvers, not enough - from different sites.
Now a note that the Chinese suspect the DPRK is sitting on $7 Trillion" in natural resources and speculating that it is in the form of rare earths (which the Chinese, who own 90% of the known supply, has stated it is running low).
First the US backs the only spot in the Mid-East which is NOT sitting on a lake of oil, now we get the half of a hell hole of a peninsula which doesn’t have the rare earths…
The Chinese own 90% of current production, NOT 90% of known reserves. They just happen to be mining them balls-out and had driven other competition out of business. While that works in their favor short term, long term sucks to be them.
In other news, North Korea decries swishing skirt:
“North Korea issued a direct personal attack on the South’s new president for the first time since her inauguration two weeks ago, saying on Wednesday that her ‘venomous swish of skirt’ was to blame for rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”
Oh, good!
I was worried we’d have to turn to the Iranians for a round of insanity passing for a sovereign state!
Now North Korea has issued a video showing an imagined rocket attack on Washington. Story here.
Video here. It’s pretty rousing. After watching it, I almost found myself sending off for information on joining the North Korean army.
Join the DPRK Army, see the world!*
- Awesome Leader says that there is no world beyond the borders of the DPRK
Join the DPRK Army and you will eat first when supplies are low.
No other recruitment message needed. 
Join the army, meet exotic southerners and imperialist dogs and eat them.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a little outdated. This was maybe five years ago, maybe more. But a colleague of the wife’s was a member of the UN team who conducted the census back then. This lady said as far as she knows, the entire country was covered. She herself was in a rural area of North Korea, did not feel pressured in any way and didn’t think the locals looked all that bad off. Of course, she was in just the one area, and she didn’t know how representative it was of the rest of the country.
Now the fat little runt is threatening to nuke Japan and Guam.
[QUOTE=Link]
Tensions have spiked in the region since North Korea carried out its latest underground nuclear test last month, the first under its new young leader Kim Jong Un, prompting the United Nations Security Council to respond by toughening sanctions on the secretive regime.
The sanctions enraged the North further, and during the week when the Security Council was voting on them, it ratcheted up its threats, suggesting it could carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States and South Korea.
[/QUOTE]
Pretty much every story about NK’s most recent frothing includes some varient of the above. Kim Jong Un tested a nuke. The UN whacked his peepee. KJ got all butthurt and is threatening to beat up everyone.
I have to wonder though, what realistically did he think would be the international reaction to his actions? Did he really think they wouldn’t drop the hammer on him? Was it a bigger hammer than he was expecting?
I’m gonna join and train hard in hopes of becoming one of the elite team members of Burning Your Dog Team Six.
I’m.what I’ve North Korea’s crazy sabre rattling is mainly intended to.unite the population in the face.of oncoming hardships, for example, a food shortage. Get the masses riled up with talk of war, and come Spring, they won’t feel.so bad about having their daily.food rationalized to 1000 calories. After all, the army comes first, and the imperialist running dog Yankees and their puppet lackeys come knocking, they’ll be safe in the embrace of the loving arms of the Great Leader.
elmwood, you on your period?