I don’t quite know whether to put this in GQ or GD so mods: feel free to move this.
Anyhow, i found a Web site (http://www.pyonkoma.com/houdou203.asf) where users can download nightly news broadcasts from North Korean television. All the newscasters, and all the people appearing in the newscast – government officials, man-on-the-street interviewees, and so on – speak in a hurried, frantic voice, as if they’ve all had ten cups of coffee that morning. (I’ve seen South Korean newscasts, and the presentation is far from frantic; they’re more relaxed, like a nightly newscast on an American network or the BBC.) Every action that could be perceived as even the most minor slight against North Korea is considered a “threat of war” by the country. Officials are referred to with incredibly grand names. I’ve read Nazi German propaganda translated into English, and it seems reasoned and mild in comparison – at least in its overall tone, despite the underlying message – to what comes out of KCNA news releases (http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm) from North Korea.
Bear in mind that the Nazis only lasted for a dozen years; the North Koreans have been doing this for six decades. Sustaining a permanant state of emergency for that long requires a lot more work.
Or maybe it’s just that they’ve been doing it for so long, it seems normal to them.
I think he is talking to his own people . The impression most have is that the N. Koreans are very poor and a bit backwards on technology. He is telling them they need to suffer so the country can defend against the imperialists who want to take them over. Hear it enough and it becomes fact.
Remember all media in North Korea is state controlled, so any man-in-the-street will very carefully parrot the state. As to why state officials are so bombastic, it’s on the script guidelines for dictatorships.
All statements are over the top, ‘Socialism or Death!’ was Fidel Castro’s closing line in speeches in the 1990’s. (Graffiti artists in Havana at the time would change the ‘or’ in banners to ‘is’.)
Basically in a dictatorship, like North Korea or Cuba, the state’s position is not just correct, it is the only possible position. Anyone with an opposite viewpoint would outrage any right-thinking person. So that’s what you hear righteous outrage.
It seems to me he’s talking to the rest of us as well. All of N. Korea’s neighbors, not to mention the scary USA, are eyeing Pyongyang, with its ailing, crazy leader, to guess if it might be low-hanging fruit. NK is a little nation. Its image of dangerous madness makes it a headache. If it weren’t so dangerous/crazy, maybe it would have been taken over long ago. KJI wants to protect the transition to his successor, so the danger/crazy has been ramped up. It really harks back, IMO, to kingdoms of centuries ago. Because of that, I think KJI is not as scary as he seems.
Besides this, I think that the media in places that allow no dissent tend to be crude and extreme because they get no honest feedback. When the only response they get for anything they say is agreement, subtlety and style can be expected to slide.
Well…why wouldn’t they be? I agree with most of the posters in the thread…they are like that because their system pretty much requires it, the people expect it, and lil’ Kimmy probably likes it that way.
Korea will be the next great war. It won’t be global and no one will take NK’s side outright, but it will be extremely brutal. NK will not exist afterwards and there will be a unified Korea, but it will cost many American lives and even more SK lives.
Why? We will not let the NK’s get nuclear weapons.
A hijack, but I disagree: a war against NK will start off with nuclear strikes, to prevent a counter-attack. This will be followed by conventional airstrikes against militarily valuable targets in civilian areas. There will be very many NK dead and very few SK and American dead.
The longer you’re on TV, the longer you’re on the governments radar. Speak quickly then duck.
North Korea has a large conventional army. It’s supplies wont last for long, but long enough to turn Seoul into rubble. If war breaks out, North Korea will probably spend all it’s resources to take out Seoul. If South Korea survives the war with only a couple million dead I’d be very surprised.
I doubt there will be war, and if there is I think NK will fold like an empty beer can crushed beneath a tractor trailer. NK is on the verge of collapse and has been for decades now. Trying to support a major war will push them over the edge…either they won’t be able to sustain combat operations AND feed their people, or they will not worry about feeding their people…in which case they had better leave a LOT of troops behind to make sure they still have a country to come back to. The US and the SK’s will pound the holy living crap out of their logistics infrastructure, and this will only exacerbate the problem. The SK’s have some REALLY nasty defenses between the DMZ and any kind of open country…and the SK’s actually have modern weapons (such as the K1A1, F-15K, etc etc), while the NK’s still have old soviet era crap (T-55’s and 62’s, Mig 19’s and 21’s, etc etc). While the NK’s have a LOT of that old crap, it’s, well, old crap. It works for keeping their own population cowed, but it would only be so many targets to the US and SK troops on the DMZ. About the only thing to worry about would be the NK’s nukes (which I seriously doubt they would or could use…I don’t think they have had enough testing to put the things into a case small enough to be deployed from a missile or even an aircraft. They would probably have to drive it in a truck) and their artillery.
To paraphrase Will Smith from Men In Black…we are talking about the difference between old and busted (a.k.a. the NK military) and new hotness (the US/SK militaries). Lambs to the slaughter.
Of course North Korea will fold if there’s a second Korean War. The threat isn’t that North Korea will win, the threat is that they’ll flatten Seoul before they get crushed. And about 20 million people live in the Seoul metro area.
Does anyone have any idea how much time there would be before the start of hostilities and the utter devestation of Seoul? I often hear that Seoul would be crushed in the event of war, but how true is that really?
Say, for instance, NK starts firing it’s artillary at Seoul. SK starts firing at NK on the DMZ side. I would think NK’s ability to attack Seoul would be rapidly diminished.
Sure…I agree. I think that Seoul will get pounded, but probably not as much as some people seem to think. I had a friend who was stationed in Korea (on the DMZ) and he was telling me that a lot of that NK artillery is expected to be targeted (initially at least) at the various defensive positions and fortifications the US and SK’s have all along the border. I have no doubt with tens of thousands of tubes that the NK’s will also be pounding the crap out of Seoul as well…but, by the same token, our counter battery and air strikes will be hitting them as well.
Still, you are right…in a real war between NK and SK, Seoul will most certainly get pounded before the NK’s finally fold. In reality I don’t see war as a likely outcome…I think the NK’s will eventually tear each other apart when lil’ Kimmy finally snuffles off this mortal coil…
Just to clarify, you are aware that North Korea already has nuclear weapons? (In fact, that the current crisis is in response to them testing one such weapon?)
The Korean fallout will occur when NK is able to produce quantities enough to sell (think Iran, ect) and/or with the range to reach the California coast.
I agree with most of the posters in the thread…they are like that because their system pretty much requires it, the people expect it, and lil’ Kimmy probably likes it that way.