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Main Paineframe posted:if they wanted to hurt South Korean civilians or damage South Korean industry for absolutely no reason at all, it'd be much simpler to just close off Kaesong and imprison/murder the South Korean supervisors there.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:39
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Halloween Jack posted:That would be a pretty blunt and direct method for the economic suicide they'd be committing anyway, that's for sure! I'm not sure how to quantify "economic suicide" wrt North Korea at this point.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:04
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Pope Guilty posted:I'm not sure how to quantify "economic suicide" wrt North Korea at this point. Loss of slave labor to airstrikes?
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Aug 22, 2015 02:01
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Can a zombie commit suicide? North Korea doesn't really so much have an economy, as they have subsistence agriculture and a military.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:07
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Pope Guilty posted:I'm not sure how to quantify "economic suicide" wrt North Korea at this point. How's this for criteria: When North Korea's leaders have to start living like working class Americans because even the gravy train for just like 50 people tops can't be kept up.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:15
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Nintendo Kid posted:How's this for criteria: When North Korea's leaders have to start living like working class Americans because even the gravy train for just like 50 people tops can't be kept up. It probably wouldn't be that big of a step down.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:35
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American jets buzz the dmz and blue house talks are a-go
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Aug 22, 2015 08:16
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sparatuvs posted:American jets buzz the dmz and blue house talks are a-go Wait do you mean Panmunjom or the actual Blue House?
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Aug 22, 2015 09:12
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:Wait do you mean Panmunjom or the actual Blue House? Panmunjom, I'm assuming the United Nations command building. NK tv live stream: mms://121.167.43.161/chosun ass struggle fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 09:20
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chitoryu12 posted:There were some musings on whether or not they could reach Japan and the Taepodong-2 has a "theoretical" range of Alaska, but I think all of their successful tests have just splashed into the Sea of Japan at the farthest. The aforementioned Alaska Killer lasted about 40 seconds in the air when they tested it. North Korea's NoDong missiles (which are proven to the extent that Pakistan and Iran are big customers), can hit most of Japan including Tokyo. It can also carry a one ton warhead, and is what Pakistan would use to deliver their nuclear warheads. There's no proof that North Korea has or hasn't managed to miniaturise it's warhead to one ton or less, but plenty of reasons to assume it has or is capable of doing so. http://38north.org/2015/02/jlewis020515/ North Korea also managed to successfully get a satellite into orbit using a three stage rocket. Incidentally this does in fact appear to have been largely designed and built in North Korea, despite technical limitations. http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/6177/north-koreas-juche-rocket North Korea has launched the Taepodong 2 (also called the Unha) four times now - three times it has failed, at around the staging point. The fourth times it successfully deposited a satellite into orbit. That isn't a terrible record for a new rocket and a fledgling rocket programme - indeed North Korea beat South Korea into getting a satellite into orbit, even though South Korea was using a rocket largely built with Russian help. Incidentally, South Korea's rocket failed twice before having a successful launch. mediadave fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 12:39
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Of course, that doesn't change the fact that North Korea isn't going to launch an attack. The main worry would be that provocations get out of hand, perhaps a front line officer takes the propaganda too seriously and decides to avenge the honour of the fatherland. Under Kim Jong Un though North Korea though has launched several economic and agricultural reforms that appear to be having a success and gaining steam: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/north-korea-economic-reforms-show-signs-paying-off quote:The changes were introduced soon after Kim took over in late 2011, codified last May and, according to North Korean economists, are now being expanded to cover the whole country. Indeed, rather than the North korean economy declining to the extent that the North Korean elite are forced into penury, as posited above, Pyongyang is going through something of a relative boom: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/15/-sp-pyongyang-north-korea-kim-jong-un http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/north-korea-pyongyang-restaurant http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/under-kim-jong-un-north-korean-property-prices-are-soaring/story-fnb64oi6-1227343518944 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0aec028e-3184-11e4-b2fd-00144feabdc0.html#slide0 N Korea: for the lucky few, a consumer boom quote:At its apex sit the donju, wealthy traders whose investments have been fuelling a retail and construction boom in Pyongyang and a few other cities. Informal trading has been a feature of North Korean life since markets arose as an unplanned response to widespread famine in the late 1990s and the collapse of the state’s public distribution system, through which nearly all goods were apportioned. Now some donju run businesses within North Korea’s state-owned enterprises, quasi-autonomous ventures that a bankrupt state tolerates in exchange for a chunk of the profits. Of course, it's this that poses the big risk to the regime - The average North Korean may now be a bit more secure than they were in the nineties, but they are now concious that they're far poorer than the Dior and BMW flashing moneyed classes. mediadave fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 13:31
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The reason this time seems different to me is it's the first time in my living memory that the South has had such strong rhetoric. I thought they normally just sort of ignored NK provocations.
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Aug 22, 2015 17:00
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Dusty Baker 2 posted:The reason this time seems different to me is it's the first time in my living memory that the South has had such strong rhetoric. I thought they normally just sort of ignored NK provocations. There's political factors in the South as well. Whenever the tone of some international relations posturing changes abruptly in the news, the first thing to look at is virtually always domestic politics in that country. I don't generally follow South Korean politics, but I'm sure there's plenty of domestic issues going on that the government would love a distraction from. Let's take a look. For example, the South Korean establishment has been making an awful lot of noise about an unidentified National Intelligence Agent who was allegedly found dead in his car last month, in an alleged elaborate suicide plan, after leaving an alleged suicide note swearing that South Korea was absolutely not spying on its own citizens and any indication to the contrary in the recent Hacking Team leaks was solely a result of his own "overzealousness" and that he had destroyed all government records relating to the spying to prevent "misunderstandings". The whole thing seems to have rather unfortunate timing, given that it's only been six months since the last head of the NIS was convicted of ordering the NIS to attempt to influence the last election in favor of Park Geun-Hye. In addition, President Geun-Hye, who said while campaigning that she wanted to crack down on the chaebol leaders and limit the president's pardon powers, recently issued a massive sweeping presidential pardon covering thousands of people including a whole bunch of chaebol leaders, some of whom were getting their second presidential pardon (my personal favorite is the one whose previous presidental pardon was after he was convicted of bribing the president, which should explain a whole lot about why this is a big deal). In addition, there's been a whole bunch of bribery and corruption scandals lately, including a former prime minister and even the current president's brother-in-law. As a result, approval ratings for the government have been dropping, especially for the conservative President Geun-hye, who's been cast with a perception of being weak against corruption, rich business conglomerates, and other internal problems. She probably wants to take full advantage of the opportunity to get out there, posture and threaten a bunch, and look tough on something.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:02
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50 North Korean subs have left their pens and are unaccounted for.
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Aug 23, 2015 16:02
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maybe they sank
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Aug 23, 2015 16:06
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sparatuvs posted:50 North Korean subs have left their pens and are unaccounted for. They even have 50?
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Aug 23, 2015 16:17
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CommieGIR posted:They even have 50? I was surprised, but apparently they do.
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Aug 23, 2015 16:19
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CommieGIR posted:They even have 50? Small diesel-electric subs. They're about 1/3rd the size of a US attack boat and much less complex. Not the worst weapons if you just want to flood a local coastal zone with mines and torpedoes.
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Aug 23, 2015 16:23
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Out of interest, is there a theoretical lower-bound on the population needed to maintain a 'modern' military-industrial complex? NK's 24 million must be pretty close to it.
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Aug 23, 2015 16:29
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Zeroisanumber posted:Small diesel-electric subs. They're about 1/3rd the size of a US attack boat and much less complex. Not the worst weapons if you just want to flood a local coastal zone with mines and torpedoes. Wow. According to Wikipedia, they are slower on the surface and submerged than World War 2 era U-Boats.... And worse diving depth. And worse range....
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Aug 23, 2015 16:30
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CommieGIR posted:Wow. According to Wikipedia, they are slower on the surface and submerged than World War 2 era U-Boats.... Yeah, but they're cheap and they don't have to go very far and Un doesn't give a single gently caress if any of them come back at all so long as they do a little damage.
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Aug 23, 2015 16:33
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sparatuvs posted:50 North Korean subs have left their pens and are unaccounted for. They are all defecting to South Korea
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Aug 23, 2015 19:14
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Cubey posted:They are all defecting to South Korea Sadly all sunk before they could reach a South Korean port.
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Aug 23, 2015 19:55
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chitoryu12 posted:There were some musings on whether or not they could reach Japan and the Taepodong-2 has a "theoretical" range of Alaska, but I think all of their successful tests have just splashed into the Sea of Japan at the farthest. The aforementioned Alaska Killer lasted about 40 seconds in the air when they tested it. I remember one of the Sea of Japan tests Japan didn't even bother complaining about.
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Aug 23, 2015 20:55
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North Korean special forces already attacking US arms depots in Japan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YwCtAL2-iA
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Aug 23, 2015 21:18
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Nonsense posted:North Korean special forces already attacking US arms depots in Japan. Is this really an attack?
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Aug 23, 2015 22:06
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no
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Aug 23, 2015 22:13
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I still remember reading about the one time North Korean special forces got like a square away from some important building (was it SK's White House equivalent?) before South Korea found them. And all thanks to one of them being a decent enough human being to allow two poor woodcutters to live instead. They didn't keep their promise of not telling anyone, sadly. Whoops  It was pretty surreal to see that at one point both Koreas were so closely matched (I mean, beyond the Korean War).
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Aug 23, 2015 22:35
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Azran posted:It was pretty surreal to see that at one point both Koreas were so closely matched (I mean, beyond the Korean War). Until the 80's NK was richer and more developed than ROK.
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Aug 23, 2015 22:56
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sparatuvs posted:Until the 80's NK was richer and more developed than ROK. why was south korea so poor?
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Aug 23, 2015 22:59
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sparatuvs posted:Until the 80's NK was richer and more developed than ROK. Note: this is because in the late 70s, Kim Il Sung started to flake out on trade deals and dump way too many resources into monuments to his own vanity. One of the reasons North Korea got so screwed in the 90s was because the Soviet Union/Russia was the only people deigning to give them normal trade deals anymore, because they'd burnt their bridges with first the west, and then the Eastern European countries that had been ideologically aligned. If North Korea had just stuck, essentially, to playing by the rules, it'd be a lot better off today. Kurtofan posted:why was south korea so poor? Roughly, the current North was and is rich in minerals and industry, while the South was mostly rich in farming land. It took quite some time for the South to build up its own industry, heavily reliant on import and export, under the authoritarian but anti-Soviet leaders they had. Now, the North can't take advantage of all its mineral wealth because of the fact that they can't afford energy and so on. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 23:00
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Kurtofan posted:why was south korea so poor? Because it had never been developed. North Korea had more industry (it is rich in coal and iron and thus got the development) but really only when compared to the south. Its biggest advantage was in subsidies from the Soviet Union and later China. South Korea eventually industrialized on the back of cheap labor while the north stagnated and then collapsed when the Soviet Union and its subsidies ceased to exist. I disagree with the others on the timeline though, South Korea began to pull ahead in the late seventies, by the time 1980 rolled around it was already a much better place to live than the north was.
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Aug 23, 2015 23:10
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He also squeezed every communist country he could for foreign aid, even Cuba and Bulgaria.
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Aug 23, 2015 23:21
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Kurtofan posted:why was south korea so poor? It had never developed. Japan ran Korea as a colony for nearly 70 years and obviously wasn't too keen on doing anything but extracting wealth to ship back to Japan during that time. Then the war meant that by 1960 or so Korea was still pretty much a premodern subsistence economy
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Aug 23, 2015 23:40
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sparatuvs posted:Until the 80's NK was richer and more developed than ROK. Yeah, after doing some actual reading I learned about this. I meant that at first impression, without doing any reading and considering the sheer poverty over there, you tend to think of North Korea as one of those Perpetually Poor (tm) nations. Also I recall reading about Kim Il Sung giving a lot of money and/or weapons to, uh Madagascar? To the point where Madagascar came to be known as the Little Korea? That was pretty funny. Cliff Racer posted:Because it had never been developed. North Korea had more industry (it is rich in coal and iron and thus got the development) but really only when compared to the south. Its biggest advantage was in subsidies from the Soviet Union and later China. South Korea eventually industrialized on the back of cheap labor while the north stagnated and then collapsed when the Soviet Union and its subsidies ceased to exist. I disagree with the others on the timeline though, South Korea began to pull ahead in the late seventies, by the time 1980 rolled around it was already a much better place to live than the north was. In fact, a lot of Koreans who lived in Japan during the 50s and 60s decided to move back into North Korea both due to ideological reasons and because the South looked like a lovely place to be in. It's funny reading about those who had lucrative pachinko enterprises and decided to move back and donate as much as they could to the regime. I think the thing I find the most intriguing about extremely authoritarian communist regimes like the North Korea is how much they enjoy poisoning the well. They just love burning down any kind of goodwill by their own inhabitants. Particularly North Korea, with its weird rear end emphasis on bloodlines. Even if some poor, brainwashed kid is willing to give his life for the regime at a moment's notice, just because a relative three generations ago was a landlord means he's hosed for life and has no chance of ever getting into the party. Azran fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Aug 24, 2015 |
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Aug 24, 2015 03:04
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Kurtofan posted:why was south korea so poor? In addition to everything else said here, one should also remember that up until 1960, South Korea was ruled by Syngman Rhee, who was corrupt as gently caress even by the standards of a third-world dictator. Treating the country as your personal piggy bank isn't exactly conductive to economic growth.
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Aug 24, 2015 10:15
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Cerebral Bore posted:In addition to everything else said here, one should also remember that up until 1960, South Korea was ruled by Syngman Rhee, who was corrupt as gently caress even by the standards of a third-world dictator. Treating the country as your personal piggy bank isn't exactly conductive to economic growth. Yeah, Rhee was a total sack of poo poo. By comparison literal military Juntas were enlightened.
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Aug 24, 2015 17:34
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They folded http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34039187 quote:Yonhap reported that the deal, to be announced later on Monday, would see North Korea express "regret" over the landmine incident earlier this month.
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Aug 24, 2015 17:56
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Keep in mind for everyone saying the North was more developed, the South was still probably a better place to live. The personality cult and secret police/ inminban and caste system all went into full swing in just a couple of decades. You might have had a better quality of life materially, but civil liberties were nonexistent right from the outset. They were absolutely horrendous in the South too until fairly recently but the North has always been on a different level.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:11
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Uh, I really don't believe the police state in the south was better until like the 70s at the earliest.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:28
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