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Koramei posted:There are some dumb as hell attitudes in this thread, but the notion that the Korean War was started as naked aggression akin to Hitler rolling into Poland is also incredibly one dimensional. It was naked aggression though. It was a Kim Il Sung vanity project that he only barely got approval for from Stalin and Mao. It was planned for months in advance, although the North Koreans ended up forgoing several of the elements from prior plans. Kim Il Sung essentially grossly underestimated what a UN/US response would be, and so did Stalin in approving it. The best you could say about it is that if North Korea hasn't unleashed naked aggression when they did, that dickhead Syngman Rhee in the South might have done so instead within a few years, with the same goal of unifying Korea. But in our world, it was Kim Il Sung who decided to do an unprovoked war against fellow Koreans - and I'll remind you that this only happened once the US troops in SK had been reduced to under 600 as part of the US pulling out of Korea.
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May 3, 2017 04:52
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Guy Goodbody posted:I guess the argument is that North Korea wasn't really invading, they were liberating the south from the yoke of the US so the country could be unified under the yoke of the Kims I think that's a fair argument, inasmuch as I wouldn't object to that argument if you shifted the context to Vietnam. Having taken their shot and failed, though, it's a bit rich for their defenders to complain about the devastation that arose from a war of choice that they started, especially seventy years later.
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May 3, 2017 04:55
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The Korean War was inevitable pretty much from the moment Korea was divided. It wasn't especially surprising that North Korea started it, considering their military advantage at the time.
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May 3, 2017 05:37
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Don't North Koreans still believe that we want to eat their children and really want us all dead? Also, how could've the Korean War been avoided? A more soviet-friendly president perhaps?
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May 3, 2017 05:44
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fishmech posted:It was naked aggression though. It was a Kim Il Sung vanity project that he only barely got approval for from Stalin and Mao. It was planned for months in advance, although the North Koreans ended up forgoing several of the elements from prior plans. Kim Il Sung essentially grossly underestimated what a UN/US response would be, and so did Stalin in approving it. Bold faced opportunism sure, but naked aggression (although looking it up, I'm not sure there's a definition for what that actually is, so maybe this is all just semantics) implies no justification. There was definitely a justification. We look at Korea today as 2 separate countries with incompatible identities, but at the time, they'd been separate for just 5 years after more than 1000 years of unity. This wasn't some pet project for Kim Il-sung, reunification was seen as important to pretty much every Korean, from top officials all the way down to peasants, both in the north and south. Kim leveraging it to his political advantage in every way he could doesn't mean that's the reason the war happened. You kind of argued outside of my point though, so I guess I must have not explained it as clearly as I should have. When you're looking at stuff from the perspective of Koreans back at the onset of the war, you have to remember that the partition that was to their perspective imposed on them by a foreign power wasn't legitimate, the governments installed by a foreign power weren't legitimate. We see UN intervention as us stepping in to stop an aggressor attacking a sovereign nation; to them, it wasn't sovereign, it wasn't legitimate. Koreans were bewildered and furious when they learned about the partition, there were enormous protests and a huge amount of resentment towards the US that wouldn't abate until the war. Reunification was the only acceptable future and there was nothing aggressive about it. This is stuff we tackle all the time when talking about post-colonial partitions in places like Vietnam, but for some reason, maybe since the history is still happening today, it's hard to wrap our heads around with Korea. Obviously in hindsight the DPRK is poo poo awful and it's a great thing the UN intervention happened, and probably the partition too, since it meant at least part of Korea got spared from turning into a post-Soviet hell. At the time though, especially before the war and all the atrocities and cementing of power and so on therein, the attitudes and perception (among Koreans) was different. Grouchio posted:Also, how could've the Korean War been avoided? A more soviet-friendly president perhaps? The US leaving troops in the peninsula, outfitting the ROK army with anything, not explicitly leaving out the ROK on a list of nations the US said it would fight to protect. The attitudes that led to the war were inevitable among Koreans but the war its self didn't have to be. Alternatively, not partitioning the country in the first place. There really was no basis to it at all beyond great power politics. Koramei fucked around with this message at 06:14 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 06:11
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US Troops were leaving South Korea. Also "the invasion is okay if it's justified" is the most ridiculous circular logic ever.
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May 3, 2017 06:26
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I never said it's okay, I just said it was justified, at least to the perspective of Koreans at the time. and leaving as in "leaving troops in", i.e. having them stay. all but a handful had already gone by the time it started
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May 3, 2017 06:31
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Nucken Futz posted:Oh Boy . Actually I don't think who started the war really matters at this point, especially since it got dragged into a stalemate and both sides suffered terribly from it. It is 50 years later, both sides are armed to the teeth and nothing has really been resolved and yes, the situation was already primed for a conflict back in the late 1940s. Also, I think North Korea is another case where severe economic sanctions if anything emboldens the regime especially since they can shift blame to outside actors. Ultimately, if really want to corner North Korea, the pressure needs to be first put on China. China has more of less control over North Korea's trade, and therefore has the ability to mold the regime to their purposes. I think your posts speaks to exactly how politicized talking about North Korea is. I have repeatedly said North Korea is a brutal totalitarian regime....but that can't be enough. My narrative has to match your exactly match your narrative. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 07:49 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 07:19
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Ardennes posted:Also, I think North Korea is another case where severe economic sanctions if anything emboldens the regime especially since they can shift blame to outside actors.
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May 3, 2017 08:17
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During the Sunshine Policy years, the North received billions in no-strings-attached aid from the South, most of it went into military procurement, luxury goods, and vanity projects, relations did not improve, and North Korea's propagandists treated it as grudging reparations from the US Imperialists and their hapless puppets in the wretched Yankee Colony to the south for their indiscriminate aggressions, forced out of them by the stalwart Diplomatic Warriors of glorious best Korea. DPRK gonna DPRK, no matter what the US and ROK do.
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May 3, 2017 08:36
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:i mean it really very much seems like you just spiced up the story of the reporter going running with more drama than existed.are there really multiple stories of westerners going running in North Korea? I'd cop to it if that was the case. This wasn't a reporter but an athlete or something like that. Grouchio posted:Don't North Koreans still believe that we want to eat their children and really want us all dead? It's up in the air, a lot of witness accounts suggest many North citizens see through the bullshit, but have to pretend they don't because they don't know who else is in on it. Also, a lot of pirate media enters NK these days, which makes pretending North Korea is Best Korea difficult at best, and if they're lying about one thing in the outside world, people probably realize they may be lying about other things as well.
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May 3, 2017 08:42
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It could be argued that relations were actually better during the Sunshine period (even if they still were aggressive) and that South Korea at least had a carrot to bait the regime with. I do think South Korea should have been more active in using that carrot on human rights issues. At this point, I don't see the North Korea getting rid of their nuclear program (especially since it has implicit Chinese support). The other option is to slowly try to detach the regime by giving it an economic incentive, thereby backing it out of the corner it is in but making it also more reliant on South Korea/Western trade. That or just the status quo.
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May 3, 2017 08:46
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Yeah, at that point you've got to weigh the carrot against the status quo and determine which would be more expensive in the short and long term. Sure, it's gaming with millions of lives, but welcome to geopolitics.
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May 3, 2017 08:57
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Have you guys read "Only Beautiful, Please?" It's about a a British Diplomat who was stationed in Pyongyang, it seems like he wasn't terribly restricted, was able to go on bike rides around the cities and interact with the locals, and I indeed got the impression that life there is far less interesting than someone would imagine. It seems just like being stationed at any communist country during the cold war, lots of bureaucracy and paranoia among the higher ups but daily life just went on as normal. One interesting point he talks about is comparing the society of North Korea vs. feudal Korea and occupied Korea. Sure, compared to life in the South it may not be as good, but there are several things that are objectively better than before the revolution, and for a lot of them that's the only frame of reference they really need. Original_Z fucked around with this message at 10:47 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 10:43
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Original_Z posted:Have you guys read "Only Beautiful, Please?" It's about a a British Diplomat who was stationed in Pyongyang, it seems like he wasn't terribly restricted, was able to go on bike rides around the cities and interact with the locals, and I indeed got the impression that life there is far less interesting than someone would imagine. It seems just like being stationed at any communist country during the cold war, lots of bureaucracy and paranoia among the higher ups but daily life just went on as normal. I have, and I believe he mentioned that the reason why life seemed so ordinary, by our standards, was because the famine of the '90s loosened the reliance that the average NK citizen had on the state, and in turn, the control the state had over the citizenry. Having to fend for themselves, they took up things such as markets, selling and buying things, which they apparently previously didn't.
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May 3, 2017 11:57
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Tias posted:I'd cop to it if that was the case. This wasn't a reporter but an athlete or something like that Then link to the story.
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May 3, 2017 12:07
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I would if I could find it again. I was not trying to con anyone, I know I have read this.
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May 3, 2017 12:31
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Tias posted:I would if I could find it again. I was not trying to con anyone, I know I have read this. If you say so. It sure seems entirely like you read a more boring story about a reporter taking runs in north korea then added a bunch of made up elements about people FREAKING OUT and having to CONFINE them. Which seems like the pattern with people talking about north korea. Taking a real story that really contains actually bad elements then feeling the need to throw in wacky elements that didn't actually happen. Heck, it's common enough maybe you even read someone else's embellished version of the story.
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May 3, 2017 13:39
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Could be, sure. I try to take a chill approach to any news from NK, since it came out that most of the outrageous poo poo we think we know are just fabricated news.
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May 3, 2017 14:31
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Grouchio posted:Don't North Koreans still believe that we want to eat their children and really want us all dead? Maybe if either the US or the Soviets had been more interested in setting up a serious Korean state than extending spheres of influence through an area neither really cared about all that much. Dividing Korea was a stupid idea, unpopular among the Korean population, and there was never any real transition plan to a unified Korea beyond "maybe the Soviets will be more likely to agree to what we want in a couple of years". On top of that, the political suppression that both occupation governments engaged in did a lot to clear the field for the regimes that followed, and the two separate Korean governments were so different and so intent on crushing ideological opposition to cement their own power that there was no real hope of peaceful coexistence. I'm not really sure there could have been a great outcome for Korea. The best-case scenario would have been both powers largely staying out of it, coming in merely to help Korea transition away from Japanese rule and establish its own single government...but given the geopolitical situation in 1945 and the state of Soviet-US relations, that wasn't happening. It might have been an improvement if the US hadn't insisted on having a role in Korea and had instead left the country to the Soviets, but that doesn't really line up with US policy at the time, and that unified communist Korea probably wouldn't have been much better off than any other Soviet client state. I guess if MacArthur could have found someone competent to oversee the US provisional government in the South, at least maybe we wouldn't have made such a mess of South Korea? It still would led to a war sooner or later, though; the moment we suggested having an "American zone" and a "Soviet zone" and the Soviets agreed, the Korean War was probably an inevitability.
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May 3, 2017 15:36
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East and West Germany managed to not get into a war. The solution was to have a poo poo load of nukes on both sides of Korea I guess.
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May 3, 2017 16:09
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These videos from Asian Boss are pretty interesting and the discussions are thoughtful. New one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsJjP3He4h8 + North Koreans remember the highly racialized depictions of Americans. Big noses and evil-looking eyes. + One wore a t-shirt that had "USA" printed on it to school. The family bought it at a (black?) flea market not knowing what it meant. He got in uhh ... trouble. + A lot of foreign movies available. Titanic, Die Hard and James Bond are popular. One guy didn't think the Hollywood films were American since it wasn't what he was taught Americans looked like. Getting busted for having South Korean movies carries a harsher punishment. + North Koreans think Kim Jong-un's haircut looks dorky because they like K-pop styles now and see KJU as trying to emulate his grandfather. One of the defectors even thinks KJU is copying Kim Il-sung in the way he stands and applauds (and even by gaining weight -- but IMO, KJU might also just be a fatass lol). + Experiences may vary. One defector notes Pyongyang is very different from the rest of North Korea, and each town is different. I've read separately that many defectors come from near the Chinese borderlands and are less propagandized than those in Pyongyang, but I don't know where any of these defectors came from originally, specifically. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 16:47 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 16:11
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Its all americas fault as usual. Always good to isolate the one nation that can afford reunification.
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May 3, 2017 16:21
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A unified soviet-aligned Korea would at least have benefited from not needing to be so much of a garrison state. Less external threat can mean more internal surplus and less internal repression.
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May 3, 2017 16:23
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:
Big nose is the stereotype in general asians have of white people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBXzHx-jAIo
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May 3, 2017 16:31
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Big nose is the stereotype in general asians have of white people.  Here's a propaganda poster called "The Game of Beating to Death Americans Is Very Funny" which I think relates to a dummy-stabbing schoolyard game one of the defectors in the video talks about.  Edit: I just noticed this poster ("Let Us Not Be Deceived by the Disguises of US Imperialists!") from the same website as the previous which I'm sharing simply because it looks fantastic:  North Korean art, messages aside, is seriously awesome. I want to buy that, frame it, and put it in my bathroom (where I put war/propaganda posters like that) lmao for I am a nerd The Mansudae Art Studio in Beijing also deals in North Korean art: http://www.mansudaeartstudio.com/ BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 16:35
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I'm just trying to figure out if I'd make bread often enough to warrant the amount of counter space a combination bread/rice maker would take up.
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May 3, 2017 16:46
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Guy Goodbody posted:I'm just trying to figure out if I'd make bread often enough to warrant the amount of counter space a combination bread/rice maker would take up. You could also fly nippon airline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCjxzpSrFP4
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May 3, 2017 17:03
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Peel posted:A unified soviet-aligned Korea would at least have benefited from not needing to be so much of a garrison state. Less external threat can mean more internal surplus and less internal repression. This presupposes that there was ever a need to be anything like the garrison state that it was. We know that Kim Il-Sung held on to hopes of reunification through conquest through at least the end of the '60s. This provides a more concrete explanation for Prussianesque military focus of North Korea than amorphous fears of American perfidy.
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May 3, 2017 17:19
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Koramei posted:Bold faced opportunism sure, but naked aggression (although looking it up, I'm not sure there's a definition for what that actually is, so maybe this is all just semantics) implies no justification. There was definitely a justification. We look at Korea today as 2 separate countries with incompatible identities, but at the time, they'd been separate for just 5 years after more than 1000 years of unity. This wasn't some pet project for Kim Il-sung, reunification was seen as important to pretty much every Korean, from top officials all the way down to peasants, both in the north and south. Kim leveraging it to his political advantage in every way he could doesn't mean that's the reason the war happened. There was no justification. Neither side invading the other would be justified, and they didn't even wait for a particular "provocation" event to use as the justification. It was simply "we're going to invade first". But dude, it wasn't "The Koreans" who did the invasion. It was North Korea specifically, at the orders of Kim Il Sung. I can assure that what the general Korean population would have preferred would be some sort of peaceful solution to the partition. Especially once it's like 3 days into the invasion or whatever and it becomes clear that Southerners aren't welcoming in Northern invasion with open arms, and the US and UN were going to fight back. This was ABSOLUTELY an aggressive act! Once again, very few Koreans wanted the partition to be ended through an invasion destroying their homes though? I'm not sure why you're trying to defend a clearly indefensible war. Even if the North Koreans had been able to successfully sweep out the Southern regime as originally planned, it would still have been bad, because it would have resulted in tons of deaths in the process. There was nothing that required a war with Korea. It could have just limped along and eventually reached a point of peaceful reunification, likely once the Soviet Union collapsed or was about to do so. But Kim Il Sung just had to start a foolish war, and build up extra bad feeling that has stayed ever since. The only positive outcome of the Korean War is that the border we have betweent he two zones now makes a bit more sense than the old flat line did, but that's hardly worth it. Koramei posted:I never said it's okay, I just said it was justified, at least to the perspective of Koreans at the time. Uh, no? It was justified in the perspective of a select group of Koreans, but most of the Koreans didn't think being invaded or being forced to participate in an invasion was a good idea or justified. Stop writing "Koreans" when you mean "Korean military leadership".
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May 3, 2017 17:39
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fishmech posted:Stop writing "Koreans" when you mean "Korean military leadership". Does any other type of Korean exist for North Korean apologists though?
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May 3, 2017 17:49
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Both Koreas had claims and cores in each other's territory, giving them CB to declare war at any time. Every month spent NOT declaring war due to this would lose them prestige and respect at home, and eventually those claims would expire given enough time partitioned. This is real basic EU4 stuff guys.
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May 3, 2017 17:53
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hailthefish posted:During the Sunshine Policy years, the North received billions in no-strings-attached aid from the South, most of it went into military procurement, luxury goods, and vanity projects, relations did not improve, and North Korea's propagandists treated it as grudging reparations from the US Imperialists and their hapless puppets in the wretched Yankee Colony to the south for their indiscriminate aggressions, forced out of them by the stalwart Diplomatic Warriors of glorious best Korea. this is like 90 percent bullshit
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May 3, 2017 18:11
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mlyp (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 3, 2017 18:21
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Baronjutter posted:East and West Germany managed to not get into a war. Korea's position was a little different from Germany's. As it had been a Japanese colony, the political dynamics were different. Also, both Germanies knew they were regarded the front lines of any potential World War III and the battleground that would decide the future of Europe, so they were under no illusions that military adventurism might be realistic. fishmech posted:There was nothing that required a war with Korea. It could have just limped along and eventually reached a point of peaceful reunification, likely once the Soviet Union collapsed or was about to do so. But Kim Il Sung just had to start a foolish war, and build up extra bad feeling that has stayed ever since. The only positive outcome of the Korean War is that the border we have between the two zones now makes a bit more sense than the old flat line did, but that's hardly worth it. What, are you saying that North Korea would have collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union if not for the Korean War?
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May 3, 2017 18:41
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Peel posted:A unified soviet-aligned Korea would at least have benefited from not needing to be so much of a garrison state. Less external threat can mean more internal surplus and less internal repression. see how that worked out in romania
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May 3, 2017 18:43
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fishmech posted:Stop writing "Koreans" when you mean "Korean military leadership". Disdain for the partition went well beyond the military leadership; you're right that I'm painting the attitudes with an overly broad brush (obviously people had different perspectives), but the partition being unacceptable was an attitude that permeated every level of Korean society at the time- from the top of the governments and military, down to student movements- and they'd seen diplomatic channels repeatedly fail. Not everybody wanted war (and doubtless when it touched people personally, many changed their outlooks) but the vast majority considered the cause of reunification justified; everything I've read, and the handful of older Koreans I've been able to talk with about this corroborate it, so if you have some different accounts then I'll be very interested. It's not a stretch to say "Koreans" in this instance, and this is something I'm generally very conscious of, thank you.  quote:It was North Korea specifically, at the orders of Kim Il Sung. Because he was in a position to do it. If Rhee had been able to, you can bet he would have pushed for reunification at any cost too; in fact, he did, when the war developed to the point he could. Rhee with a single minded fanaticism, to the point he tried everything he could do to stop armistice talks and keep going after everyone else wanted out, but the South Korean establishment backed him for a while, and had been very belligerent even before the war. quote:There was nothing that required a war with Korea. It could have just limped along and eventually reached a point of peaceful reunification, likely once the Soviet Union collapsed or was about to do so. Dude, come on. I'm guessing you hold this belief fundamentally, because it explains why you keep ignoring my point. This makes sense to us now, with the benefit of knowledge on how devastating the war there was, and that the USSR would fall apart, and that America eventually developed an attitude where it's willing to go to some lengths to support self determination. With this all in mind, yeah, the war was dumb as hell, reunification carried too steep a cost. But that's all with the benefit of hindsight; to the perspective of most Koreans at the time, there was no reason to believe any of that, or that the partition would ever end. This was a country and people that had been united culturally and politically for more than a thousand years, who'd just endured decades of being a colonial subject, and just witnessed the most devastating war in history. "Limping along" with the vaguest of hopes of reunification is a kind of poo poo deal. You can't look at reunification in the 1950s with the attitudes of today. Incidentally, since it's apparently impossible to say there were multiple dimensions to the Korean War without being an apologist, I should probably clarify that I'm actually extremely glad of the UN intervention, and the DPRK can go gently caress off. Koramei fucked around with this message at 18:57 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 18:53
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Main Paineframe posted:What, are you saying that North Korea would have collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union if not for the Korean War? It would be much more likely. Koramei posted:Disdain for the partition went well beyond the military leadership; you're right that I'm painting the attitudes with an overly broad brush (obviously people had different perspectives), but the partition being unacceptable was an attitude that permeated every level of Korean society at the time- from the top of the governments and military, down to student movements- and they'd seen diplomatic channels repeatedly fail. Not everybody wanted war (and doubtless when it touched people personally, many changed their outlooks) but the vast majority considered the cause of reunification justified; everything I've read, and the handful of older Koreans I've been able to talk with about this corroborate it, so if you have some different accounts then I'll be very interested. It's not a stretch to say "Koreans" in this instance, and this is something I'm generally very conscious of, thank you. Your point is bullshit. The Korean populace wasn't clamoring for a war and an invasion to do reunification in 1950. It was all down to Kim Il Sung being pointlessly aggressive and thinking he'd get an easy win. You keep transposing the desires of Korean military leaders to the thoughts of the wider Korean populace. If you went around asking Koreans on either side of the parallel in early 1950, I sincerely doubt you'd find them saying "boy an invasion would be great!". Most people wanted reunification, but they surely didn't want it via themselves and their homes being plunged into war The invasion was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It just led to pointless destruction and death, because Kim Il Sung wanted to show off and might have started buying into his propaganda about the South being ready to collapse at any time a little too hard. And this doesn't even require hindsight! Stalin and Mao refused to back the invasion fully because they saw it had a really high chance of outright failing or triggering American re-involvement. It'd taken several years of Kim Il Sung begging to get that grudging support from the two leaders. Even in an ideal situation, it would still have killed an awful lot of people in the process. Also, both Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee were equally "capable" of forcing unification via an invasion: not capable at all.
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May 3, 2017 19:11
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Fishmech, do you also also regard Ho Chi Minh's decision to fight for reunification as unjustifiable? If not, what causes the distinction?
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May 3, 2017 19:23
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Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:Fishmech, do you also also regard Ho Chi Minh's decision to fight for reunification as unjustifiable? If not, what causes the distinction? Vietnam is a lot more complicated, including the entire existence of South Vietnam being formed effectively from a rival group rebelling against Ho Chi Minh's independence movement, and a bunch of weird connections like how Vietnam was originally supposed to be unified from the start after French withdrawal. Straight up invasions from the north didn't really happen until war had already been happening, and there had already been tons of South Vietnam/US attacks against the north as well. Meanwhile Kim Il Sung was a jumped-up figurehead for the Soviet occupation forces who got to stay in power, and started to believe he was a real war leader. Then he did an entirely unprovoked invasion. Between the Japanese being removed and the North's invasion, fighting has been limited to very small scale scuffles between jumpy border troops, certainly no massive bombing campaigns against each other.
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May 3, 2017 19:50
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