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Some Guy TT posted:Like, you do realize that even if we did invade North Korea, we'd probably still have to keep the prison camps open, right? They're not filled to the brim with democracy lovers. Even the main political dissidents are in there for plotting to take more power for themselves. They don't care about democracy, except to the extent they'll probably pretend that they do to pull one over on occupying American forces, which is what happens pretty much every time we try to make friends out of our enemy's enemies. Of all the dumb things in this post, this stands out as especially absurd and repugnant. Just for starters: East German political prisoners didn't stay imprisoned after German reunification, and as far as I know no problems resulted from their being freed. More to the point: They could at least free the people who are in there for the "crimes" of family members! Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Oct 23, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 06:53
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You call my post dumb, yet you think East Germany, of all the possible geopolitical examples, is the most relevant one here. But then again you're assuming my United States/North Korea prison comparison is intended to make the latter look good rather than the former look bad, so I'm guessing you're reading my posts with blinders on. edit: gently caress it I'll just spell it out for you. Communist East Germany voluntarily relinquished power. There was do dramatic build-up about the need to punish Communists for crimes against humanity. They cooperated with the changeover. For such a situation to happen on the Korean peninsula would require such a dramatic reversal of the current situation of political brinkmanship that we might as well be talking about an alternate universe. My post was assuming a situation where current North Korean leadership is removed by force, and probably sets up a successful insurgency against foreign invaders. Not exactly far-fetched, when we factor in that considerably less competent political factions in the Middle East have managed to do the same. ↓ That's only an assumption in commonwealth legal systems, not Napoleonic ones. South Korea uses the latter, for reference. I don't have a clue what kind of legal system the North Koreans use. Like most of their secrecy, this is no doubt intentional, since it would make any kind of power transition hopelessly difficult without their express cooperation. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Oct 23, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 10:00
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Whatever happened to presuming innocence before judging guilt?
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Oct 23, 2017 10:08
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...Although if you're wondering what he meant by freeing people who are in prison for the crimes of their family members, that's in reference to collective punishment. In the North Korean context it's a Communist legal idea where the theoretical basis is meant to prevent family members from committing crimes to benefit the rest of their family, but only the one who directly committed the crime faces consequences, which is a problem in any capitalist system. See- rich families that are impossible to take down since only one ever gets convicted at a time and the rest remain rich to commit crimes another day. In theory we deal with this through the civil damages system which is...imperfect, at best. Neither is the North Korean system, obviously. My point here isn't that the North Koreans are great for having lofty moral standards, it's that they do indeed have moral standards they just don't bother adhering to them when it's inconvenient and that's where the real evil in the system lies. Which again, makes them a lot more like us than the Nazis. The technical purpose of the North Korean camps is re-education, after all, which is just a more evil sounding Communist word for rehabilitation.
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Oct 23, 2017 10:25
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One common belief in the states is better a 100 innocent people in jail than 1 guilty person going free. These people often assume that the innocent people did something else to merit prison anyways making themselves immune from false imprisonment. Edit. I got my topics crossed and thought this was a different discussion.
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Oct 23, 2017 10:27
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So is nuclear armageddon on hold for now or what? I might be able to go to SK for a few weeks on vacation and it would be a bummer if it got destroyed while I was there.
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Oct 23, 2017 13:33
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mobby_6kl posted:So is nuclear armageddon on hold for now or what? I might be able to go to SK for a few weeks on vacation and it would be a bummer if it got destroyed while I was there.
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Oct 23, 2017 13:41
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RandomPauI posted:What happens if we start a trade war with China and they still find that preferable to a North Korean refugee crisis? America has 55 million hand guns, Washington can't afford to jack up the price of Walmart goods.
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Oct 23, 2017 13:57
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Samurai Sanders posted:I’m sure the state department will issue a travel warning if they think poo poo is about to come loose. Those are the only kinds of announcements I am looking for, not dubious internet stuff. They upgraded the travel alert from travel warned against to travel restricted for north korea in september. Not south korea, but until last month you could totally go to north korea and eat gasoline clams and now you can't.
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Oct 23, 2017 14:01
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Some Guy TT posted:edit: gently caress it I'll just spell it out for you. Communist East Germany voluntarily relinquished power. There was do dramatic build-up about the need to punish Communists for crimes against humanity. They cooperated with the changeover. For such a situation to happen on the Korean peninsula would require such a dramatic reversal of the current situation of political brinkmanship that we might as well be talking about an alternate universe. My post was assuming a situation where current North Korean leadership is removed by force, and probably sets up a successful insurgency against foreign invaders. Not exactly far-fetched, when we factor in that considerably less competent political factions in the Middle East have managed to do the same. None of that has any bearing on the ideology of the currently imprisoned political dissidents, though. Some Guy TT posted:But then again you're assuming my United States/North Korea prison comparison is intended to make the latter look good rather than the former look bad, so I'm guessing you're reading my posts with blinders on. I'm not reading your post that way because you compared North Korean internment camps to US prisons, I'm reading your post that way because you justified locking up political dissidents (and now you're justifying locking up their families too, apparently).
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Oct 23, 2017 15:06
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icantfindaname posted:So wait are people in 2017 unironically still parroting end of history stuff about how neoliberal economic reform will inspire third world peasants to rise up and topple anti-American tyrranies around the world? Uh... North Korean markets aren't "neoliberal economic reform" so much as "we can no longer distribute food, go do it yourself, we'll look the other way most of the time".
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Oct 23, 2017 17:04
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Silver2195 posted:I'm not reading your post that way because you compared North Korean internment camps to US prisons, I'm reading your post that way because you justified locking up political dissidents (and now you're justifying locking up their families too, apparently). Yeah, I never once defended US prisons (hint: we're talking about North Korea, and pointing at this other guy when someone points out you're a dick is ...not the best justification for things), but I never thought someone would unironically parrot Bruce Cumings' "having your entire family arrested is a good thing!" line on North Korean prisons. quote:Kang Chol-Wan was held in the Yodok labor camp for ten years, and like most other prisoners, he went there with his family -- a common practice and an odd aspect of the DPRK's belief in the family as the core unit of society. Mutual family support is also the reason that many survive the ordeal of prison. Note: in North Korea people are imprisoned for throwing away newspapers with Dear Leader's picture incorrectly. Cumings goes on to say that Kang's surviving off of rats caught in the prison grounds was a feature, not a bug. quote:The natural environs meant that small animals could surreptitiously be caught and cooked, however, and death from starvation was rare. Note: I am NOT holding this up as justification for a pre-emptive war (which would be insane), but as to why the international community may have just cause to sanction North Korea for trying to build a ballistic missile program while not being terribly excited about France's.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:15
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I never defended North Korean prisons either. You seem to think explaining why the system exists in the form it does is tantamount to justifying its existence. I know it's a lot more morally comfortable to pretend like North Korean leadership is motivated entirely by the number of evilgasms they get by smashing baby heads against hard rocks, but that kind of attitude is how we got to our current situation. By refusing to consider the situation from their point of view. Consider for a moment that the North Korean state came into existence in the wake of the Japanese Occupation, and that the issue of Korean collaboration with the Japanese was a big one. The prevailing belief was that extreme punishment, to the extent of punishing entire families, was the only way to act as a substantial deterrent against past and future collaboration with foreign invaders, since such collaboration was typically motivated by a desire to provide for the family unit long term. The ethical ramifications of this are horrific and wrong and evil, which I apparently have to explicitly state since you lack enough understanding of nuance to think that explanations are tantamount to endorsement. But as far as the North Koreans are concerned, history has justified this policy. South Korea, which did not enact any kind of serious punitive measures against Japanese collaborators, ended up being almost immediately and entirely run by former collaborators. The influences of this are still felt in South Korean culture to this day, where all the major power players can trace their influence back to the Japanese Occupation- not that they want to do this. Until recently discussing Korean collaboration with the Japanese was very verboten in South Korean culture for exactly these reasons. This also is why North Korea has a strong sense of Korean nationalism while South Korea does not. It's not a matter of the specifics of Juche, it's that they even have an ethos at all. Right-wing nationalists in South Korea have to fall back to waving American flags to express their patriotism because even they don't have the slightest idea what Korean identity is supposed to be. Hilariously, left-wing nationalists have historically always been accused of being closet Communists even when they were nothing of the sort (see Kim Dae-jung, who did austerity measures before they were cool) because North Korea has effectively monopolized the idea of Korean exceptionalism. This is the real danger of an invasion where we're expecting South Koreans to do the heavy lifting. They won't want to. Mandatory military service is already massively unpopular here, and that's just when it's two years of mandatory PTSD in the best years of your life that you can't do resume building. You will see massive street protests against the war that would make the Park Geun-hye protests look like a joke, and that's not even getting into the plummet in morale South Koreans will face every day as North Korean soldiers and civilians alike will mock them every day for fighting the Yankee's war for them. This is why North Korea has toned down their anti-South Korea rhetoric over the past few decades. It's become increasingly incomprehensible to the populations of both countries why they would even want to fight, except for the sake of American interests in East Asia. Lum_ posted:Note: in North Korea people are imprisoned for throwing away newspapers with Dear Leader's picture incorrectly. Cumings goes on to say that Kang's surviving off of rats caught in the prison grounds was a feature, not a bug. But maybe I'm wasting my breath. You seem more interested in pithy generalizations than trying to understand how North Koreans actually think and why they are unlikely to be impressed by our getting on a moral high horse about how bad their prison system is.
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Oct 24, 2017 03:08
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Some Guy TT posted:This also is why North Korea has a strong sense of Korean nationalism while South Korea does not. It's not a matter of the specifics of Juche, it's that they even have an ethos at all. Right-wing nationalists in South Korea have to fall back to waving American flags to express their patriotism because even they don't have the slightest idea what Korean identity is supposed to be. Hilariously, left-wing nationalists have historically always been accused of being closet Communists even when they were nothing of the sort (see Kim Dae-jung, who did austerity measures before they were cool) because North Korea has effectively monopolized the idea of Korean exceptionalism. Nationalism and supposed monopoly on defining Korean identity mean nothing, though, if the authority claiming to represent the nation and uphold those ideals can't keep meaningful promises or make nuanced threats to ensure loyalty from its population. All that North Korea has to hold its population in line is a volatile mix of outside pressure from its neighbors (who don't want to be overrun with waves of refugees and defectors) and chains of repressive and totalitarian authoritarianism from the top down. Take that away, and it has no leverage to enforce compliance. North Korea is already shaky in terms of food, electricity, medical care, and the like. In a conflict, that would all probably be kaput, outside of the military. I would expect regular soldiers to gather supplies and arms and head back to their homes and families to try and wait out the forthcoming apocalypse (be it by conventional means or worse). After all, the North Korean military is mostly conscripts, and (from my understanding) poorly trained at that. I don't expect much esprit de corps on the North Korean side, in the event of a conflict. Because it seems likely that desperate North Koreans will turn on each other out of desperation, paranoia, and suspicion, once food distribution is further interrupted, the availability of medical services and goods is dramatically reduced, and new tensions over resources like habitable dwellings, water, and fuel for cooking and heating manifest (don't forget, winter is right around the corner!). North Korea's social contract is null and void, essentially. It was made and has been upheld under duress. Once the source of duress is removed, expect things to fall apart rapidly. Some Guy TT posted:This is the real danger of an invasion where we're expecting South Koreans to do the heavy lifting. They won't want to. Mandatory military service is already massively unpopular here, and that's just when it's two years of mandatory PTSD in the best years of your life that you can't do resume building. You will see massive street protests against the war that would make the Park Geun-hye protests look like a joke, and that's not even getting into the plummet in morale South Koreans will face every day as North Korean soldiers and civilians alike will mock them every day for fighting the Yankee's war for them. This is why North Korea has toned down their anti-South Korea rhetoric over the past few decades. It's become increasingly incomprehensible to the populations of both countries why they would even want to fight, except for the sake of American interests in East Asia. I could see protests if South Korea initiated a conflict or let itself be dragged into a US-initiated conflict, but the minute that they see an unjustifiable North Korean attack on South Korean territory (within the context of peninsular conflict being understood to be "hot" again, if just between the US and North Korea), you'll probably see more support for a reprisal. Perhaps out of national pride, perhaps out of cynical bitterness from past South Korean military reservists who want their suffering in service to finally mean something (I kid?). But I think you're underestimating South Korean soldiers here. South Korea still has a social contract, and has managed to deliver on it pretty well over the past few decades. Democracy, economic development, some social liberalization, and all the attendant trappings of such that Western capitalism is lauded and touted so much about for spreading across the globe. This means (as I've mentioned before in this thread) stuff like McDonalds, Xbox Live, high-speed Internet, K-pop idols, and a million other shallow, dumb, crassly materialistic things that Westernized (and even some not-so-Westernized) young men around the world dig. More than that, they come from a fairly comfortable society. It's comfortable because it's "certain" (well, certain enough). You can get food, clean water, electricity, medical care, and other modern necessities fairly easily. You can believe that if you follow the expected behavioral and scholastic steps of South Korean society, you will be rewarded. Even if you're a dead-end South Korean burger flipper burnout (or the local equivalent thereof), you might still have the certainty of returning to your room after work, having some cup ramen, and loving around on the Internet all night for indefinite lengths of time. It's no picnic utopia, but it's functional enough, I guess? So anything that disrupts that functional stability, that undermines the illusion of there not having to be bigger cares in the world than busting your rear end at work to pay for a lifetime of lattes...I think the results of such a shock would be like those of Americans after 9/11. And once the South Korean government and military authorities (likely in conjunction with the US military and entertainment industry) start ramping up the propaganda with cinematic dramatizing of war, start pushing an affiliation between military shooters like Call Of Duty and actual service, and start making war seem "fun" (especially to the bored, desperate, curious, thrill-seeking, or psychotic in South Korean society), then you'll see South Korean militarism and enthusiasm for war go up. Throw in the certainty of better equipment, better training, better support, and the prospect of being more likely to return home alive, and it just seems ridiculously laughable that South Korean soldiers would feel ashamed and embarrassed because the North Korean population developed the most wounding "Yankee dog lackeys" rhetoric ever. That only works, logically, if they somehow share a same "Korean" mindset that transcends ideology, experience, and perception. And if North Korea has set the tone for native Korean nationalism, while South Korea can only define its national identity through its relationship with the United States, especially militarily...then there's a contradiction here? How can South Koreans somehow recognize a shared Koreanness with North Koreans, if their national characters and identity are so different? It's not as if shared ethnicity or familiar coexistence stopped what happened in Cambodia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, or for that matter in the American Civil War and during the Nazi regime in Germany. And this isn't getting into the potential dynamics of South Korean soldiers dehumanizing the North Korea population through victim-blaming, both to cope with the conflict psychologically and also to justify unleashing their anger, rage, and pent-up frustrations from home on them. If mandatory military service is unpopular with South Koreans because it seems rough and like a waste of time, imagine how unpopular North Koreans would be if a South Korean conscript was not only dealing with the stress of their military service, but now also the stress of possibly dying in a conflict and returning to a ruined nation and economy if they do survive.
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Oct 24, 2017 08:58
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Kthulhu5000 posted:Nationalism and supposed monopoly on defining Korean identity mean nothing, though, if the authority claiming to represent the nation and uphold those ideals can't keep meaningful promises or make nuanced threats to ensure loyalty from its population. All that North Korea has to hold its population in line is a volatile mix of outside pressure from its neighbors (who don't want to be overrun with waves of refugees and defectors) and chains of repressive and totalitarian authoritarianism from the top down. Take that away, and it has no leverage to enforce compliance. These exact same arguments have been made for the last seventy years. The political leaders making these arguments die or go into retirement. The regime stays. You, like our leaders, underestimate the regime at every turn. That's why we're in this mess. quote:I could see protests if South Korea initiated a conflict or let itself be dragged into a US-initiated conflict, but the minute that they see an unjustifiable North Korean attack on South Korean territory (within the context of peninsular conflict being understood to be "hot" again, if just between the US and North Korea), you'll probably see more support for a reprisal. Perhaps out of national pride, perhaps out of cynical bitterness from past South Korean military reservists who want their suffering in service to finally mean something (I kid?). Now this much I agree with. South Koreans (eventually) rallied behind Syngman Rhee in the face of invasion. They'd do the same with anyone. quote:But I think you're underestimating South Korean soldiers here. South Korea still has a social contract, and has managed to deliver on it pretty well over the past few decades. Democracy, economic development, some social liberalization, and all the attendant trappings of such that Western capitalism is lauded and touted so much about for spreading across the globe. This means (as I've mentioned before in this thread) stuff like McDonalds, Xbox Live, high-speed Internet, K-pop idols, and a million other shallow, dumb, crassly materialistic things that Westernized (and even some not-so-Westernized) young men around the world dig. You have this entirely backwards. People do not conscript because they're happy the government is giving them creature comforts. To the contrary- if you're happy flipping burgers and playing Xbox Live, nothing will piss you off more than the prospect of being sent off to a foreign country to risk your life fighting for nothing while a drill sergeant yells at you. This is is why nearly all of the men in South Korea hate, hate military service. There's no sense of patriotic duty And that's just in context of the disaffected slacker. Most young South Korean men have stronger ambitions than that- and are frustrated at every turn by an increasingly stressful society where it is getting harder and harder to get a decent job, where they are made to feel ashamed for failures and offered no means of self-improvement, and who are so used to abuse in the crappy burger flipping jobs they do have access to that there's a special term for how South Korean millennial feel about this country. Hell Joseon. People describe wanting to escape from here and live in the West, as if that's any better. And need I mention the highest suicide rate in the world? Some social contract. quote:So anything that disrupts that functional stability, that undermines the illusion of there not having to be bigger cares in the world than busting your rear end at work to pay for a lifetime of lattes...I think the results of such a shock would be like those of Americans after 9/11. And once the South Korean government and military authorities (likely in conjunction with the US military and entertainment industry) start ramping up the propaganda with cinematic dramatizing of war, start pushing an affiliation between military shooters like Call Of Duty and actual service, and start making war seem "fun" (especially to the bored, desperate, curious, thrill-seeking, or psychotic in South Korean society), then you'll see South Korean militarism and enthusiasm for war go up. I disagree. The factors you describe are uniquely American, and have been built up in our culture over the last several decades. 9/11 was just the powder keg that set it off. The only thing here that's even close to that level of military worship is Descendants of the Sun- a drama which has already been mostly forgotten about, because its main novelty was that heroic soldiers are almost never depicted in South Korean media. You're more likely to get a popular movie about a con artist than you are a South Korean soldier. quote:Throw in the certainty of better equipment, better training, better support, and the prospect of being more likely to return home alive, and it just seems ridiculously laughable that South Korean soldiers would feel ashamed and embarrassed because the North Korean population developed the most wounding "Yankee dog lackeys" rhetoric ever. That only works, logically, if they somehow share a same "Korean" mindset that transcends ideology, experience, and perception. Again, you might want to read up on this Hell Joseon stuff. Young South Koreans are not happy with their lot in life. They already feel like society is pushing them to impossible standards to no apparent purpose. Forcing them to fight a war in that context would be the last straw. quote:And if North Korea has set the tone for native Korean nationalism, while South Korea can only define its national identity through its relationship with the United States, especially militarily...then there's a contradiction here? How can South Koreans somehow recognize a shared Koreanness with North Koreans, if their national characters and identity are so different? It's not as if shared ethnicity or familiar coexistence stopped what happened in Cambodia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, or for that matter in the American Civil War and during the Nazi regime in Germany. My point is not that the superiority of Juche ideology will allow North Korea to overwhelm South Korea with cultural defections. It's that the Juche ideology is very, very well-suited to encouraging the citizenry to stick up for their culture no matter how lovely the material circumstances, especially in the context of a defensive war. South Korea have nothing worth fighting for. Soldiers aren't robots. If morale is poo poo, you lose the war even if you win the battle. ...And I suppose I should clarify, since you think South Koreans are impressed by the wonders of electricity. Nationalism as we know it became a defining force in World War I, where the common citizens on both sides lived in much worse material conditions than anyone in North Korea today. If blinding nationalist patriotism could be unleashed in that context, in an explicitly pointless purposeless war that accomplished nothing except dick-waving, you better believe the North Koreans could do the same in a defensive context. poo poo, the Taliban managed to pull it off. Surely you can't be underestimating North Korea that much. quote:And this isn't getting into the potential dynamics of South Korean soldiers dehumanizing the North Korea population through victim-blaming, both to cope with the conflict psychologically and also to justify unleashing their anger, rage, and pent-up frustrations from home on them. If mandatory military service is unpopular with South Koreans because it seems rough and like a waste of time, imagine how unpopular North Koreans would be if a South Korean conscript was not only dealing with the stress of their military service, but now also the stress of possibly dying in a conflict and returning to a ruined nation and economy if they do survive. This only happens that way if there's something the North Koreans can be blamed for. Again, the main probable prospect for South Korea going to war with North Korea right now is if the United States, currently represented by Trump, forces them to do so. If you really think South Korean soldiers are going to hold North Korea 100% to blame for that, I don't know what to tell you. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Oct 24, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 10:46
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Are we going into that phase of discussion again, where we argue that SK will go full total war with every able-bodied man screaming for Norkie blood if their precious K-pop Idols and MMORPGs get threatened? Where we totally ignore the possibility of the opposite scenario, where they'd hit war weariness right the gently caress away if any of this gets threatened, and demand the government seek a peaceful resolution or end to conflict when their Capitalist Way Of Life gets strained?
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Oct 24, 2017 11:05
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The soft decadent south koreans, their culture tainted by the west, will lazily march into their slave labour camps and sigh as their homes and families are destroyed, resigned to their fate. Their superior modern military no match for for the racial and cultural purity of the north. Although their lives will be absolute hell, with everything they've worked for looted or destroyed, they just have no motivation to defend them selves due to the malaise brought on by western contamination.
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Oct 24, 2017 18:09
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Baronjutter posted:The soft decadent south koreans, their culture tainted by the west, will lazily march into their slave labour camps and sigh as their homes and families are destroyed, resigned to their fate. Their superior modern military no match for for the racial and cultural purity of the north. Although their lives will be absolute hell, with everything they've worked for looted or destroyed, they just have no motivation to defend them selves due to the malaise brought on by western contamination. Let's compromise, the rich cowards in the cities will sell out their poorer countrymen to NK in exchange for mostly keeping their comfort and security. The same bargain that already exists in North Korea.
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Oct 24, 2017 18:39
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Some Guy TT posted:These exact same arguments have been made for the last seventy years. The political leaders making these arguments die or go into retirement. The regime stays. You, like our leaders, underestimate the regime at every turn. That's why we're in this mess. The regime stays because, as much as interested countries might dislike its existence on political and humanitarian grounds, keeping the status quo is still the sane, rational thing to do at this point. The regime in North Korea isn't terribly crafty or enlightened (but nor are they insane) - they're just blatant extortionists who are willing to wield guns at everyone else in the room. I'm not arguing that South Korea would totally go in and dominate the North Korean military with sheer shock and awe, because I agree that there's not much point for the Koreas to fight at this point in time (though that doesn't mean things are peachy-keen between them, either). But if the two Koreas (with each being a symbolic representative entity for the millions of people who reside with in each) have no reason to fight each other one-on-one at the national level, then the same applies to the individual soldiers who would be doing the actual fighting. The main difference is that South Korea can make things both comfortable and uncomfortable to compel its soldiers to obey (so good quarters, liberty, and financial bonuses on the positive side, and stuff like jail time and possible effects on civilian employment on the negative side). It's the unspoken deal, basically - fight, get through the war alive, and then help South Korea rebuild and recover and sort things out. Don't fight when you're ordered to do so? Here's jail time and a criminal conviction, and good luck with it in the hard period that may follow a conflict on the Korea peninsula. Add in the fact that South Korean forces will have a technological and logistics advantage, and hence the prospect of being ordered to combat (even if otherwise undesired) can be psychologically reckoned with. I still contend that North Korea, unless they have an army of commissars to shoot deserters and regularly keep the conscripts fighting out of fear (and they don't), has nothing to keep its forces fighting to the last for the regime. Even if they hold their posts initially, how long can they be expected to do so if they're not getting resupplies of food, ammunition, manpower, and equipment? What good is it to be a tank crew, when you run out of fuel and become a stationary sitting duck (especially once invading forces establish air superiority)? North Korea's Korean nationalism is a justification for the regime to try and legitimize its actions and reason for being. It's not some +10 to fighting willingness that is inculcated in the flesh and souls of North Korean people, and I think trying to argue such is veering into the same "brainwashed goobers" vein of argument that suggests the North Koreans are just mindless, propagandized lemmings who truly believed that Kim Jong-il never defecated. Some Guy TT posted:You have this entirely backwards. People do not conscript because they're happy the government is giving them creature comforts. To the contrary- if you're happy flipping burgers and playing Xbox Live, nothing will piss you off more than the prospect of being sent off to a foreign country to risk your life fighting for nothing while a drill sergeant yells at you. This is is why nearly all of the men in South Korea hate, hate military service. There's no sense of patriotic duty I think "conscript", as a term, typically implies that there is some kind of involuntary obligation? And I get why South Korean men may hate it, in a normal context, especially when it has been going on for generations despite the war being something from their grandparents era that has been relatively quiet since the 1950s. It definitely seems like a waste of time and opportunities, in that vein. But we are talking about a hypothetical, near-future conflict between South Korea and North Korea. I already laid out the compounding psychology of a South Korean conscript in that scenario in my post above. And this is the thing that I'm reading in your posts, this weird dehumanizing objectification of the South and North Koreans. You seem to be implying that the North Koreans, steeped in a lifetime broth of ethnic nationalism, military propaganda, and fear and brutality, will fight to the last (including trying to strangle pigdog Yankee lackeys with their entrails before succumbing to a hero's death). And conversely, you're arguing that South Koreans will whimper and shirk away at the first sign of conflict and sue for peace because they have become Westernized and soft, and have no sense of national purpose or personalized relationship to the South Korean nation that will make them willing to fight. They're just US lackeys who might as well be puppies for all the fighting good that can be expected from them. We can sum up that what you're really describing here is the North Koreans as junkyard pitbulls, and the South Koreans as some kind of toy dog breed that old ladies carry around in their purses. If that's essentially how you're seeing both sides, you should probably reassess your views of them. There may not be a shared human vision at the more abstract and advanced levels of cultural and societal development, but I think it's pretty much a given that base ape-like humanity is pretty similar around the world. Among other impulses: avoid pain, seek safety, inflict pain, seek the satisfaction of revenge. Which modes of base thinking dominate is situational, of course. Some Guy TT posted:And that's just in context of the disaffected slacker. Most young South Korean men have stronger ambitions than that- and are frustrated at every turn by an increasingly stressful society where it is getting harder and harder to get a decent job, where they are made to feel ashamed for failures and offered no means of self-improvement, and who are so used to abuse in the crappy burger flipping jobs they do have access to that there's a special term for how South Korean millennial feel about this country. Hell Joseon. People describe wanting to escape from here and live in the West, as if that's any better. And need I mention the highest suicide rate in the world? Some social contract. And North Korea is much better? It's a stressful totalitarian society (though maybe the people and police have given up a lot of that charade), with no way to realize any personal ambitions and few decent jobs. People want to leave it, but doing so involves more than scraping up the money for a plane ticket. And then you can add in all the additional stresses of food availability, unreliable electricity, and the government conscripting you for military/general labor duty or for that dumb "mass games" festival. Even if South Korean society is toxic to its participants and could stand to have some reforms, the reduced stress of getting food, water, medical care, shelter, and other essentials puts it above North Korea. Add in the little perks, like capitalist material distractions, the ability to leave the country if you so wish, and a million other little things. South Korea has its poo poo together, albeit imperfectly (though it might be more likely to remedy its defects than North Korea), and it's undeniable. Any criticism that can be lobbed at South Korea for its failings as a nation can probably go double (nay, triple) for North Korea. It's not a valid comparison or point, then. Some Guy TT posted:I disagree. The factors you describe are uniquely American, and have been built up in our culture over the last several decades. 9/11 was just the powder keg that set it off. The only thing here that's even close to that level of military worship is Descendants of the Sun- a drama which has already been mostly forgotten about, because its main novelty was that heroic soldiers are almost never depicted in South Korean media. You're more likely to get a popular movie about a con artist than you are a South Korean soldier. Again, you're trying to think of this in the vein of South Koreans having an atrophied military section in the brain. It's almost like you're saying South Koreans are now unable to have a self-conception of themselves as warfighters. You're ignoring the more base emotions of hatred, anger, contempt, trauma, and shock, especially in a population that has been largely removed from struggle and suffering, and then gets exposed to it. And even if the domestic media in South Korea shies away from military worship and glamorizing war, that's counterbalanced by a constant stream of pro-military, war-glamorizing media like movies and video games from overseas. Promise them they might get to drive a tank, shoot artillery, be a fighter pilot. Sell it to them as being like Call of Duty XXXXXXXTREME (but even more so, cuz it's real life!), get them wound up, and let them go. This isn't to say that it would work for every South Korean conscript, or that their fighting enthusiasm won't take a hit once the reality of military service and war becomes apparent to them, but my point is that there's more than one way to get a person into a uniform to do your killing for you. Some Guy TT posted:Again, you might want to read up on this Hell Joseon stuff. Young South Koreans are not happy with their lot in life. They already feel like society is pushing them to impossible standards to no apparent purpose. Forcing them to fight a war in that context would be the last straw. I'm countering this by saying that a comfortable but discontented population can be the best pool to draw support from (see President Trump, heyo!). You just can't use direct appeals to patriotism or nationalism, but you can deflect blame (e.g. "South Korea is the way it is because those North Korean motherfuckers would rather threaten everyone like gangster scum instead of getting their poo poo together!"), promise things that wouldn't otherwise be tenable in peacetime, and also spin the war as a means of somehow bettering yourself / improving your lot in life. Basically, they can be made to fight by finding some way to fill the spare brain capacity that (in South Korea, at least) hasn't been used to deal with the immediate demands of living essentials and survival the way it can be in other, more desperate and underdeveloped parts of the world. North Koreans, on the other hand, don't necessarily get to take their minds off of struggle - especially if their country is being attacked and invaded and they're feeling anxious about their families. Some Guy TT posted:My point is not that the superiority of Juche ideology will allow North Korea to overwhelm South Korea with cultural defections. It's that the Juche ideology is very, very well-suited to encouraging the citizenry to stick up for their culture no matter how lovely the material circumstances, especially in the context of a defensive war. South Korea have nothing worth fighting for. Soldiers aren't robots. If morale is poo poo, you lose the war even if you win the battle. Sure, I get that. I just don't place much value on Juche being something that the North Korean government sincerely believes in and operates by all the time, that it's something it actually cares about. I also take an askew view that it has taken root among the North Korean population enough to compel them to indefinitely resist an invasion from outsiders (especially in light of the points I made above about how long and well North Korea could sustain itself for militarily). It's not some big leap of realization, if you're an average North Korean manning a machine-gun emplacement, that all the aircraft above you and the far off explosions you're seeing could easily be for you next - and there's probably nothing you can do about it should it happen, except trying to quietly slip away. If North and South Korea were more evenly matched in everything, then yes, you might have a point about Juche being a driving factor in mobilizing a vigorous North Korean defensive response. But with the overall disparity and general political isolation of North Korea, I can't see Juche filling the gap or putting blinders on regular North Korean soldiers and making them fight 110% against an overwhelming onslaught. Some Guy TT posted:...And I suppose I should clarify, since you think South Koreans are impressed by the wonders of electricity. Nationalism as we know it became a defining force in World War I, where the common citizens on both sides lived in much worse material conditions than anyone in North Korea today. If blinding nationalist patriotism could be unleashed in that context, in an explicitly pointless purposeless war that accomplished nothing except dick-waving, you better believe the North Koreans could do the same in a defensive context. poo poo, the Taliban managed to pull it off. Surely you can't be underestimating North Korea that much. Again, the actual validity of North Korean nationalism as a driving force in the nation's existential and defensive ethos is questionable to me. Does every flag-draping US politician in front of a crying eagle backdrop truly believe they're working in the shared patriotic interest of the American citizenry, or are such claims and displays just a guise for more personal agendas? The Taliban managed to acquire power by beating other vying groups (kind of a critical point) in the war-shattered nation of Afghanistan (also kind of a critical point), and (so as I understand it) by supplying themselves and hiding across the border in the rough and rugged Pakistani frontier areas. And interest in them was about the same as it was for North Korea prior to all this nuclear weapons business - their Afghanistan was a questionably legitimate state, run brutally by assholes committing humanitarian crimes, but it was viewed as acceptable (though not desirable) so long as their bullshit was contained and didn't threaten to spill out. Pakistan and Iran could contain it, while the various-stans to the north...well, who really gives a poo poo about what happens in Tajikistan or Turkmenistan? Some Guy TT posted:This only happens that way if there's something the North Koreans can be blamed for. Again, the main probable prospect for South Korea going to war with North Korea right now is if the United States, currently represented by Trump, forces them to do so. If you really think South Korean soldiers are going to hold North Korea 100% to blame for that, I don't know what to tell you. Uh, yeah, I think I mentioned that and it should go without saying? I don't see South Korea initiating an attack on their own accord, because then they're inviting North Korea to lob hand grenades into their fine crystal glassware shop, but if the US causes a big fracas and a bunch of players get dragged into it (willingly and likely not), then that is where this discussion becomes more pertinent. Conspiratiorist posted:Are we going into that phase of discussion again, where we argue that SK will go full total war with every able-bodied man screaming for Norkie blood if their precious K-pop Idols and MMORPGs get threatened? Again: It's not the threat of harm that will trigger bloodlust (since that's always been present since the Korean armistice), or even actual harm to K-pop idols and MMORPG servers. Of course, in this weird and crazy 21st century, who is to say that we wouldn't see dead K-pop idols effectively used in some post-modern version of the post-Lusitania sinking "Enlist" poster? But it's the disruption of the settled and mundane lives that South Koreans live, the destruction of socio-economic institutions their parents and grandparents suffered and struggled to build, of all that work (so that, yes, maybe they can fluff around on MMORPGs for hours on end instead of breaking their backs in fields) being wasted because a bunch of assholes to the North would rather throw tantrums and push the situation to the brink, rather than peacefully sorting out their poo poo and joining the regional crowd of world-class nations. And that's just the meta-backdrop; throw in the more direct impacts of a war like the destruction of one's home and belongings, the economic impacts, and the potential injury and loss of friends and family that could happen. Conspiratiorist posted:Where we totally ignore the possibility of the opposite scenario, where they'd hit war weariness right the gently caress away if any of this gets threatened, and demand the government seek a peaceful resolution or end to conflict when their Capitalist Way Of Life gets strained? Yes, capitalism is not at all a savage, bloodthirsty, or rapacious ideology, willing to devote an inordinate amount of the money it generates towards making ever bigger weapons of war. Nah, they'll get tired of flying those shiny jets, launching those shiny missiles, and firing those shiny guns after a week and sue for peace. And yeah, of course peace would be the best option. The problem is, how? North Korea has had decades to make deals with the outside world to pivot towards positive development. The failure to do so isn't entirely North Korea's fault - but at the same time, it's pretty obvious that North Korea exists more like a self-interested monarchy, with Kim Jong-un and his cohorts in the upper echelons living like kings and soaking as much blood and milk out of the country as they can. Counterfeiting, drug running, arms smuggling, kidnapping Japanese citizens, the odd bits of actual fighting...North Korea is both a desperate nation and a cynical one that would rather play games to get what it wants than admit their current situation is almost untenable and they'll need to make some changes. The problem is, it has to keep on upping the ante (as I've harped on before), because the whole national form is based around an autocratic cult-of-personality dynamic that can't readily change modes without breaking the whole social structure. And this ante-upping and threat-bluffing might work with in a normal political scenario, but it's hazardous because there might eventually be someone (like Trump) who wholly believes it to be true, or worse, figures that regardless of it being true or not, something should be done about it once and for all.
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Oct 25, 2017 00:24
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I appreciate you taking the time to seriously explain your position instead of shitposting. Really I do. But honestly, at this point it's obvious that we have views of patriotism and war weariness that are just fundamentally irreconcilable. Even the United States, in the aftermath of 9/11, did not see a significant enough surge in enlistment numbers to achieve even the most modest of goals. American culture has legit full on military worship, they were unambiguously attacked, and even that wasn't good enough to completely shut down nascent anti-war sentiment. The very idea of a draft terrifies interventionists in the United States, because even if it's the only way they could realistically achieve their goals, the backlash would be so horrific they'd all be out on their asses just as soon as the next elections were held. That you sincerely believe that South Korea, a country with nowhere near as many factors working in the miltarists' favor as the United States, a country that still has cultural memory of how destructive the last Korean War was, a country with genuine deep-rooted anti-military sentiment, a country that is mainly kept together by a high standard of living that would implode under the stress of demands of full-on war...I honestly don't know how to respond to that. You genuinely seem to believe that South Korean people are stupid and are just going to forget all this stuff once their leaders transition to blaming North Korea for everything. You don't seem at all aware of how for the last ten years successive conservative governments already tried to play up the threat of the North to solidify domestic power, and all they managed to accomplish was pissing people off so much that they were thrown out of office on their rear end several months before anyone realized Park Geun-hye was in throe to South Korean Scientology. What's worse, the main people they pissed off are the under-thirty demographic- that is, the ones who would have to fight in any hypothetical war. Bear in mind that even though South Koreans believe all the same negative things about North Korea that you do, they simply don't care because it's not relevant to their current situation. As an oh so evocative South Korean punk band puts it, North Korea eats poo poo so why should we eat piss gently caress you gently caress you gently caress you. Current attempts by the conservative and centrist parties to wrap themselves in the flag against the threat of the North have only succeeded in further torpedoing their already miserable approval ratings. There was a legislative boycott a couple of months over Moon Jae-in not being enough of a hardliner. It did not go well. Mind, I'm not saying North Korea has any kind of meaningful advantage. They'd be just as hosed were they to attempt an invasion of the South as the other way around. But then, that's why their propaganda constantly emphasizes defense, how the nukes are to protect themselves, and how they will fight to the last man to defend the motherland. That is a vastly different pitch than making an offensive push to unify Korea by force which, as I have mentioned in the past, stopped being North Korea's official policy on reunification some thirty five years ago. That's not something they can flip flip on overnight any more than the South Koreans can flip flop their anti-military sentiment. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 00:56
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9/11 wasn't an existential attack, it wasn't an invasion. We haven't seen a modern democracy face a war of total annexation by a brutal foreign power because NATO and other alliances has kept that from happening, that and nuclear war. I think Ukraine is a good example about patriotism. Ukraine got straight up invaded by Russia, and it did trigger a wave of nationalism, but a ton of Ukrainians don't give a gently caress about the east and don't even have a super strong sense of identity. They don't want to be invaded by Russia but they also know they won't really get much out of being owned by german banks either. Life goes on as "normal" in Kiev, the oligarchs and leaders don't really want to spend too much on the war because that's all money that could be going into their pockets instead. Ukraine is a depressing poo poo hole and despite a lot of people volunteering and essentially self-funding their equipment, it's been barely enough to hold the awful status quo of the east being sort of maybe part of russia sort of maybe some independent republics sort of maybe foreign occupied. People just don't care, or at least don't care enough, what are they fighting for or against? Some minor linguistic nationalism? The right to have their corrupt oligarchs speak Ukrainian instead of Russia? But that's not at all the situation in south korea. south korea is fairly wealthy, has a very well equipped and trained professional military backed up by a deep pool of conscripts and is part of a large defensive alliance with the largest military superpowers on earth. The north korean system is absolute incompatible with the life of the average south korean, and it's also absolute incompatible with the interests of the capitalists elite. From farmer to CEO, annexation by the north would be the end of most people's lives as their know them. Weather true or not, there's also widespread acceptance than the north is quite happy to use slavery and death camps. People will absolute defend that to their last because a "quick peace" would mean what? Slavery? Everything they have taken by some north korean officer, their father executed, their daughter a sex slave, their son a human mine sweeper? That's the sort of fear that gets people fighting. Any defensive war would be fairly short. South Korea not having the stomach for a long term invasion and occupation of the north is believable, but just giving up defending against an invasion?? It wouldn't even be their call to make, the US would be instantly and heavily involved and the war would be over when the US said it is.
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Oct 25, 2017 02:19
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Upon further reflection I realize I really need to address this part specifically-quote:And conversely, you're arguing that South Koreans will whimper and shirk away at the first sign of conflict and sue for peace because they have become Westernized and soft, and have no sense of national purpose or personalized relationship to the South Korean nation that will make them willing to fight. They're just US lackeys who might as well be puppies for all the fighting good that can be expected from them. The South Koreans are not soft. They are an intelligent people, who have free expression having fought for decades to have that right. My impression from the current domestic political landscape is that they have realized, correctly, that war with North Korea would wreak havoc and destruction on their lives, and that only unscrupulous assholes (namely Trump) would see any benefit from sacrificing South Korean lives in the name of a war where every plausible outcome would be substantially worse than the current status quo. For these reasons, and others already discussed, I do not believe they would have any kind of patience for a new Korean War, barring ridiculous hypotheticals like North Korean soldiers crossing the Demilitarized Zone. Maybe my previous posts haven't made this clear. Nationalism is a destructive, monstrous ideology and I am glad that the South Koreans don't have it. That you think my appraisal of their disliking the prospect of the abomination of war makes them "soft" is, quite frankly, disgusting. That is fascist language, and you should be ashamed of yourself for using it. At least the guy who posted before you had the sense to phrase it as a joke. Baronjutter posted:Any defensive war would be fairly short. South Korea not having the stomach for a long term invasion and occupation of the north is believable, but just giving up defending against an invasion?? It wouldn't even be their call to make, the US would be instantly and heavily involved and the war would be over when the US said it is. As I have mentioned repeatedly, an invasion by North Korea is unlikely. It would go against their official policy and nothing in state propaganda recently has even vaguely hinted that this is something they're considering- in stark contrast to Trump's tweets, which all but explicitly state that they're now considering invasion. The bolded is what I'm talking about in terms of South Koreans not being willing to go to war or having the nationalist will for it. These people came out in the millions just to force a corrupt president out of office a few months earlier than she was going to leave anyway. Do you seriously think they're just going to sit around and twiddle their thumbs at home while a foreign power forces them to go war against fellow Koreans against their will?
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Oct 25, 2017 02:28
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Yeah there's a big difference between "2 bases near the DMZ just got nuked, Seoul's northern suburbs are under artillery barrage, and and a million screaming north korean troops are pouring across the border with the stated goal of total conquest" and "So Trump got mad at a tweet and tried to take north korea's leadership out with some cruise missile attacks on the capital but failed, north korea has retaliated with an artillery barrage and missile strikes on military bases and demands the US leave south korea or things will continue to escalate, guess we're at war now and Seoul might get nuked if this carries on" I could see massive pressure to come to some sort of agreement and appeasement in the 2nd situation, but not in the first.
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Oct 25, 2017 02:48
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Baronjutter posted:I could see massive pressure to come to some sort of agreement and appeasement in the 2nd situation, but not in the first.
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Oct 25, 2017 02:54
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The reality is neither SK nor NK want war and China is keeping the US in check, so nothing but chestbeating is gonna happen anytime soon.
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Oct 25, 2017 03:20
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Unless trump does something really stupid.
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Oct 25, 2017 14:40
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Worth pointing out that it is easier and therefore more likely for Trump to do something stupid as the military gradually mobilizes past the minimum acceptable capability thresholds to mount a successful invasion. There's two carrier strike groups there now, and a third nearby, plus meaningful transfers of additional munitions to bases in the theater.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:14
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https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/923200452296142848 Don't think that translated as intended.
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Oct 25, 2017 19:12
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OhFunny posted:https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/923200452296142848 I wouldn't worry about it. They've threaten to strike near Guam twice, and nothing has happened
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Oct 25, 2017 19:14
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OhFunny posted:https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/923200452296142848 maybe. poo poo would be "interesting" if they really did it.
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Oct 25, 2017 21:22
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Might depend on how we respond to it. The Guam threat was taken extremely seriously, which is what NK loves. The hydrogen bomb test is being largely downplayed at the moment, which might make them more tempted to go through with it. There's still a ton of risks for them to go through with it. Which makes it possible that they might not. It's a matter of whether they think the potential benefits outweigh the risks. It's all one giant guessing game.
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Oct 25, 2017 21:23
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Some Guy TT posted:I appreciate you taking the time to seriously explain your position instead of shitposting. Really I do. But honestly, at this point it's obvious that we have views of patriotism and war weariness that are just fundamentally irreconcilable. Sure. Some Guy TT posted:Even the United States, in the aftermath of 9/11, did not see a significant enough surge in enlistment numbers to achieve even the most modest of goals. American culture has legit full on military worship, they were unambiguously attacked, and even that wasn't good enough to completely shut down nascent anti-war sentiment. The very idea of a draft terrifies interventionists in the United States, because even if it's the only way they could realistically achieve their goals, the backlash would be so horrific they'd all be out on their asses just as soon as the next elections were held. As Baronjutter mentioned, 9/11 wasn't an existential attack on the country. It was a blow to the national self-image, and instead of trying to reflect on why it happened and consider the best ways of responding to it, the American people lost their heads. What did 9/11 do? Off the top of my head: 1. Led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. 2. Led to the US invasion of Iraq. 3. Overthrowing Saddam's regime like we did probably led to the formation of ISIS and helped to foment more unrest through the Middle East. 4. It ramped up anti-Muslim sentiment immensely, to the point that I would say it's a new form of bigotry and blood libel akin to that of classic anti-Semitism. 5. The ramp up in anti-Muslim sentiment also serves as a dogwhistle/stalking horse/door opener to prop up other forms of bigotry, in my opinion, which probably helped to elect Trump by making his bullshit seem like he was speaking truth to power. 6. It definitely made US government policy more openly and actively militaristic than it was before. And the presence of anti-war sentiment in the US is irrelevant, in light of the fact that US military adventuring is still merrily rolling along all these years later. It's not wrong or foolish to be anti-war, but it's hard to argue that it means anything when analyzing possible responses by South and North Koreans, when the US military still found enough political and manpower support to keep a military presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq for years. I think we've had some US service personnel still getting killed in Afghanistan this year, for Christ's sake. It's also not as if South Korea would need every reservist to show up and fight in a conflict ; they just need "enough" manpower for combat and support operations, especially with force multipliers and the like reducing the demands for actual infantry. And maybe lots of South Koreans really are as cynical, bitter, and unethused about their country, as you say, but I don't think it's so bad a situation that, in a population of 51 million people, the government would be unable to find ten, twenty, or fifty thousand semi-willing people to muster a response with. I would also contend that the US response to 9/11 and a hypothetical South Korea responding to a reigniting of the Korean War are not going to be the same goals (and hence, they aren't comparable). The US failed in its goals because it was ultimately going to war against an ideology, and it's hard to formulate a final win condition in that situation. South Korea's goal would be to break the North Korean regime and end its existence as a threat to the South; this is a pretty concrete goal that could be achieved, if they're willing to pay the horrendous costs in terms of blood, people, material, and money it would involve. Finally, South Korea also has an "advantage", if you want to call it such, in that North Korea is right next door to them. This makes combat operations easier, it makes managing the post-war situation easier, and South Korea may be able to make deals with neighboring states to help them manage a, well, post-North Korea North Korea. That's potentially a lot different from how things played out for Iraq and Afghanistan as nations, and for the US prosecuting it wars in those countries. Some Guy TT posted:That you sincerely believe that South Korea, a country with nowhere near as many factors working in the miltarists' favor as the United States, a country that still has cultural memory of how destructive the last Korean War was, a country with genuine deep-rooted anti-military sentiment, a country that is mainly kept together by a high standard of living that would implode under the stress of demands of full-on war...I honestly don't know how to respond to that. You genuinely seem to believe that South Korean people are stupid and are just going to forget all this stuff once their leaders transition to blaming North Korea for everything. You don't seem at all aware of how for the last ten years successive conservative governments already tried to play up the threat of the North to solidify domestic power, and all they managed to accomplish was pissing people off so much that they were thrown out of office on their rear end several months before anyone realized Park Geun-hye was in throe to South Korean Scientology. Again, anti-military sentiment means nothing, especially in relation to a conflict that might involve existential concerns (both personal and national) rather than abstract ideological and political concerns. It's easy to be anti-war in peacetime, because you're correct, how many people want it when things are going OK without it? But getting dragged into a conflict with North Korea (even if inadvertently) is going make an anti-war position less tenable for many South Koreans to maintain, I suspect - especially when they're going to be closer to any conflict than most Americans ever were to the destruction of the World Trade Center and then to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it's hard to compare anti-politician sentiment with anti-war sentiment. The underlying psychological motivation of the former is to remove undesirable politicians and install "better" representation and leadership that better suits the whims of a population. For the latter, it comes down to those existential concerns mentioned above, and trying to forestall a loss of life, safety, and comfort that can't be easily replaced. The key question is the voluntary or involuntary nature behind those sentiments. If a South Korean politician tried to state that "Yo, I'm now the Southern Kim Jong-un, suckas! Surprise! One Juche Korea!", you would likely see a greater backlash than you would against a politician who is merely incompetent or corrupt. People don't want political tension and violence, typically, but it can be forced to happen if they believe they have no other option for relief. The same applies to war; people don't want actual warfare and violence if they have a say in the matter, typically, but if violence comes to them, they're going to be more likely to respond in kind rather than maintaining the same milder views they had prior to everything blowing up. Again, I don't see South Korea being the one to lead a charge into North Korea (at least, not at this point in time). But I think the bone of our contention is how South Korea would respond to being touched by a renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula - and maybe there can be calls for restraint, if only a few small South Korean-side incidents happen while the US and North Korea duke it out. Yet I don't see South Korea trying to stay on the sidelines for very long, if there isn't a quick and decisive conclusion (like the North Korean regime suing for peace in the face of them losing everything and the punishment for their crimes catching up to them), and if South Korean losses and damages are perceived to be nearing unacceptable levels despite the nation restraining itself from a conflict. Some Guy TT posted:What's worse, the main people they pissed off are the under-thirty demographic- that is, the ones who would have to fight in any hypothetical war. Bear in mind that even though South Koreans believe all the same negative things about North Korea that you do, they simply don't care because it's not relevant to their current situation. As an oh so evocative South Korean punk band puts it, North Korea eats poo poo so why should we eat piss gently caress you gently caress you gently caress you. Current attempts by the conservative and centrist parties to wrap themselves in the flag against the threat of the North have only succeeded in further torpedoing their already miserable approval ratings. There was a legislative boycott a couple of months over Moon Jae-in not being enough of a hardliner. It did not go well. Punk is dead, though? I actually don't buy into the idea of the horribleness of the North Korean people, as a whole. It's why I don't see the average North Korean conscript as being a piece of screaming, brainwashed cannon fodder who is totally willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of big dumb Kim. I do think the North Korean government and the way it operates the state makes it a weird "gangster monarchy crime syndicate", basically, and its leadership is a bunch of cynical, calculating charlatans who are willing to run wild and risky geopolitical gambits to get what they want. And again, it's easy to be cynical, bitter, and jaded when there is nothing more urgent in your life that's demanding your attention. And I won't judge this as being wrong; it's just the human urge to ask "What's next? What more?" and feel bothered by the lack of a concrete or realized answer. And we're on the same page here - North Korea isn't relevant to the day-to-day affairs of South Koreans. Their day-to-day affairs are, naturally. And if those are already tough and stressful enough to manage (because of various social pressures, lovely job availability, and so on)...what do you think the response is going to be if they become even more stressful or are obliterated in a conflict? Maybe your parents and teachers are a pain in the rear end, you can't find a decent job, and you feel stuck in the mud in life. Ennui. But how much of that will matter when you realize that since your neighborhood got destroyed, you're not sure where you're going to sleep, poo poo, change or launder your clothes, find clean food and water, brush your teeth, and so on and so forth? Goodbye ennui, hello rage - because, if you already view yourself as being low on the totem pole, you're going to be even more pissed off that the totem pole is destroyed, and with it, any certainty you might have had about life to that point, along with the likelihood of climbing up it. Some Guy TT posted:Mind, I'm not saying North Korea has any kind of meaningful advantage. They'd be just as hosed were they to attempt an invasion of the South as the other way around. But then, that's why their propaganda constantly emphasizes defense, how the nukes are to protect themselves, and how they will fight to the last man to defend the motherland. That is a vastly different pitch than making an offensive push to unify Korea by force which, as I have mentioned in the past, stopped being North Korea's official policy on reunification some thirty five years ago. That's not something they can flip flip on overnight any more than the South Koreans can flip flop their anti-military sentiment. That's probably the biggest difference we have. I don't take North Korea's claims at face value. I don't see them (that is, the North Korean government) as giving two shits about anything but ensuring its absolute power and enriching itself (and no, let's not go into "whataboutism" with how that describes every government). I don't see them as sincere national actors at this point; rational, yes, mostly sane, yes, but not sincere. They might have some legitimate grievances, but I also see them as being just as culpable for the tensions in the region at this point as anyone else (and yes, that includes the US, though we can definitely claim "top responsible rear end in a top hat banana" once the first airstrikes are launched) But to me, their claims about nukes and national sanctity and the like are about as meaningful and true as some weirdo redneck claiming his 40mm high explosive multi-grenade launcher that he just got (and, legally, isn't supposed to have) is totally for defending the decrepit trailer-cum-meth lab he lives in from "goblins". North Korea could probably be the biggest party in defusing this whole situation, basically, but they don't want to risk losing face and not having people take them seriously as a military power (because, really, they've either locked away everything that might be impressive or worthy of respect in the country, or let it fall to pot). Baronjutter posted:Yeah there's a big difference between "2 bases near the DMZ just got nuked, Seoul's northern suburbs are under artillery barrage, and and a million screaming north korean troops are pouring across the border with the stated goal of total conquest" and "So Trump got mad at a tweet and tried to take north korea's leadership out with some cruise missile attacks on the capital but failed, north korea has retaliated with an artillery barrage and missile strikes on military bases and demands the US leave south korea or things will continue to escalate, guess we're at war now and Seoul might get nuked if this carries on" Some Guy TT posted:Upon further reflection I realize I really need to address this part specifically- And maybe I haven't made myself clear that I am talking about a hypothetical South Korean response, not them being the ones to go out and strike the first blow in reigniting the Korean conflict because they somehow got some anti-communist cat hairs up their asses and they're lashing out in aggravation. The problem is North Korea. Even if it's familiar and seemingly regular in how it manifests, their constant ante-upping and sword-waving is tiresome. It's their one note to play, the only political tool they seem to use, the only topic of discussion that seems to matter with them. Maybe there's more going on behind-the-scenes, but their stupid nukes are what get the limelight. And that's risky, because the association of North Korea as being both a nuclear power and also unyielding and inflexible in what it wants creates an impression (in the easily panicked or very stupid, at least) that they can't be dissuaded to not use them at some point. So this leads to troublesome Trump tweets and the like (because, as I mentioned earlier, there is always the risk of a Trumpish leader taking their bluff seriously or personally), but more importantly, it raises the question in my mind of just what North Korea is doing for its own sake besides building nuclear weapons. It's a double-edged concern: are they building nukes because they truly believe their eggs are in order, or are they building nukes while ignoring or not caring that their eggs are out-of-order? Because, as this thread has discussed before, the bigger North Korean issue is the havoc they can still wreak, even without nuclear weapons or by convential military means, with a humanitarian and refugee crisis, civil war, and possibly being (as I've stated in the past) the Korean Afghanistan for a while. So the North Korean issue is that they can't be ignored; they're always demanding attention, and in the worst ways, because their rhetoric can't just be ignored, but the country's functioning has been so awful that you can't ignore them and let them collapse either without pain and maybe being "the bad guy" because trying to deal with managing 25 million people whose world has been turned upside down is going to inevitably involve some traumatic and questionable decisions. So maybe this is a good jumping off point to discussing another aspect of this whole situation: how do you think South Koreans would respond to an internal crisis, like a revolution, civil war, or coup in North Korea, that in turn kicked off a humanitarian crisis?
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Oct 26, 2017 01:50
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https://twitter.com/nktpnd/status/923656200339812353 I would guess this is for a longer range ICBM then what the North current has. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/lack-talks-north-korea-sounds-alarms-capitol-hill-n813951 quote:Yun’s diplomatic efforts are on their “last legs,” one U.S. official said, adding that Yun is frustrated by an inability to communicate the urgency of the diplomatic situation to the White House. Also there apparently is no communication between the US and North Korea behind the scenes.
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Oct 27, 2017 04:31
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Somehow I still believe that tensions between Kim and Trump have been dampered since September, and that I should not lose sleep over threats of 'imminent' war.
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Oct 27, 2017 09:23
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OhFunny posted:Also there apparently is no communication between the US and North Korea behind the scenes. What about between China and North Korea, though? Because I can see a scenario where the lack of a sincere and active US response and participation in regards to North Korea leaves a wide open diplomatic and political power gap for China to pull a prestige move in and handle the North Korea problem with a freer hand. Especially for a leader like Xi Jinping, who is apparently seeking to bolster China's influence and authority on the geopolitical stage.
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Oct 28, 2017 06:15
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Pretty easy to backfire politically in that instance, given their official channels have been screeching 'We don't actually have much influence with them' ever since they realised they'd have to sleep in that bed.
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Oct 28, 2017 06:22
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WarpedNaba posted:Pretty easy to backfire politically in that instance, given their official channels have been screeching 'We don't actually have much influence with them' ever since they realised they'd have to sleep in that bed. Sure, it would be risky, since everyone (myself included) could well be overestimating North Korea's rationality and underestimating their willingness to go to war. But I think a lot of people lack perspective about North Korea's relationship with the outside world and have a "It's North Korea versus the United States!" view of the whole matter. Especially in the West, which includes the United States, but also Canada, the UK, the EU nations, and so on. It's easy to have tunnel vision in that regard, because for most of us, that's our most relevant connection with the whole matter (and this is kind of key). So it's my view that North Korea's main "win condition" with their nukes is that no one upsets their apple cart, be it the US, China, South Korea, Japan, and so forth. And an upsetting can be anything from regime removal down to being able to press for demands and concessions from them. And this is why North Korea is saber-rattling at so many people and appearing so threatening, and keeping the aforementioned parties involved; it allows them to stoke the furnace of political nightmares in each of them, and play them off of each other. And it keeps those parties from acting unilaterally, since no one member currently wants to be the one who triggers a renewed conflict that drags everyone else into it unprepared and unwillingly. And the two biggest power brokers in the current multi-party system are China (due to its size, military might, and geographical proximity to North Korea), and the United States (the global hyperpower, who has committed itself for nearly seven decades to defending South Korea despite it being thousands of miles away, but whose justification, willingness, and ability to maintain that commitment seems to be waning). If China perceives that the current US desire vis-a-vis North Korea is to ultimately not risk the lives of US soldiers in South Korea and Japan (Trump tweets aside), and to not be an active enemy of the North, then that perceived hesitation leaves China to start hefting itself. Everyone might ask "What leverage would China have alone?" And the answer is, quite a bit. If the US is effectively out of the picture, then it gives China more sway with South Korea and Japan to hammer out their own accord on the matter. It "forces" China to choose a side in the event of a military conflict, and there's an even chance that choice would be to drop the charade and not stand by North Korea. And that would all then mean that they can go to Kim Jong-un through back channels and deliver an ultimatum: give up the nukes, sign a peace agreement that makes China look good in exchange for some meaningless concessions, and be a good little puppet vassal state. And that might well work, if it's China, because the alternative would be that the North Korea government looks like a pack of wolf-criers to the world, or the regime, state, and countless North Korean civilians die horribly because the US does decide to go to war, drat the consequences, and North Korea's survival and sovereignty gambit fails. And accepting that ultimatum would be the most logical (if nationally bitter) thing for North Korea to do: * They would recoup some bit of international goodwill by giving up the nukes (without openly looking like their arm had to be twisted or they were panicking everyone for nothing). * The regime and nation-state stays intact and is perhaps strengthened in its position by being officially tied in with China in some kind of trade/mutual aid/military pact (especially if China puts North Korea under its nuclear umbrella). * There's no refugee crisis or major military casualties, no concerns about having to deal with building up North Korea from a war-ravaged waste, and everyone can go back to indefinitely kicking the North Korean can down the road again. There might be more benefits, but those three are the major ones I can think of. What does China gain? 1. A major symbolic victory. The self-assured, stable, and rational Xi calmly trying to solve a festering, lon geopolitical, representing an ascendant China, compared to the unpopular, insecure, unstable, demented, and physically declining Trump, representing a declining United States on the wane. 2. China also gets diplomatic cred in the region if they can settle the North Korean crisis. It means that South Korea and Japan will be drawn closer and more likely to engage with China first in the future, rather than looking to the United States. 3. In line with point two, successfully bringing down the boil and making North Korea seem undeniably under a Chinese thumb would give them leverage to get the United States military presence out of northeast Asia. It knocks out our justification to keep troops stationed in South Korea, and would give a boost to political groups in South Korea and Japan who want US troops gone from those nations. 4. Strengthened Chinese influence over North Korea could be the start of more normalized relations and sowing the seeds of economic development and investment. I'm sure there's plenty of Chinese dark money sloshing around that would love to find something outside of China to park itself in, and a potential North Korean boom might be the ticket. 5. China would also have justification to keep their military actively deployed near North Korea's border to "ensure" an agreement is kept. 6. This would also justify further military expansion and activity. More than that, it would also mean that China could replace the US' presence and role on the entire peninsula. North Korea attacks South Korea? Here's the PLA steamrolling in to stop them! And conversely, if someone attacks North Korea, here's the PLA steamrolling in to help them! 7. Sort of in line with point one, but it would be a definite prestige move for China to settle a lingering crisis, and to do so at a moment when the US involvement has not only failed to adequately resolve this situation after so many decades, but now appears to be on the cusp of losing its ability to do so. There could be more benefits to China, but what I've outlined above strikes me as some significant upsides for China if they felt confident enough to take a risk and muscle the US out of this whole North Korean fiasco. Even if it's a return back to the ugly status quo, that would still be a major feat for them.
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Oct 28, 2017 22:17
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Kthulhu5000 posted:snip
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Oct 28, 2017 22:51
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Grouchio posted:Somehow I don't mind this scenario happening, as long as China doesn't vassalize SK or Japan next. I think you're missing the long-term point of such a strategy.
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Oct 28, 2017 23:27
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The more pertinent question isn't if NK will start a war but if the US will.
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Oct 28, 2017 23:55
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