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The USN has laughable submarine detection capabilities too, so it's really not that unbelievable.
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Oct 7, 2014 15:36
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Zeroisanumber posted:That's not true at all. The USN has some of the best detection capabilities in the world. The North Koreans used a midget submarine to launch a surprise attack against the ROKS Cheonan while the USN/ROKS were conducting exercises ~75 miles away. We're good, but we're not 75 miles good. Is it bad relative to our naval spending or just not bad at all then? I've read no shortage of people complaining about it (which evidently I took to be a very authoritative source).
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Oct 7, 2014 17:36
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People spell the words in all kinds of crazy ways and I wouldn't fault them for it 'cause Romanization of Hangeul (or I guess Chosongul since we're talking about the north) has been schizophrenic as all gently caress, but the actual letter (ㅈ) is close to a j sound, not a y. Jong-il, Juche
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Oct 9, 2014 00:24
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Arglebargle III posted:I don't know about this. North Korea's population is a rounding error compared to China's population. Think about that. North Korea's population is what, 23 million, 24 million? China's population is usually given as 1.3 billion. Even if 20% of North Korea's population fled to China, that would be 5 million people. That's 0.005 billion. A rounding error compared to China's population. I don't know much about the logistics of refugees but does it really work like this? Considering how tightly some western countries are shut against just thousands/ tens of thousands. And it's not as though the refugees would be divvied out evenly across the Middle Kingdom; Liaoning and Jilin (just for everyone's reference, the Chinese provinces that border North Korea) combined have a population of about 70 million, so they'd take a much bigger hit from that five million, and probably from even less than that. And even if the slack gets picked up farther in, I think a mid-sized Chinese city's worth of relatively worthless and starving refugees is going to take a much bigger toll than you're suggesting.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:53
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Typo posted:The difference is that at least in a generation or two wages will rise because the population of South Korea is getting smaller and demand for labor is going to rise. North Korea may well be second world under a unification scenario. Speaking of the demographic crisis- would that be something reunification could help with?
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Oct 16, 2014 03:53
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TheImmigrant posted:teenagers today have problems with obesity. say what I'm willing to trust you on this but this is news to me, Koreans have very pridefully told me that they're the thinnest nation, and their insane appearance and 'health' culture kind of corroborates with that. Unless you mean just relative to a few decades ago?
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Oct 16, 2014 06:58
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Main Paineframe posted:I imagine such problems would be even worse in North Korea, and any gains in literacy would be offset by the population being much worse with machines. Why do you imagine this
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Oct 16, 2014 17:44
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Main Paineframe posted:Because the people who've lived their entire lives since they were born farming dirt in prison camps will need jobs too? North Korea isn't completely composed of totally uneducated bumpkins who've never heard of electricity in their lives, and in fact plenty of North Koreans can do factory work as demonstrated by Kaesong, but there's at least a hundred thousand people in the camps, and I'm sure there's still plenty of farmers who've never been to the cities. I'm sure there are more than a few people in North Korea who are at least as unsuited for factory work as poor people in the richest country in the world are. the camps are pretty staggering in scale but hardly representative of anything beyond a tiny fraction of the total population. how does the language varying make literacy hard to judge? of all north korea's figures, literacy is probably the most believable. hangeul is dumb easy to learn. besides, there are already south korean factories in the north. i'm sure they've got it figured out already. Main Paineframe posted:And I didn't say no one would ever oppress their own ethnic group, but it probably wouldn't be too popular allowing Koreans in Korea to starve to death by the millions if they don't care now they're not going to care then
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Oct 16, 2014 18:15
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JohnGalt posted:Ftfy That's true for Korean applicants too; pictures are practically always mandatory on applications and you'd better hope they think you're hot 'cause it's perceived as a pretty major factor. i mean to be fair we've got the whole "their name sounded foreign" thing in the US and Europe but at least we try to be a little more subtle about it
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Dec 29, 2014 03:41
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Halloween Jack posted:The South Koreans don't exactly love the United States. A South Korea that no longer needed the US to protect them from the North would hardly be a puppet government of the US. South Korea is one of the most pro-US countries in the entire world. Occasional popular bluster over American GIs being huge shits doesn't mean the Koreans are gonna turn their backs on their strategic safety, which, even after reunification, is incredibly reliant on the US.
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May 13, 2015 21:10
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no
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Aug 23, 2015 22:13
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Keep in mind for everyone saying the North was more developed, the South was still probably a better place to live. The personality cult and secret police/ inminban and caste system all went into full swing in just a couple of decades. You might have had a better quality of life materially, but civil liberties were nonexistent right from the outset. They were absolutely horrendous in the South too until fairly recently but the North has always been on a different level.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:11
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You can make that argument; it's hard to quantify tens of thousands dead versus absolute repression. The point is that there tends to be a "North Korea really was a Communist paradise until recently  " attitude in these discussions that's really not true at all. It was a huge shithole right from the beginning.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:44
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It ended in the late 80s; Park Geun-hye or no, South Korea's changed a whole lot. It's kind of weird talking to Koreans today and realising just how different things were only a few decades ago though (often weird for them too; stuff like not being able to leave the country until the late 80s was surprising to a lot of people I asked about it).Nintendo Kid posted:Also North Korea really was a decent place to live for a bit. Like sure not compared to the literal US but easily better than a lot of the Soviet Bloc, and better than South Korea. And then Kim Il Sung decided to make himself a god complete with ridiculous monuments and woops! Devoting way too much resources to that quickly results in a shithole. You're focusing a lot on material wealth- that was better than the South's for sure (although from what I know at least, I might dispute it compared to most of the USSR). The personality cult had threads right from the end of the Korean war though, the register and caste system was very early too. A lot of it basically a continuation of the Colonial regime under the Japanese I guess. It wasn't just like one day and suddenly Hermit Kingdom, the place was poo poo to live in from the word go. like: Azran posted:In fact, a lot of Koreans who lived in Japan during the 50s and 60s decided to move back into North Korea both due to ideological reasons and because the South looked like a lovely place to be in. It's funny reading about those who had lucrative pachinko enterprises and decided to move back and donate as much as they could to the regime. this story (from Aquariums of Pyongyang right?) did not have a happy ending, and that goes for pretty much all Zainichi immigrants; they were warning people not to enter right from the start. I would not have wanted to live in either Korea for the first few decades of the Cold War but anyone who says the North was better is kidding themselves. Unless living in the most Orwellian society in history isn't an issue for you as long as you get food, education, and clothes twice a year I guess. Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 00:48
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Oh I need to read that, I'd been meaning to but it slipped by. And yeah, the story was similar in Aquariums of Pyongyang; the grandfather was incredibly wealthy from owning a casino and gave/ lost all his money to North Korea when he immigrated there. I thought Zainichi Koreans tended to be pretty heavily involved in criminal stuff in Japan (since other jobs are hard to come by for them) though so maybe it's not so surprising. Nintendo Kid posted:You're acting like it's West Germany vs East Germany when it was really more like Nazi Germany versus East Germany. are you serious right now Jesus loving Christ I didn't think I'd been whitewashing the South under Syngman Rhee but if that's your standard then sure why not. Koramei fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 01:14
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There was more freedom. From what you're saying it sounds like you need to read more about North Korea, because it really is and always has been on another level. and alright, one very easy thing to name: emigration. Koreans left the South in absolute droves, both because it was a pretty awful place and also because they could. e: also the worst of it really was under Syngman Rhee. There was plenty wrong with people like Park Chung-hee but Bodo-league massacre style terror did not extend until 1987 geez. Koramei fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 01:32
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I said it was more free in pretty much every way but you just ignored those posts so I gave you an easier example. I like your posts most of the time dude but people really aren't kidding about you sometimes huh. Let's end this one for now, and you really should read more about North Korea if you think it wasn't worse than the South.
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Aug 25, 2015 01:38
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my bad man I'll fix that it's a good book
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Aug 25, 2015 01:42
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Incidentally for those that don't know, Park Chung-hee is also the father of the current president, Geun-hye. e: oh it even says so in the article HorseLord posted:Literally nobody cares about abstract freedoms over poo poo like job security and economic prosperity. It's why western countries can give themselves the power to imprison you indefinitely without trial (or in the UK, trial you secretly without giving you legal representation or informing you of charges), and the most reaction there is is token concern in the space of a news cycle. But when there's nothing on store shelves? Suddenly the cry for freedom is heard. Yup. But in North Korea a lot of the lack of freedoms weren't so abstract even back then, there were real tangible constraints on the population at all strata of society that they were well aware of. For the most part until the famine in the 90s people didn't care (and how much they care today is an important question) but that doesn't mean it didn't affect them. Koramei fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Aug 26, 2015 |
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Aug 26, 2015 17:47
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WarpedNaba posted:One comes to the opinion that SK may well weigh up the cost of economically reconstructing the North vs the inevitable sanctions that would result from slaughtering soldiers and civilians en masse in order to only have the infrastructure to worry about in terms of rebuilding.  what the gently caress is this
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Sep 17, 2015 16:18
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Well maybe if you were a clairvoyant infallible super-general like every other goon you'd enjoy the topic too.WarpedNaba posted:Oooooh! I never* get to link these! Wow your two tangentially related wikipedia articles sure showed me that South Korea will totally commit genocide on 25 million people? I sort of thought I'd just fallen for a dumb joke you pulled but now I'm just confused.
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Sep 19, 2015 02:51
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It doesn't deserve to get you imprisoned and I hope he makes it out unharmed, but you have to be a bit of a shithead to go on one of those tours in the first place, they directly support the regime. He's been reported as being a business major too? So not even studying anything related to the place. I can't say I have too much sympathy for the guy.
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Jan 22, 2016 21:41
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old dog child posted:Anyway, there's value in visiting a place like North Korea, in the same way interviewing an evil person isn't a hosed up thing to do. Nobody knows why that guy went to NK. If he was detained, then he probably wasn't there to brag about it to his friends*. It's just hosed up to place the blame on the victim when no one knows motive. 21 y/o frat boy business major who isn't of Korean descent (who allegedly got drunk while he was there); odds are pretty significant he went there as a vanity thing. Yes people do that, it's basically The Reason most westerners go to North Korea, even if they tell everyone it's because they want to "see life from the other side" or whatever. Why does him being detained make it sound like he wasn't there to brag to people? And even if you really do have a legitimate reason to go there, given the country's reputation you kind of only have yourself to blame if something bad happens. quote:Also, more westerners should visit NK while being subversive because any cultural contamination is a good thing. Hell, anything he does to undermine the regime while there (if he is guilty) helps the US in the end. Ultimately, his imprisonment does not add any value to NK's bargaining position since he is politically worthless. Being subversive while you're there can have genuine repercussions for your tour guides, that's not a good thing to encourage at all. on the other hand re: cultural contamination and visiting the place in general, just a few days ago Ask a North Korean covered that from one defector's point of view, according to them there's some merit to it. Koramei fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 21:12
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old dog child posted:Well, I don't mean shouting the merits of capitalism at everyone you see but even something as small as a conversation might eventually help change minds. Yeah this is true. A lot of accounts from people that have visited the place say that the locals are often super interested in talking to foreigners, they just usually don't get the chance. The problem is that what "being subversive" is, both for the repercussions for the people that talked to you, as well as yourself- is up for North Korea to decide, not you. Cliff Racer posted:And you "being subversive" isn't going to fool anyone anyway. Who are you going to impact, your guides? The people who are already trusted to not only interact with you but with all sorts of wealthy near-locals (Korean ex-patriates, Chinese people, SE Asians, etc) who quite clearly have it better off than themselves? Those aren't random college students working a summer job, they are intelligence officials who are reporting on you. tangential to your point, but South Korean citizens can't (legally) go to North Korea on those kinds of trips. The guides are officials but you deal with student volunteers, tour schools etc too. But yeah since the guides know their necks are (often quite literaly) on the line they're meant to be pretty good at stonewalling any questions like that and shepherding tourists away from locals.
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Jan 23, 2016 21:42
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Nobody knows
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Feb 11, 2016 21:55
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this sure makes you seem smart & witty and also lends a lot of gravity to what you're saying
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Feb 15, 2016 03:09
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So that student who got detained a month ago? Turns out his crime was trying to steal a propaganda poster.
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Feb 29, 2016 16:46
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It's not like pre-industrial nations were just constantly devastated by plagues every few decades, humanity has survived for thousands of years without modern medical care. Even if North Korea was at that level you can't expect the country to just spontaneously explode from disease. And it's not at that level anyway. There's an account from a doctor in Nothing to Envy if you're interested in reading about it. They have sparse access to modern drugs but they're still educated, and that was during the famine so it might have gotten better now.
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Mar 4, 2016 23:09
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https://www.nknews.org/2016/03/u-s-student-gets-15-years-hard-labor-for-attempted-theft-of-poster/quote:US student Otto Warmbier has been given 15 years hard labour in North Korea for crimes against the state.  okay now I do feel for the guy. he picked a really unlucky time to pull that stunt.
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Mar 16, 2016 16:03
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The non-ethnically Korean ones tend to get out pretty quick, but things are pretty tense right now. He's probably not gonna have to do all 15 years but he may be poo poo out of luck for a fair while.
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Mar 16, 2016 16:11
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Of all the posters to steal, you pick the loving huge one with a stiff back so you can't roll it up, and it doesn't even have any cool art on it?
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Mar 18, 2016 20:39
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my favourite is the one with the sweaty North Korean and Caucasian men in leotards wrestling it up
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Mar 18, 2016 20:52
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought the DPRK had plenty of conventional artillery that can reach Seoul. well you know since internet forums user fishmech says so with such authority, he must be correct
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Sep 1, 2016 22:02
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Whitlam posted:I'm not so sure about this - from what I've read, my understanding is that most North Koreans were true believers (at least for the start) of the Arduous March. North Koreans today by comparison have no such love for the regime. If it happened again today, nobody would believe KJU was living off one rice ball a day. I think more North Koreans than ever before are questioning the regime, if not openly in defiance of it (see: grey markets). I wouldn't be surprised if one more huge disaster was the difference between Kim rule and something else. The problem with this is that we get this impression from defectors, who are already self selected as the kinds of people who are disloyal/ trying to look for the cracks. As with anything to do with North Korea nobody knows for sure, so I agree saying nothing could bring about the regime's collapse at this point, after the famine, is an exaggeration, but we can't really trust defectors as an infallible glimpse at the country. They're a particular kind of people, usually the underclasses, close to the border where they get easier access to foreign media and less government support. Opinions might be very different among the more privileged, and they're the ones who are more able to potentially change something. Keep in mind defectors, particularly the ones you read about, actively involved in media, are often pretty actively trying to drum up support for their cause. It's not like they're lying but they have an incentive to make you think change is more possible than it necessarily is. fishmech posted:People are so obsessed with the idea of the one city they know about in South Korea being bombed into a crater as the most likely scenario for renewed war. You seem more to be reacting against this (which is kinda understandable) than saying anything substantive. It just makes you sound a bit ridiculous when you're pretending to speak with authority on the military capabilities of state that even our most in-the-know experts only vaguely understand. And extremely callous when you're so quick to dismiss people's concerns about a city of tens of millions coming under threat as though they're idiots.
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Sep 1, 2016 23:39
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There was a story floating around a couple of months back that the government was (trying to) clamping down hard on the black market. You can guarantee they're not happy about the loss of control there no matter what the actual situation is.Phlegmish posted:What is your source for this? And would this change in attitude be the result of increased access to outside information? I don't agree with "North Koreans today by comparison have no such love for the regime"- there's obviously a huge range of opinions and plenty of evidence that a huge number are still unfalteringly loyal. But for a number of years now defectors have been saying that a growing number of North Koreans these days just grit their teeth and bare it, that the genuine devotion you practically universally got before mostly died in the famine, at least outside of Pyongyang. There is no single cause of the apparent change. Outside media is obviously part of it but I don't think the effect of the famine can be understated, or even the fact that having a young (and fat) man like Jong-un in charge flies in the face of Korean cultural values that fairly strictly link age to authority. There are stories of defectors that snapped the moment they saw a glimpse of South Korean TV, some who picked up airdropped pamphlets and were distrustful of it but always a little more open to defection until something else gave them cause to leave, and others who were getting bombarded with pleas and evidence from their relatives who had defected but never budged an inch until their kids dragged them kicking and screaming out of the country.
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Sep 2, 2016 16:29
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he's doing pretty good, afaik
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Sep 3, 2016 00:40
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Psy is the future of Korea
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Sep 3, 2016 01:57
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Whitlam posted:Aren't the vast majority of those subscribers in Pyongyang though? this was just glanced on in Ask a North Korean a couple of weeks back actually: quote:Park: When I left North Korea cell phones were only seen in Pyongyang, Pyongsong, and Nampo. About 60 percent of the Pyongyang citizens had phones at the time. Cells started to become widely popular from 2013 to 2014. When I left, a scene like this – where a man would look at his phone on the way to the subway – wasn’t so familiar, and the phones we used were limited to old style flip phones. Cellphones aren't really a sign of wealth though, they're getting pretty ubiquitous even in the poorer parts of India and Africa; they're not that expensive anymore and the capability to communicate instantly with anyone you know is pretty loving revolutionary.
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Sep 14, 2016 18:28
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Why would it be the Catholic minority instead of the much larger chunk of Protestants there are there? But no, I doubt it's that (other than that Christianity becoming so rapidly dominant in Korea is symptomatic of the same thing), it's just that Koreans eat up cults like crazy for some reason. Also you can't really blame Sewol on some cult-conspiracy, it was just blind greed and incompetence. The cult stuff was just a coincidence.
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Oct 29, 2016 17:47
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holy poo poo, if that's the assassinPhlegmish posted:If it is true that North Korea was behind it, which seems very likely, Kim Jong-Un is NOT the jolly type of fat man. well, I'm glad that's finally been established.
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Feb 15, 2017 17:15
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