North Korea

NutAgain!

Her father dies and her mother raped in front of her while escaping, people executed for making an international phone call, multiple generations of families jailed for expressing doubt about the government, and never reading or seeing stories of love ...

How exactly was able a person to make an international call in a system that was designed to prevent such occurences?

He is believed to be the first person to be shot since the capital, Pyongyang, tightened a crackdown on illegal mobile phones last month.

North Korea does allow mobile phones to be used, but they have to be registered and their range is limited to Pyongyang.

However Chinese mobile phones with pre-paid cards that make international calls possible have been distributed through the black market.

It is the owners of these phones who have been targeted by the country's secret police.

The execution of Jung is expected to be deliberately leaked by the regime as a warning to others who own similar phones.

...unless
they just mow down the millions of refugees who will flood the border.

Cruise missiles would get only a percentage

Wiki says artillery batteries have a max range of... 20-50 miles.

Of note is that South Korea is a modern powerhouse while the North is a shithole

kunlun_shan:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/23/north-korean-executed-for-communicating-with-outside-world

Reilly

^^^ True, but unless China steps in and pulls the plug on Phat Boy I don't
see a sanitary solution to this.

Also you need to know that China from historical statistical point of view is very peaceful country.

How many direct invasions by Chinese do you recall e.g. in the last century?

Diversion tactics?

You need to understand that these regimes present a story about helping people.
So they can't just kill a person for violation of a phone calls rule.
This person need to commit "real" offense like helping defectors or sharing sensitive defence information or spreading lies about "beautiful Korean life".

Healyje: Unfortunately, they don't need to be accurate or precise.

An estimated 3 million Koreans and a million Chinese died in the last Korean War, mostly due to our carpet bombing and razing the country. We lost about 36,000 men

The risk is Kim would use a nuclear weapon in theater.

Speaking of Dennis "The Worm" Rodman.

Sick stuff

Trump to Putin: 'It's an honor to be with you'

...ended with a seize fire...

In all candidness, do you think the options with dealing with North Korea would be any different with Hillary as President?

...but his deal may have been foolish...

why do they feel the need for a deterrent?

The N. Koreans are just like the Israelis...

But if Israel's neighbors were to lay down their arms? Peace, trade, and prosperity.

They aren't going to invade the south, either. That would be suicidal, and the regime doesn't seem sucidal.

military action would be a disaster

China will never allow a unified Korean Peninsula allied to the US, under any circumstances. If Trump had any functioning brain cells he would negotiate a regime change with China and be done with it.

For N Korea and, to a lesser degree, S Korea. I only hope we honor the
Asian way of war, best evinced by Genghis, and reduce them to a smoking
hand-to-mouth subsistence level in perpetuity. This insane practice of
restoring our defeated enemies to a state of luxury has to stop. Heads
on pikes surrounding the smouldering wreckage is the only sure way to
ensure peace.

If you want to understand why North Korea refuses to work with the US then look no further than our history with iran

China will never allow a unified Korean Peninsula allied to the US, under any circumstances. If Trump had any functioning brain cells he would negotiate a regime change with China and be done with it.

Be Strategic, Not Impulsive, on North Korea
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/opinion/trump-north-korea-strategy.html

the Germans and the Japanese are now some of our best friends.....

Aug 10, 2017 - 08:29pm PT
This is how it went down.

CIA sent Rodman to tell Kim wrong un to keep lobbing missiles to scare the sh!t out of people so that we Americans can spend more money on our defense contractors.

More defense contractors making money boosts the economy driving down the unemployment rate making the illusion America is great again.

The horsesh!t scare tactics by North Korea always work because Americans are so damn stupid they'll believe anything they're fed by their moron mainstream media.

All the Russian horsesh!t is the same cesspool of garbage also that the dumb asz Americans fall for.

Americans are so stoopid .....

For N Korea and, to a lesser degree, S Korea. I only hope we honor the
Asian way of war, best evinced by Genghis, and reduce them to a smoking
hand-to-mouth subsistence level in perpetuity. This insane practice of
restoring our defeated enemies to a state of luxury has to stop. Heads
on pikes surrounding the smouldering wreckage is the only sure way to
ensure peace.

The North Koreans won't back down, can't be pressured into backing down, and it'd be hard to destabilize their regime.

The most pressing question about North Korea has always been, why do their dear leaders have such f*#ked up hair cuts?

Maybe they double as airbags.

Regime change isn't necessarily for the better, although hard to see it getting any worse.
OK, go ahead on it.

Kicking the can down the road is not diplomacy

One day, while Nasreddin was visiting the capital city, the Sultan took offense to a joke that was made at his expense. He had Nasreddin immediately arrested and imprisoned; accusing him of heresy and sedition. Nasreddin apologized to the Sultan for his joke, and begged for his life; but the Sultan remained obstinate, and in his anger, sentenced Nasreddin to be beheaded the following day. When Nasreddin was brought out the next morning, he addressed the Sultan, saying "Oh Sultan, live forever! You know me to be a skilled teacher, the greatest in your kingdom. If you will but delay my sentence for one year, I will teach your favorite horse to sing."

The Sultan did not believe that such a thing was possible; but his anger had cooled, and he was amused by the audacity of Nasreddin's claim. "Very well," replied the Sultan, "you will have a year. But if by the end of that year you have not taught my favorite horse to sing, then you will wish you had been beheaded today."

That evening, Nasreddin's friends were allowed to visit him in prison, and found him in unexpected good spirits. "How can you be so happy?" they asked. "Do you really believe that you can teach the Sultan's horse to sing?" "Of course not," replied Nasreddin, "but I now have a year which I did not have yesterday; and much can happen in that time. The Sultan may come to repent of his anger, and release me. He may die in battle or of illness, and it is traditional for a successor to pardon all prisoners upon taking office. He may be overthrown by another faction, and again, it is traditional for prisoners to be released at such a time. Or the horse may die, in which case the Sultan will be obliged to release me."

"Finally," said Nasreddin, "even if none of those things come to pass, perhaps the horse can sing."

Regime change isn't necessarily for the better,

What I found significant is: official Chinese media today wrote that if North Korea attacked the U.S., China would stay neutral (which is earth-shaking news). However if the U.S. attacked North Korea, China would be allied with North Korea, which has been the norm since 1951.

Check if they're moving the USS Maddox to a station anywhere near Guam.

And who would Putin back?

I hope Trump is sane enough to not attack North Korea, unless they attack us or our friends first.

He thought the current North Korea crisis was the worst crises the U.S. has suffered since the early 1960's Cuban missile crisis.

I love Nasruddin! I even have one of his books! And nothing says trenchant analysis like glib blathering!
You got a poster of Neville Chamberlain on yer wall?

This is all about pulling china in to a war. This is a wrong dog to get in a dogfight

For N Korea and, to a lesser degree, S Korea. I only hope we honor the
Asian way of war, best evinced by Genghis, and reduce them to a smoking
hand-to-mouth subsistence level in perpetuity. This insane practice of
restoring our defeated enemies to a state of luxury has to stop. Heads
on pikes surrounding the smouldering wreckage is the only sure way to
ensure peace.

Yep, worked great in WWI.

You'll notice the Khans no longer rule the world. didn't work for them, either.....

Ken, Reilly's my neighbor. To be honest I'm never entirely sure when he's being serious, but he has a twisted (in the best of all possible ways) sense of humor. Consider the possibility that you've been trolled by an artist...

CNN had Leon Paneta on late today.

Russia crushes their people.

Please, both men have issues. But Kim Jong-Un is evil incarnate.

Congress and the Supreme Court are the only differences between Trump and Kim.

I kind of agree with Moose here... not much difference in personalities, just difference in environment and what they can get away with because of the circumstances created by their predecessors.

Congress and the Supreme Court are the only differences between Trump and Kim.

At least he appears to care about the US population,

If trump cared about the US population he would not be arresting innocent people.

How many presidents have run for re-election after six months in office?

He would be proposing affordable healthcare for all Americans. He would be making sure Americans had access to clean water, and provide for clean air. He would be doing what the American people want done, not what his minuscule base wants.

Larry M. Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group, said he was not aware of any president having held a campaign rally this early in his tenure.

Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing. You can do it!

Sorry but a couple of news clips don't tell the story.

Goddammit. You guys have put me in the position of defending Donald Trump, of all people. Why must I do it? Because the volume of the hate against this guy has become irrational. You all need a reality check. I mean damn, there are people here who actually believe that Jong-Il and Trump are cut from the same cloth. This is nuts.

Ummm… He’s arresting innocent people? Please elaborate.

Pretty much every one I can remember. President Obama, for example, never stopped campaigning after he was elected. Don’t get me wrong, raising huge amounts of money and whipping up support is American politics today. But you’re wearing rose colored glasses if you think your question deserves an answer.

We have an un-elected agency with the power to make law and levee punishment.

Do you seriously think that Trump wishes for the days of smog alerts and Love Canal because he wants to reel in 40 years of over-reach?

that white supremacists are his base is wrong.

...here’s what you don’t know, unless you’re an obsessive North Korea-watcher:

Also starting on July 4, North Korea has been saying over and over again that it might put its nuclear weapons and missiles on the negotiating table if the United States would end its own threatening posture.

This fact has been completely obscured by U.S. and other western media. For the most part, newspapers and television have simply ignored North Korea’s position. When they haven’t ignored it, they’ve usually mispresented it as its opposite – i.e., claiming that North Korea is saying that it will never surrender its nuclear weapons under any circumstances. And on the rare occasions when North Korea’s statements are mentioned accurately, they’re never given the prominence they deserve.

North Korea’s proclamations have been closely tracked by Robert Carlin, currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and formerly head of the Northeast Asia Division in the State Department’s intelligence arm. Carlin has visited North Korea over 30 times.

Via email, Carlin described how it is difficult but critical to accurately decode North Korean communications. “Observers dismiss as unimportant what the North Koreans say,” Carlin writes, and “therefore don’t read it carefully, except of course if it is colorful, fiery language that makes for lovely headlines. Some of what the North says is simply propaganda and can be read with one eye closed. Other things are written and edited very carefully, and need to be read very carefully. And then, having been read, they need to be compared with past statements, and put in context.”

With that in mind, here’s Kim Jong-un’s statement on July 4:

[T]he DPRK would neither put its nukes and ballistic rockets on the table of negotiations in any case nor flinch even an inch from the road of bolstering the nuclear force chosen by itself unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated. [emphasis added]

That formulation again appeared in an August 7 government statement after the United Nations Security Council passed new sanctions on North Korea. The same day, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho also said it during a speech at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum in the Philippines.

I love how she says North Korea is a terrible country since there is only one channel on TV, and no internet. That would crush the souls of most people who post on here.

"Trump" doesn't do anything he's not told to do as there are things and people he holds dear.

Let's get that clear.