Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[FunkMonk]

Sounds like this guy took a lot of flak.

[grumbler]

Sounds like this guy took a lot of flak.

He was to to go to an AA meeting.

[celedhring]

Sounds like this guy took a lot of flak.

He was to to go to an AA meeting.

His proposals were always shot down by Kim Jong Un.

[frunk]

Sounds like this guy took a lot of flak.

He was to to go to an AA meeting.

His proposals were always shot down by Kim Jong Un.

He should have used a guided missive.

[jimmy olsen]

No we shouldn't. 

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2015/05/13/will_north_korea_have_subs_that_can_fire_nukes_111191.html

Should We Worry About North Korean Subs With Nukes?
By Brendan Thomas-Noone

North Korea's apparently successful test of a workable submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) was big news over the weekend.

Signs that North Korea had been working on designing and testing both an SLBM and a submarine with the vertical missile launch tubes capable of firing them have been circulating for some time. In March, Admiral CD Haney, commander of US Strategic Command, warned that Pyongyang was working towards a sea-based deterrence capability. Some South Korean defence officials say that North Korea could have a functioning submarine and ballistic missile in 2-3 years. Whether Pyongyang is able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead in that time is up for debate.

Robert Kelly yesterday wrote a great analysis of the security and political ramifications stemming from the launch. I believe he is right in that this development will be fodder for American hawks, particularly with a presidential campaign coming up next year.

However, I disagree with Kelly's argument that North Korean SLBMs 'cannot be targeted for preemption: that is the whole point of SLBMs.' I would argue that the mere existence of SLBMs, while certainly complicating defence planning for the US and South Korea, will not eliminate the preemptive strike option in the minds of policy-makers in Washington or Seoul.

The guaranteed nature of the second-strike depends on the quality of the submarine as much as on the SLBM.

'Noisy' submarines can be tracked, trailed and if need be destroyed by anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces. It appears that the submarine the North Koreans intend to use for their SLBMs is based on an old Yugoslav navy design from the late 1970s. This will likely make it vulnerable to modern ASW.

Pyongyang's test is likely to spur increased development of ASW forces in South Korea, something that has already begun happening since the sinking of the Cheonan in 2010. Seoul may now have more cause to increase its cooperation in this area with the US, as well as Japan, the two most significant ASW powers in the region, if not globally.

Kelly also argues that North Korean second-strike capabilities will lead to greater pressure from the US on South Korea to deploy land-based missile defence systems. I think this is true, but South Korea is more likely to push for greater cooperation with the US on sea-based missile defences.

One of the advantages of mobile missile-launch platforms such as submarines is their ability to relocate to different azimuths in order to gain an advantage over static land-based BMD systems. But if you know the rough location of the submarine through ASW trailing, destroyers equipped with BMD systems can close in on the likely launch point and take out the missiles in the vulnerable ascent phase. South Korea already has three KDX-III class destroyers with some BMD capability, and is investing in more Aegis-equipped cruisers, with six planned by 2019.

[jimmy olsen]

Went to Seoul, got hit by a cab, picked up my visa for Vietnam. Currently on my way to Itaewon for fish and chips.

[Eddie Teach]

Currently on my way to Itaewon for fish and chips.

You travel to another city for fish and chips? 

[jimmy olsen]

Currently on my way to Itaewon for fish and chips.

You travel to another city for fish and chips? 

Itaewon is an infamous foreign district in Seoul.

[Valmy]

Why is it infamous? Do the cabs hit even more people there?

[derspiess]

Sounds like this guy took a lot of flak.

They promised him a trip to the zsu.

[lustindarkness]

Dammit, damn cabbies can't get a simple job done, I ain't paying him shit.

[Admiral Yi]

Why is it infamous? Do the cabs hit even more people there?

Used to be where GIs in Seoul went to bang hoors.

[grumbler]

Dammit, damn cabbies can't get a simple job done, I ain't paying him shit.

I told you to hire the waiter, but nooooo... "the cabdriver will save us each $1,000," you said.  "And he's probably even more reliable," you said.  Fuck that.  Next time, we hire the waiter.

[Martim Silva]

Bloomberg has a nice take on it:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-14/don-t-believe-the-north-korea-horror-stories

Don't Believe the North Korea Horror Stories


A North Korean defense minister is executed with anti-aircraft fire for falling asleep in a meeting (or was it a parade)? If you don't find that hard to believe, you probably buy everything you see advertised on TV.

Even so, news media throughout the world repeated this story about the alleged demise of General Hyon Yong Chol, based on an anonymous report from South Korea's National Intelligence Service.

Although the NIS later backtracked, saying Hyon had been "purged" but not necessarily executed, much less in such a gruesome manner, more such stories will circulate and find an eager audience -- and not just about North Korea. They're also likely to have longer legs than the subsequent denials, because the Internet audience is little different from that of old-style TV and newspapers: It still selects news and opinion consistent with its attitudes and beliefs.

People are more likely to share a news story when it chimes with their worldview, or with that of popular network users they follow. Selective exposure, as the phenomenon is known in academic circles, is a source of joy for propagandists and intelligence services that seek not so much to convert people to their views as to reinforce the core beliefs of their respective audiences.

North Korea, as a secretive dictatorship with media resources limited to a few toothless propaganda sites, is a particularly easy target. Its current leader, Kim Jong Un, is apparently tougher on the country's ruling elite than his father Kim Jong Il and his grandfather Kim Il Sung used to be. In a recent article for the Moscow Carnegie Center, North Korea expert Andrei Lankov wrote that of the seven top officials who stood next to Kim Jong Il's coffin at his funeral, six have since "disappeared without a trace." One was arrested during a government meeting and his execution was reported in North Korea. Another simply lost his post and was edited out of official photographs. Make no mistake: The North Korean regime is not run by liberal softies.

Still, the most gruesome tales of the youngest Kim's brutality have turned out to be hoaxes. No, he did not execute former lover Hyon Song Wol for making porn movies. And no, he didn't feed his uncle Jang Song Thaek to 120 hungry dogs.

It has never been proven that North Korea used mortars or flamethrowers to execute people, for the simple reason that no one willing to talk to the media has ever been present at a North Korean execution. The blurry satellite images used as proof of North Korean executions by anti-aircraft guns should strike a familiar chord with anyone who has been closely watching the conflict in eastern Ukraine: There, such pictures and out-of-context videos have been used daily by each side to accuse the other of unspeakable brutality, including the downing of the Malaysian passenger jet, in which 298 people died.

Many of these watchers draw conclusions from photographs juxtaposed with Google Maps satellite images, the provenance of which is all but impossible to verify: Who put them on the Internet and why? Every time such findings make the news, there's an answering salvo using similar material. Much of this kind of analysis is simply grist for people who already have an established view of what happened.

Did Russian President Vladimir Putin really snap a pencil during last February's tense cease-fire talks in Minsk? No he didn't, but Ukrainians and their Western sympathizers were primed to believe it when someone posted a doctored image from the pool footage online.

Did former U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki really say: "There are no Ukrainian refugees in Russia. Those are tourists. In the Rostov Mountains, there is wonderfully healing air"? No she didn't, but Putin fans like to think she's too ignorant to know the Rostov region has no mountains and too stubborn to admit that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled to Russia since the conflict started.

The list goes on. In the case of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the falsehoods are described as part of a "hybrid war." North Korea's case shouldn't be treated any differently. It's hard to say who benefits the most from the stories of flamethrowers, anti-aircraft guns and hungry dogs: South Korean conservatives and intelligence operatives, who want to portray North Korea as a version of hell; Western governments that need Kim as a bogeyman; or Kim himself, who doesn't mind being feared as long as he isn't mocked.

"You know what's more destructive than a nuclear bomb? Words," a fictional Kim says in the recent Hollywood comedy "The Interview," blamed for bringing on the recent Sony hack. It's not quite certain that North Korean hackers perpetrated that crime, but again, pinning it on them benefits everyone. Sony gets some sympathy as a victim of government-sponsored terrorism; U.S. intelligence is seen doing its job, tracking down cybercriminals; and even North Korea gets some grudging respect for pulling off the biggest computer attack in history.

If North Koreans have really learned computer warfare, expect them to pick up the media skills of Russian and Ukrainian propagandists soon. No doubt North Korean spin doctors would glamorize Kim's corruption fighters and portray his brutal regime as one of the last bastions against pervasive U.S. spying; it worked for China.

And what if Kim has already mastered the game and all the gory rumors originate from his covert propaganda machine? If that's impossible to believe, maybe selective exposure is playing its tricks on you, too.

That everyone in the West just believes what they are told without any kind of critical thought says more about the state of mind of the West's populations than about North Korea, really... 

Well if you are going to be that hilariously broad you might as well toss non-Monarchies in there to. Losing an election in Florence could be hazardous to your health.

"Hilariously" merely means I am saying that what happens there is no different than how nations used to be ruled until relatively recently. Henry VIII or François I would have a hard time telling what is weird in Kim III's actions.

Can't add republics to the comparison, not for now at least - not only they could not be dynastic, but in the case of the European ones, they relied heavily on foreign trade - something that North Korea does not do. What they do is far more akin to Kingdoms, where only the super-rich can afford imports and 99% of the population had to do with national products or what they could make at home.

This also leads us to one very important point: with the exception of the Japanese protectorate-colonial period, people in North Korea never, ever knew a different system of government: as part of the Kingdom of Korea, they were under an extremely closed absolute monarchy until Japan invaded in 1884, and after they were under japanese overlordship until 1945.

After WW2, the population of North Korea just resumed the tradition of an absolute, deified, leader with a privileged class, dominant army, no freedom and occasional starvation that they ALWAYS knew before the Japanese came. This explains a lot WHY the nation can be as it is - it's South Korea that was changed into new ways, not North Korea that got warped.

[Admiral Yi]

BS