Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[Ed Anger]

Fuck 'em.

[CountDeMoney]

Fuck 'em.

OK, Yosemite Sam I Am.

[11B4V]

With all the saber rattling, what is South Korea's stance?

[CountDeMoney]

With all the saber rattling, what is South Korea's stance?

Duck and Cover.

[Ed Anger]

With all the saber rattling, what is South Korea's stance?

Pants down, bent over the exam table.

[Jacob]

With all the saber rattling, what is South Korea's stance?

Pants down, bent over the exam table.

You're projecting your proctologist visits again.

[Ed Anger]

With all the saber rattling, what is South Korea's stance?

Pants down, bent over the exam table.

You're projecting your proctologist visits again.

wrong test

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/north-korea-details-guam-strike-trump-load-of-nonsense

North Korea details Guam strike plan and calls Trump warning 'nonsense'

Pyongyang says it will launch four missiles into waters '30-40km' off US territory in clear attempt to goad the US president

North Korea has defied threats of "fire and fury" from Donald Trump, deriding his warning as a "load of nonsense" and announcing a detailed plan to launch missiles aimed at the waters off the coast of the US Pacific territory of Guam.

A statement attributed to General Kim Rak Gyom, the head of the country's strategic forces, declared: "Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him". The general outlined a plan to carry out a demonstration launch of four intermediate-range missiles that would fly over Japan and then land in the sea around Guam, "enveloping" the island.

"The Hwasong-12 rockets to be launched by the KPA [Korean People's Army] will cross the sky above Shimani, Hiroshima and Koichi prefectures of Japan," the statement said. "They will fly for 3,356.7 km for 1,065 seconds and hit the waters 30 to 40km away from Guam."

The statement said the plan for this show of force would be ready by the middle of this month and then await orders from the commander-in-chief, Kim Jong-un.

The statement was clearly designed as a show of bravado, calling the Trump administration's bluff after the president's threat and a statement from the defence secretary, James Mattis, both stressing the overwhelming power of the US military. "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met by fire and fury like the world has never seen," Trump said on Wednesday.

The response from Pyongyang was its most public and detailed threat to date, and evidently meant to goad the US president. Trump had "let out a load of nonsense about 'fire and fury' failing to grasp the ongoing grave situation. This is extremely getting on the nerves of the infuriated Hwasong artillerymen of the KPA."

The US has a naval base in Guam and the island is home to Andersen air base, which has six B-1B heavy bombers. According to NBC news the non-nuclear bombers have made 11 practice sorties since May in readiness for a potential strike on North Korea. The remote island is home to 162,000 people.

South Korea's military said on Thursday that North Korea's statements were a challenge against Seoul and the US-South Korea alliance. Joint chiefs of staff spokesman Roh Jae-cheon told a media briefing that South Korea was prepared to act immediately against any North Korean provocation.

Japan's chief government spokesman said the country could "never tolerate this". "North Korea's actions are obviously provocative to the region as well as to the security of the international community," Yoshihide Sug said.

The announcement on the North Korean state news service KCNA came at the end of two days of brinksmanship which began with the leak of a US intelligence report that Pyongyang had developed a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a missile. This was followed by Trump's warning of "fire and fury". On Wednesday the US defence secretary, James Mattis, said a North Korean attack would risk the "end of its regime and the destruction of its people".

In the event of such a launch by North Korea, the US military faces the dilemma of trying to intercept the incoming missiles and risking humiliation if it fails. Trump would have to decide whether to try to a carry out a pre-emptive strike on the Hwasong launchpads or a retaliation strike if the launch went ahead. The North Korean military has frequently tested missiles that land in the sea off the Japanese coast, without a military response from Tokyo.

"For the [North Koreans] to telegraph a move like this is extraordinary. But it's probably their way of trying not to trigger a war," said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He said that if the launch went ahead as laid out in the statement, legal restrictions on shooting down missile tests might not apply.

"The reason you can't shoot down a test is that it doesn't enter a defended area. But that wouldn't be the case with 'bracketing fire'," Pollack said in a thread of tweets. He argued that the exchange of threats and the missile plans underlined the need to open a military hotline between the US and North Korea to mitigate the dangers of catastrophic miscalculation by either side.

"If they do carry out that plan, both sides might discover that they need a crisis management mechanism sooner than not," Pollack said.

Mattis's reminder to Pyongyang that the allied militaries "possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth" capped an unprecedented 24 hours of sabre-rattling sparked by Donald Trump's surprise threat to rain "fire and fury" down on the Pyongyang regime.

Despite the harsh rhetoric, there was no change in US military deployments or alert status. Mattis couched his remarks in the language of traditional deterrence, making clear that such overwhelming force would be used in the event of a North Korean attack.

Trump – without consulting his own security staff – had warned of a devastating onslaught "like the world has never seen" if Kim's government persisted in threats against the US. But that line was crossed within hours when Pyongyang announced it was "carefully examining" a plan for a missile strike and "enveloping fire" around Guam.

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, also spent much of Wednesday struggling to contain the fallout from Trump's threats, assuring Americans they could "sleep well at night", and reassuring shocked allies that there was "no imminent threat of war".

Retweeted by the Trumpster:

The Five‏
@TheFive

"@POTUS being unpredictable is a big asset, North Korea knew exactly what President Obama was going to do."- @jessebwatters

and

John Bolton‏
@AmbJohnBolton

Our country & civilians are vulnerable today because @BarackObama did not believe in national missile defense. Let's never forget that.

[Jacob]

wrong test

Must've been awkward. Will you sue for medical malpractice?

[Jacob]

That is some expert level trolling by North Korea

I hope it doesn't end in tears - or fire and fury - but until it does this is pretty fucking funny.

[Josquius]

It would be curious to see if they are able to hit Guam. I'm doubtful they have the targeting technology. Or would they use GPS? That would be curious.
I guess this is why they're speaking of missiles off the coast. Gives them an excuse

[Syt]

http://time.com/4893717/pentagon-james-mattis-north-korea-warning/

Defense Secretary James Mattis Just Issued a Stern Threat to North Korea

(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is issuing his own sharp threat to North Korea, saying the regime should cease any consideration of actions that would "lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people."

Mattis says any action by North Korea would be grossly overmatched by the U.S., and that Pyongyang would lose any arms race or conflict it started. He says that while the U.S. is pursuing diplomatic solutions, the combined military power of America and its allies is the most robust on Earth.

Mattis issued a statement as he traveled to the West Coast. His comments punctuate President Donald Trump's warning that North Korea will be met with "fire and fury" if it threatens the U.S.A new report says Pyongyang's nuclear program is progressing.

[Tamas]

A perspective on the N. Korean hate of the US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html?utm_term=.b3c39f2fefd3

Much of it is cooked up daily in Pyongyang. Like all dictatorial regimes, the Kim family dynasty needs an endless existential struggle against a fearsome enemy. Such a threat rationalizes massive military spending and excuses decades of privation, while keeping dissenting mouths shut and political prisons open.

The hate, though, is not all manufactured. It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.

The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.

The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America's own leaders. "Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population," Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed "everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another." After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.

Although the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere in the world, it was never a big story back home. U.S. press coverage of the air war focused, instead, on "MiG alley," a narrow patch of North Korea near the Chinese border. There, in the world's first jet-powered aerial war, American fighter pilots competed against each other to shoot down five or more Soviet-made fighters and become "aces." War reporters rarely mentioned civilian casualties from U.S. carpet-bombing. It is perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war.

So the whole thing is America's fault then?

I never get these excuses. They invade a country they have no business invading. The everliving shit gets kicked out of them as a response. And suddenly they are the victims? It's not the US that killed those civilians in the 50s, it was the NK leaders.

[Syt]

 

[The Brain]

Well-poisoning has consequences.