Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[Alcibiades]

It's a little colder here than Thailand... 

[jimmy olsen]

It's a little colder here than Thailand... 

Pfft...the last three winters have been mild. You should have been here the first three years, that was cold.

It's like 3C in Seoul today, that's like a good ten degrees warmer than it should be.

[Admiral Yi]

Watch out for the Won Ton poisoning.

[Syt]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/04/north-korea-kim-jong-un-orders-country-to-be-ready-to-use-nuclear-weapons-at-any-time

North Korea: Kim Jong-un orders nuclear weapons readied for use 'at any time'

Leader reportedly tells military to adopt 'pre-emptive' posture after imposition of toughest UN sanctions to date

North Korea should be ready to use nuclear weapons "at any time" in the face of a growing threat from its enemies, leader Kim Jong-un has decreed in a further escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Kim's warning, issued via state-controlled media on Friday morning, appeared to be an attempt to put pressure on the international community after the UN security council on Wednesday adopted a raft of new sanctions against the regime in response to its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

Kim, who was supervising the test-firing of newly developed multiple rocket launchers, said North Korea's situation had become so perilous that it should have the option of launching a "pre-emptive attack" – a departure from previous claims that the North's nuclear capability was purely a deterrent.

In an apparent threat to neighbouring South Korea, Kim said the new rocket launchers should be "promptly deployed" along with other new weaponry.

He said the regime's enemies – notably the US – were threatening North Korea's survival, the state-controlled KCNA news agency reported.

"At an extreme time when the Americans ... are urging war and disaster on other countries and people, the only way to defend our sovereignty and right to live is to bolster our nuclear capability," KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

"Under the extreme situation that the US imperialist is misusing its military influence and is pressuring other countries and people to start war and catastrophe, the only way for our people to protect sovereignty and rights to live is to strengthen the quality and quantity of nuclear power and realise the balance of power.

"We must always be ready to fire our nuclear warheads at any time."

People in the capital, Pyongyang, said the new round of UN sanctions would not affect the country's progress.

"No kind of sanctions will ever work on us, because we've lived under US sanctions for more than half a century," Pyongyang resident Song Hyo-il told the Associated Press.

"And in the future we're going to build a powerful and prosperous country here, relying on our own development."

The US defence department urged the North to "refrain from provocative actions that aggravate tensions, and instead focus on fulfilling its international obligations and commitments".

"We are aware of the reports and are closely monitoring the situation on the Korean peninsula in coordination with our regional allies," said Commander Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman.

The UN sanctions target mineral exports and other key sectors of the North Korean economy, as well as requiring member states to inspect cargo shipments to and from the North that go via their ports.

The measures, passed on Wednesday, are designed to limit North Korea's ability to earn foreign currency, which it then uses to fund its nuclear and missile programmes.

On Friday the Philippines coast guard announced it had detained a North Korean cargo ship that docked at the port of Subic Bay after arriving from Balembang, Indonesia.

The MV Jin Teng was carrying a palm oil byproduct used as livestock food, Philippines authorities said. Nothing suspicious was found by inspectors and bomb sniffer dogs, but safety defects would need to be fixed before the vessel would be allowed to continue its journey to south-western China's Zhanjiang port.

The ship's documents showed the cargo was for consignees in the Philippines and no new cargo would be loaded at Subic Bay, said coast guard Commander Raul Belesario.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China, North Korea's closest ally, hoped the UN sanctions would be implemented "comprehensively and seriously", while harm to ordinary North Korean citizens would be avoided.

At the United Nations, Russia's ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, asked about the North's firing of short-range projectiles, said: "It means that they're not drawing the proper conclusions yet."

Japan's UN ambassador, Motohide Yoshikawa, said: "That's their way of reacting to what we have decided. They may do something more ... so we will see."

While North Korea is believed to possess a small stockpile of nuclear warheads, most experts say the regime has yet to develop the technology to miniaturise them so they can be mounted on a missile.

This is not the first time that Kim – who became leader in late 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il – has issued threats to the west.

In 2013 he threatened a nuclear strike on the US mainland in response to sanctions imposed after North Korea carried out its third nuclear test and the US held its traditional joint military manoeuvres with South Korea – exercises that Pyongyang regards as a rehearsal for an invasion of the North.

Dr Leonid Petrov, an expert on North Korea from the Australian National University, said Friday's statement was not an idle threat.

"North Korea is prepared to go a long way in this," Petrov told Guardian Australia. "They believe it's the only way they can protect their regime. The survival of the regime is the main concern for the North Korean leadership."

Petrov said the statement was intended to send a message to the UN security council, including formerly more friendly nations Russia and China.

"I think North Korea [is] simply mirroring the US rhetoric that nuclear weapons may be used pre-emptively and that's what North Korea believes they also have the right to do," he said.

Friday's warning to the west came after North Korea fired a volley of short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast.

This followed the UN security council's unanimous decision to impose the toughest sanctions against the regime in two decades over its nuclear and rocket tests.

North Korea has previously carried out live firing near or across its borders when facing international condemnation.

Tilman Ruff, a Melbourne University academic and nuclear disarmament advocate, said that despite North Korea's "really frightening and belligerent" threats he believed its programme to develop a bomb remained mostly a political tool.

"I think the leadership would be cognisant of the fact that the military response that would follow any nuclear assault on their behalf would be the end of the regime and possibly take out most of the North Korean population," he said.

Tilman said that even if the regime had a proven long-range missile delivery system, the country's nuclear weapons cache was small.

"They have got probably less than 10 relatively crude nuclear weapons, in the global scale of 15,530 ... that's less than a 10th of a percent of the global nuclear arsenal," he said.

"I really do think that their nuclear programme is primarily about achieving political attention and trying to get the US attention in particular."

[jimmy olsen]

Amazing, they put the US Senate to shame!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-politics-filibuster-idUSKCN0W41BX

Record-breaking South Korea filibuster over 'terror' law ends on ninth day
SEOUL

Korea, February 28, 2016.
Reuters/Song Won-young/News1

South Korea's opposition members of parliament on Wednesday ended a record-breaking filibuster to block an "anti-terrorism" bill sponsored by their conservative rivals, more than a week after they began taking turns making marathon speeches.

The filibuster began on Tuesday evening last week, when the opposition took the floor to debate the bill backed by President Park Geun-hye that they say, if passed, will threaten freedom of communication and privacy.

By the time it ended on Wednesday evening, 38 MPs had spoken for an average of five hours each, the longest for more than 12-1/2 hours without a break.
ADVERTISING


The round-the-clock filibuster easily surpassed a 58-hour session by 103 members of Canada's New Democratic Party in 2011.

Park's office in February called for parliament to pass the stalled security bill, part of tough action by her government amid heightened tension with North Korea following its nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch.

The security bill proposes to set up a new anti-espionage unit reporting to the chief of the country's spy agency and will coordinate surveillance, analysis and investigation into leads that point to a possible attack.

The opposition objects to greater power for the spy agency and seeks to scrap a bill provision that would authorize the intelligence agency to monitor private communications.

Conservative ruling Saenuri party members, with 157 of the assembly's 293 seats, have expressed dismay that the speech-making is causing other bills to be delayed ahead of parliamentary elections due in April.

The decision to end the filibuster came after some senior opposition party members expressed concern that they might be seen as holding up other bills.

Some opposition MPs have come to tears during their speeches, while one of them sang and another read aloud from George Orwell's "1984," according to a South Korean newspaper.

(Reporting by Jack Kim and Dahee Kim; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

[Valmy]

Amazing, they put the US Senate to shame!

Nothing amazing about doing that

[Eddie Teach]

Doesn't even sound like the filibuster was successful.

[Habbaku]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/06/asia/north-korea-preemptive-nuclear-strike-threat/index.html?sr=fbCNN030716north-korea-preemptive-nuclear-strike-threat1233AMVODtopLink&linkId=21982718

The Norks threaten to launch a nuke in response to the joint US-South Korea military drills going on.  Likelihood of actually following through?  About as likely as Tim learning English.

[jimmy olsen]

US troops test rocket artillery near the DMZ

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/u-s-artillery-shatters-peace-of-south-korea-s-rocket-valley-with-barrage-640181315823

[jimmy olsen]

The nation is in shock and mourning.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/03/09/google_deepmind_s_alphago_ai_beats_champion_lee_sedol_in_go.html

Google's A.I. Software Beats World Champion Lee Sedol in First Game of Historic Go Match

By Will Oremus

In a victory that will join Deep Blue's win over Garry Kasparov and Watson's dominance of Brad Rutter and our friend Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!, a machine-learning algorithm created by Google has defeated legendary world champion Lee Sedol in a game of Go.

AlphaGo, a software program built by Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence division, took the first game of the historic five-game match early Wednesday morning when Lee resigned after about three and a half hours.

"I was very surprised," Lee said after the game, according to The Verge's Sam Byford, who is in Seoul to cover the match. "I didn't expect to lose. [But] I didn't think AlphaGo would play the game in such a perfect manner." Here's how the final board looked:

Lee added that he made some mistakes early on and believes he has a chance of winning the next game if he can improve his opening strategy. Observers, including DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, agreed the match was competitive.

Demis Hassabis  ‎‎@demishassabis 

extremely tense... Lee Sedol is famous for his creative fighting skills, #AlphaGo going toe to toe. Incredibly complicated position...

3:23 PM - 9 Mar 2016

But he couldn't hide his ecstasy at the result:

Demis Hassabis  ‎‎@demishassabis 

#AlphaGo WINS!!!! We landed it on the moon. So proud of the team!! Respect to the amazing Lee Sedol too

Lee will have his first shot at redemption in the match's second game, which starts Thursday local time, Wednesday night Eastern Time. DeepMind is streaming the games live on YouTube, and you can watch them here.


Obviously this isn't the first time a computer has beaten a human champion at a game of skill. But it's a landmark in the history of artificial intelligence because Go is among the world's most complex games: The number of possible board configurations is greater than that of chess by many orders of magnitude. It was less than two years ago that Wired ran a story predicting that it would be a decade or more before a computer could beat a human champion.



Lee Sedol loses to AlphaGo
Lee after losing game one.

Photo by Kim Min-Hee-Pool/Getty Images


In fact, AlphaGo accomplished that feat in November, when it swept the European champion 5-0. Beating Lee, however, represents a much tougher test: He's recognized as the greatest Go player of his generation, and one of the best ever.


As impressive as AlphaGo's fist-game victory is, however, it doesn't mean that AI is anywhere close to matching humans in general intelligence. As I explained in January, Go is a constrained environment with perfectly defined rules and goals. Brilliant as AlphaGo is in that context, it's a specialized tool designed to win a specific game. What remains unique about the human brain is not its ability to specialize, but its versatility. 

That said, the approach embodied by AlphaGo—known as deep neural nets—holds enormous promise in realms ranging from image recognition to self-driving cars. And I wouldn't bet against it in games two through five of its match with Lee. Neither would Kasparov:

Garry Kasparov
✔  ‎‎@Kasparov63 

Condolences to Lee Se-dol on losing game one to AlphaGo. I hope he can recover, but the writing is on the wall: https://www.facebook.com/GKKasparov/posts/10154030003498307 ...

8:44 PM - 9 Mar 2016

[Alcibiades]

May be around Seoul around the evening of the 26th/27th.

[Eddie Teach]

That story should probably go in the Singularity Thread.   

[jimmy olsen]

May be around Seoul around the evening of the 26th/27th.

Cool, got time to catch the sights or grab some grub?

[Alcibiades]

May be around Seoul around the evening of the 26th/27th.

Cool, got time to catch the sights or grab some grub?

Strong possibility on the 26th/27th.  I'll shoot you a message hopefully in the next week and a half when I get a more concrete answer. 

[jimmy olsen]

May be around Seoul around the evening of the 26th/27th.

Cool, got time to catch the sights or grab some grub?

Strong possibility on the 26th/27th.  I'll shoot you a message hopefully in the next week and a half when I get a more concrete answer. 

Cool, looking forward to it