Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes

No

maybe/depends

only if it's <insert country/organization here>

[Loud Whispers]

Kim Un-Guk.

[Kilroy the Grand]

But, North Korea is Best Korea..

Also, This
NSFW

[MonkeyHead]

Did someone say communist party?

[Solifuge]

The last thing we need to do with North Korea is invade, and make all that American Aggressor propaganda true. They are a people driven to desperation... they deserve our pity and our aid, not our aggression.

I have a friend living and working in South Korea, and the word from the population there is that South Korea has been throwing all kinds of aid at their neighbor, and is really pushing for burying the hatchet, showing them love, and reunifying the countries. The North has already instituted visitation programs, where families divided by the DMZ can spend a day together... and the South constructed a special highway that allows some North Koreans to work in the south, and take food and goods back to their families.

Frankly, the US has no business messing with the Koreas, unless its to offer aid in their time of hardship, or diplomatically to help them reconcile their wounded pride and rejoin the world stage. I can hope that we'll see a unified Korea in my lifetime.

[Solifuge]

...also, though China's patience for working with North Korea is growing thin, since it neither looks good on them or is profitable, the prospect of a unified, capitalist Korea on China's boarder is a different, and equally distasteful, problem.

Really, its the Koreas' issue to resolve, and the rest of the world would do better to keep out of the decision.

[Pnx]

I may be a pessimist for saying this, but I'm not very confident that North Korea is going to go the way of China or The Soviet Union any time soon.

That said, I'm much more willing to say, "Wait and see", than "Invade and cause a clusterfuck of a situation".

[Powder Miner]

What do you mean go the way of China?
Human rights in China still aren't happyland.

[FearfulJesuit]

Keep in mind, though, that nobody saw 1989 coming. Nobody.

[Pnx]

What do you mean go the way of China?
Human rights in China still aren't happyland.

True, but they're significantly better than they used to be when China was a hardcore communist nation.

It's making progress, little by little. Maybe not as fast as we'd like it to be making progress, but it's making progress.

[Zangi]

Second, even if ROK gets NK in a totaly peaceful and agreed-to matter (let's say Kim signed over the country to ROK... somehow), the rehab of the two nations' citizens is going to cost a lot. DPRK has nothing to offer ROK right now. Consider that Germany was richest of the European nations when they reunited, and the wealth difference between the two sides was only a few times. They're struggling too, I think.
*snips*

versus

*snips*
I have a friend living and working in South Korea, and the word from the population there is that South Korea has been throwing all kinds of aid at their neighbor, and is really pushing for burying the hatchet, showing them love, and reunifying the countries. The North has already instituted visitation programs, where families divided by the DMZ can spend a day together... and the South constructed a special highway that allows some North Koreans to work in the south, and take food and goods back to their families.

This is such a huge contrast... how to reconcile?  (Also, there is an edit button...)

[Leafsnail]

Germany is still the richest and most powerful nation in Europe.  They had some economic problems but they recovered better than anyone.

[miauw62]

Yeah, Germany is often called "the engine of the European economy".
Wich is a little funny, because Germany is also a major car manufacturer

[Solifuge]

Sorry, writing this on a cellphone, which strips all but basic HTML from the page. Couldn't edit or quote.

Realize that adults in Korea were split from their families, lovers, and friends following the war. In that, comparing the Koreas to East/West Germany is pretty accurate.

Also, according to what I hear (my friend just left to return to Seoul after his brief visit) the civilians of N and S Korea still view each other very much as kin. Their political systems may be vastly different, and they may have different windows to the world, but they're relatives, friends, and former coworkers divided by a wall that little news can move through. They're still human beings, with individual concerns; every NK citizen is not an extension of their government.

They both are hurting economically right now, but they are slowly working to bridge the gap through programs like I listed above. I can only hope, for all their sakes, that the new Leader sees the sense in setting aside pride and continuing to work at it.

[toomanysecrets]

N. Korea has had hundreds of artillery pieces aimed at the Demilitarized Zone (that is to say, aimed at U.S. troops) for decades, as leverage. They have nukes, even bigger leverage.

These two factors alone make it unthinkable for U.S. planners to decide to steamroll N. Korea.  For the past few decades, NATO/U.N./Pentagon victims have been (mostly) defenseless third world countries which have been covertly destabilized in advance to make it even easier to wreck their society.

Obviously, I'm not in favor of it. Carpet bombing, steam rolling, whatever you call it, is atrocious, costly in many ways, and usually extremely cost-ineffective.

[Skyrunner]

Gah I hate my iPod so much.crashed after two long paragraphs. Here's a shorter version.

Yes, we are kin. No, reuniting isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Various reasons, military, political, economical, humane.
 The aid we throw at DPRK might not be working to change NK. Could be advertising that it's tributes from the capitalist scum for all we know. No special highway for what I know.
 Visitation programs and few and rare Heart-wretching too. The coworker thingy of Gaesung Industrial Park was iirc closed over tensions last last year. Don't know if reopened or not.

From my view, the two Koreas are teetering between reconcilation and irrevocable hostility. Tending towards a frigid state right now.

One guy in Korea pinpointed the positions of many hundreds of artillery pieces and their effective range from Google Maps satellite images; it was impressive, the effort. Seoul can become a sea of fire easily if it comes to that.

And probably, the new Leader is going to walk the same as the previous >.>