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[CJ1145]

I really just wish that somebody would firebomb North Korea. It'd be a tragedy and I'd mourn the people lost, but damn it we all know how this is going to end, and I'd rather it happen sooner than later. Somebody just needs to knock North Korea off the map. I don't really care who ends up controlling it in the end, as long as the name Kim Jong has nothing to do with it.

[nenjin]

I'd agree, except for the NK people. They're prisoners in their own country. They get no outside ANYTHING, except humanitarian aid which NK regularly throws back in the world's face. It'd be like bombing all of East Germany, if all of East Germany were living at the agricultural level. In a way, it would validate everything the leadership has been saying: that they kept them safe from war and terror from the rest of the world.

So that leaves us with regime change, political assassination, an internal coup, or supporting resistance fighters. I wonder if there is such a thing as a NK resistance movement. If there is, those have to be some of the most hardened revolutionaries on the map.

[Leafsnail]

I really just wish that somebody would firebomb North Korea. It'd be a tragedy and I'd mourn the people lost, but damn it we all know how this is going to end, and I'd rather it happen sooner than later. Somebody just needs to knock North Korea off the map. I don't really care who ends up controlling it in the end, as long as the name Kim Jong has nothing to do with it.

You... know how big their army is?

[Sir Finkus]

I really just wish that somebody would firebomb North Korea. It'd be a tragedy and I'd mourn the people lost, but damn it we all know how this is going to end, and I'd rather it happen sooner than later. Somebody just needs to knock North Korea off the map. I don't really care who ends up controlling it in the end, as long as the name Kim Jong has nothing to do with it.

They're certainly asking for it, but it isn't as simple as that.  First off, they have tons of artillery aimed at Seoul.  You can't really do anything about artillery except take it out before it fires, which would be next to impossible.  My money is that if anyone takes major action against Best Korea, Seoul (which is the 8th most populated city in the world by the way) will come under heavy artillery fire.  Chemical and/or biological payloads are likely.  We'd probably get air superiority pretty quickly, but North Korea has been spending their time making their country hard to invade. It is littered with bunkers and minefields.  It would be a long and bloody conflict.  North Korea would probably lose, but the costs are hard to stomach.

The best case scenario, aside from Koizumi beating them in a mahjong game, is Dear Leader dying and being replaced with someone more moderate.  It's a really sticky situation, and I have a bad feeling it's going to get pretty ugly if North Korea doesn't stop their shenanigans.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

North Korea has to go down sooner or later, and I would prefer the option that doesn't involve giving them time to get better nukes. I think this might just be it for them. I guess time will tell.

[ChairmanPoo]

Honk if you find our resident armchair commanders  cute.

[nenjin]

The best case scenario, aside from Koizumi beating them in a mahjong game, is Dear Leader dying and being replaced with someone more moderate.  It's a really sticky situation, and I have a bad feeling it's going to get pretty ugly if North Korea doesn't stop their shenanigans.

I think you underestimate how much of the country's stability is based on fear. Moderation implies the ability to dissent. North Korea is what most Communist states would look like today had they survived the 80s. Unbelievable economic disparity. People living at the subsistence level. Almost no education. Almost no infrastructure that doesn't relate to military production. No modern services. (I think Doctors Without Borders was allowed in to do cataracts surgery....because NK can't even train professional doctors or get the equipment they need to do it themselves. Watching peasants who haven't seen in 20 years weep and cry and thank a photo of the Great Chairman, while party officials stand by and note their level of gratitude.....yeah. That's North Korea.)

Meanwhile, they have an absurdly large military and have managed to invest in nuclear power.

The only way a country has functioned like that is when you have the people completely under your boot. Germans enjoyed a comparatively high quality of life under teh Nazis, compared to North Korea. Hell, even under the Communists and that's saying A LOT.

If you bring in a moderate leader, one trying to ease restrictions while retaining the old government, all those societal cracks burst open. People flood to the border in an effort to escape 50 years of oppression that almost no one knows the full scope of. Overnight NK collapses in on itself.

A moderate leader implies they retain some of the old leadership styles. That's not going to fly, I think, were it to ever happen. They have been through too much shit to make the change gradually. I think the first opening of real freedom would basically turn into a stampede. So. I think they need a modern leader who totally abandons the old ways of thinking and tries to integrate North Korea into the rest of the world, while retaining their national sovereignty (since that's all North Koren have).

The only way you get that kind of leadership in place is with a revolution. Very, very few communist regimes went quietly, and they were moderates compared to North Korea.

Honk if you find our resident armchair commanders  cute.

Not as cute as your avatar Chairman.

[Solifuge]

A very good friend of mine is currently working in Seoul alongside his newlywed wife. I really don't want to see this escalate... I'll try to get an update from him tonight to see what folks in his area think is going on.

[de5me7]

But hey, the classics never go out of style, and apparently neither does the Red Scare/Yellow Menace. Maybe they'll combine and we can call it the Orange Terror.

Oh shit! Beaker!
Run for your lives.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

hes making ecinomic decisions in the uk

[Sowelu]

Honk if you find our resident armchair commanders  cute.

HoNk HoNk )

[Sir Finkus]

The best case scenario, aside from Koizumi beating them in a mahjong game, is Dear Leader dying and being replaced with someone more moderate.  It's a really sticky situation, and I have a bad feeling it's going to get pretty ugly if North Korea doesn't stop their shenanigans.

I think you underestimate how much of the country's stability is based on fear. Moderation implies the ability to dissent. North Korea is what most Communist states would look like today had they survived the 80s. Unbelievable economic disparity. People living at the subsistence level. Almost no education. Almost no infrastructure that doesn't relate to military production. No modern services. (I think Doctors Without Borders was allowed in to do cataracts surgery....because NK can't even train professional doctors or get the equipment they need to do it themselves. Watching peasants who haven't seen in 20 years weep and cry and thank a photo of the Great Chairman, while party officials stand by and note their level of gratitude.....yeah. That's North Korea.)

Meanwhile, they have an absurdly large military and have managed to invest in nuclear power.

The only way a country has functioned like that is when you have the people completely under your boot. Germans enjoyed a comparatively high quality of life under teh Nazis, compared to North Korea. Hell, even under the Communists and that's saying A LOT.

If you bring in a moderate leader, one trying to ease restrictions while retaining the old government, all those societal cracks burst open. People flood to the border in an effort to escape 50 years of oppression that almost no one knows the full scope of. Overnight NK collapses in on itself.

A moderate leader implies they retain some of the old leadership styles. That's not going to fly, I think, were it to ever happen. They have been through too much shit to make the change gradually. I think the first opening of real freedom would basically turn into a stampede. So. I think they need a modern leader who totally abandons the old ways of thinking and tries to integrate North Korea into the rest of the world, while retaining their national sovereignty (since that's all North Koren have).

The only way you get that kind of leadership in place is with a revolution. Very, very few communist regimes went quietly, and they were moderates compared to North Korea.

Honk if you find our resident armchair commanders  cute.

Not as cute as your avatar Chairman.

You could argue the same thing about Stalin and Soviet Russia.  I don't mean to imply that we were exactly buddies with Khrushchev (there was that whole Cuban thing of course), but he was more moderate than Stalin.  He certainly was a lot better for their citizens.

[nenjin]

Kruschev hosted the retreat from Stalinism toward moderate communism, and paved the way for someone like Gorbechev to make the dissolution of the communist state acceptable.

NK is kind of a different story though, since it's much smaller and the Il's control there is much more direct. A Cold War with North Korea would still be a step up from where things are now...but there were plenty of scares and potential for badness during the Cold War with Russia, too.

[Aqizzar]

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

hes making ecinomic decisions in the uk

The British economy is fucking boned.

[Zrk2]

Kim is crazy. Batch f**king crazy. he made his serfs think the weather changes based on his MOOD! His successor has one massive challenge, being more nutz than him. This could herald a general South-East Asian War. It would unfold like this:

1. NK shoots at SK.
2. SK shoots back.
3. China takes this as a chance to get back at Japan for arresting that captain that ran into a Japanese boat.
4. India goes 'Oh hell no!' and attacks China
5. Pakistan goes for India
6. US troops ion Afghanistan attack P. The 2000 F-16s in Taiwan scramble and assault China.
7. Iran gets pissed that USA is involved, invades Afghanistan and Iraq.
8. Rest of the Middle East backs them up
9. Israel takes them on.
10. Russia goes 'Damn! Let me in on this!'
11. EU gets into a fight with them
12.
13. Profit!

[sonerohi]

If we have to do something about NK, I think a regicide would be cool.