Another day, another threat of all-out war.

[Coito ergo sum]

US Pledges to Stand with South Korea "Always": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/world ... tml?src=mv

North Korea's decision Tuesday to sever all ties with South Korea and threaten military action in disputed waters following the torpedoing of a South Korean warship confronts President Barack Obama with another international crisis that his administration doesn't want or need.
Although the isolated, communist North's behavior is notoriously unpredictable and sometimes seems irrational, all-out war between it and the democratic, capitalist South still seems unlikely, analysts said, given the stakes.
Nevertheless, tensions on the Korean peninsula, where some 28,500 U.S. troops provide a tripwire for U.S. military intervention if the North attacks, are likely to rise in coming days.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100 ... J0aGtvcg--

[FBM]

Don't you love it when politicians use that word?

[Coito ergo sum]

It's an example of a clear, unambiguous message to Pyonyang. What a lot of people forget is that things that Clinton and Obama say publicly, in the press, etc., are always intended to communicate. National leaders announce policy by what they say. With nations with whom we have more open relations, we send communiques and send ambassadors for discussions. We don't have that with North Korea much, and what Clinton says here is intended to be translated into Korean and heard by Pyonyang. They have to be abundantly clear and direct. Nuance is not helpful in a situation like this.

by way of distinction, look how she comes across when dealing with the UN, and in particular China. Lots of nuance here:

SEOUL, South Korea – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday the world must respond to the sinking of a South Korean warship that has been blamed on North Korea.
"This was an unacceptable provocation by North Korea, and the international community has a responsibility and a duty to respond," Clinton told reporters after talks with South Korean leaders.
The ship sinking "requires a strong but measured response," she said at a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, though she did not elaborate.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100526/ap_ ... Rvbndvcmxk

[Coito ergo sum]

In the endless propaganda wars between North and South Korea, each side is constantly conjuring up new security threats, real and imagined. The South Koreans say the Communist North's latest weapon is water—tons and tons of it. The dispute involves the Kumgangsan Dam, now being built on the North Han River near the Demilitarized Zone. The facility will produce 800,000 kW of electricity and create a reservoir holding 20 billion gal. of water. South Korea charges that if the dam should ever collapse or be demolished by the North, the resulting flood would be a disaster. Thundering down the Han River valley, the water would quickly reach Seoul, 80 miles to the southwest, threatening the lives and property of millions.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z0p2WDs84Q

That was 2 years ago. The dam was completed.

[FBM]

I'd forgotten all about that damn dam. Dammit.




















Sorry.

[Coito ergo sum]

You know it's bad when they even have their female soldiers in skirts "goosestepping."



What is it with totalitarian regimes and the "goosestep?"




Ahhhh...communism....


This is a great blog by someone who was there: http://www.1stopkorea.com/index.htm?DMZ ... ~mainframe

[Coito ergo sum]

North korea - a day in the Life - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2h77e ... -1-of_news

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Chinese have a curse that goes, "May you live an interesting life."

[Coito ergo sum]

The Chinese have a curse that goes, "May you live an interesting life."

It's "May you live in interesting times."

It is supposedly followed in severity by:

May you come to the attention of those in authority.

And,

May you find what you are looking for.

[Trolldor]

Yan-yan wasn't so philosophical in my memory, then again I never much understood her Chinese rants.

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2h7d6 ... -2-of_news

It's almost exactly like Orwell's 1984.....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Chinese have a curse that goes, "May you live an interesting life."

It's "May you live in interesting times."

You fuckin' speak Chinese?

[Coito ergo sum]

The Chinese have a curse that goes, "May you live an interesting life."

It's "May you live in interesting times."

You fuckin' speak Chinese?

Sure, I just throw the silverware up against the wall.

Actually, it's probably not even a Chinese saying, but rather an English invention attributed to the Chinese.

"Ancient Chinese secret, huh....?!"

[Coito ergo sum]

War With North Korea's Orwellian Kim

by Austin Bay
May 25, 2010
In an essay written in 1945 titled "Funny, But Not Vulgar," George Orwell argued that "a thing is funny when ... it upsets the established order." Toward the end of the essay, Orwell added, "To be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious."

Radio Free Asia (RFA) took Orwell quite seriously when, in 2008, it asked North Korean defectors if there was humor in North Korea. RFA reported they answered with "a resounding "yes."" The defectors provided jokes that RFA used to spice Korean language programs.

RFA's website provides this particularly rich example:

An Englishman, a Frenchman and a North Korean are having a chat. The Englishman says, "I feel happiest when I'm at home, my wool pants on, sitting in front of the fireplace." The Frenchman says: "You English people are so conventional. I feel happiest when I go to a Mediterranean beach with a beautiful blond-haired woman, and we do what we've got to do on the way back." The North Korean says, "In the middle of the night, the secret police knock on the door, shouting, 'Kang Sung-Mee, you're under arrest!' And I say, 'Kang Sung-Mee doesn't live here, but right next door!' That's when we're happiest!"

Military, police, medics and others who work in life-and-death situations use 'gallows humor' to cope. In Kim's Korea, everyone copes using gallows humor because a literal gallows waits for them. If they get to laugh one more night, it's a good joke.

The sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in late March is no joke, however. The North Korean torpedo that sank the ship and killed 46 sailors is a wake-up knock from a nuclear-armed police state that starves, jails and murders its own people, runs a global weapons and narcotics smuggling ring, and uses assassins, kidnappers, terrorists, ballistic missiles, soldiers and nuclear weapons to extort cash from neighboring South Korea and Japan.

Consider the record. Kim Il-Sung, who launched the Korean War 60 years ago, waged a low-level war along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) from 1966 to 1976. In 1983, North Korean assassins detonated a bomb in Rangoon, Myanmar, that killed 17 South Korean officials.

After his father's death in 1994, Kim Jong-Il threatened violence during the various 1990s nuclear negotiations. This decade, Kim fired ballistic missiles and detonated a nuke. South Korea and its allies rewarded the regime's armed tantrums with food and economic aid. Liberal South Korean presidents dubbed it The Sunshine Policy -- an outreach to North Korea's suffering people. The policy sought to demonstrate to Kim the benefits of economic cooperation. Critics like current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, however, argued gifts met with insistent belligerence was stupid diplomacy.

The North Korean police state's midnight torpedo knock completely kills the Sunshine Policy.

Why the torpedo? In a column written three weeks ago, I suggested that the attack might be a macabre 60th anniversary commemoration of North Korea's attack on South Korea, one appealing to the malign psyche of North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-Il. After all, Kim gets his sexed-up jollies by sending commandos south to kidnap movie starlets whom he then enslaves as concubines. He's a sociopath who uses violence to get what he wants.

Kim can't handle real sunshine -- the truth. In the 60 years since the Korean War began, South Korea has decisively defeated North Korea in the social and economic spheres. Only in military terms, in the base destructive power of Pyongyang's large armies and nascent nuclear weapons program, does the North challenge the South. War is all Kim has. Violence is how he controls his own people -- assassination and threats of nuclear immolation are how he relates to the rest of the world.

As we enter the summer of 2010, the risk of all-out war on the Korean Peninsula is quite high, and possibly the highest it has been since the armistice was signed in 1953. The armistice suspended major combat -- it is not a peace treaty. The situation is quite serious. It's time to end the Korean War, and that means ending the Kim regime, not placating it. That's the message to send Pyongyang. Until South Korea and the Obama administration face that fact, the wicked joke is on us.

http://www.strategypage.com/on_point/20 ... 05853.aspx

[Coito ergo sum]

South Korea Loses Track of the DPRK's submarines: http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/australian ... rths-subs/