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http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/01/26/koreas.artillery/index.html?hpt=T2

They may as well get it over with. It's been a slow news week after all...

A 'No Sailing' Zone? They're not afraid of http://www.jessicawatson.com.au/ ...are they?

They really have no idea what they're doing, do they?

Fighting for the sake of fighting?

Maybe Mad Kim doesn't know our militaries exist.

If NoKo attacks anyone, they're gone. Kim would be condemning his entire country.

Would the US aid South Korea? No matter what started it?

Maybe not if South Korea attacked first. It's better to try and resolve the problem with diplomacy before resorting to force, and Obama seems like the kind of guy who'd do that.

Emperors Faithful wrote:Would the US aid South Korea? No matter what started it?

Yep. We have treaties.
South Korea would never start it. If they moved first it would be only because an NK attack was imminent.

South Korea will avoid starting anything because (IIRC) Seoul and most of the population are within chemical artillery shell range of NK. If full war broke out, it'd go very badly for both populations.

The entire situation on the Korean peninsula is incredibly tragic.

The situation in Korea is akin to a Mexican standoff. Except its been going on for so long that both sides have developed dead-man switches on their triggers, have had time to bring people in on each side with their guns holstered that MAY come out.

The only difference is that NK is slowly starving to death because instead of focusing on building an IV drip line to stay nourished like SK did, it decided to upgrade the bullet in its gun and insult all the holstered guns in the room.

The thing to remember is that North Korea is crazy, but they aren't stupid. They know what would happen if they actually started a war. Instead they provoke these instances for internal and international political gain (not necessarily for the country, but certainly for the NK leadership).

But the other thing to remember is that wars sometimes happen even when nobody wants it. At each step, as long as the cost of looking weak is greater than the slightly increased risk of war, no-one will back down. They fire shells at a test location, you fire shells in reply. They engage in aggressive recon into a no-fly zone, you shoot their fighter down. They don't tolerate the deaths of their servicemen and retaliate, and before long there's artillery landing in Seoul, and millions of NKs using the chaos to escape into China.

sebster wrote:The thing to remember is that North Korea is crazy, but they aren't stupid. They know what would happen if they actually started a war. Instead they provoke these instances for internal and international political gain (not necessarily for the country, but certainly for the NK leadership).

And there you have it. Kim Jong Il is more than a bit off his rocker but like most dictators he's not really interested in starting a potentially pitched war, he'd rather just hold onto what he's got. So once in a while they pull some crazy stunt like this, get some attention, let the little psycho feel important and then go back to not really doing much. Neither side really gives a damn about taking over the peninsula.

I just wonder how bad things are going to have to get in the north before even the military bails on Mad Kim. That would most certainly be the end of his reign.

Why do you think the military is against it? Why do you think Kim is anything but a figurehead at this point? The post Kim fight for power is already on.

The thing is, right now with Kim their positions are relatively secure, they get to live in relative comfort, and with a great deal of power.

If Kim was the least bit intelligent he'd make a habit out of having any general who got just a bit too uppity and a bit to brave shot in the back of the head immediately ensuring that he was mostly surrounded with functional yes-men and cowards.

How come the South Koreans haven't moved their capital from Seoul to some place safer, futher away from the border? They have had plenty of time to do it, in 50 years.

GG

All of North Korea's problems, from famine to overpopulation, would remain following a coup against Kim. In fact, in addition to that, you could tack on political chaos. There is no easy way to resolve the situation, and it certainly isn't anything I'd want control of if I happened to be a part of it.

About the only thing Kim could do to jeopardize his position would be to target military staff. Nothing else will perk up the old survival instinct quite like having your commanding officer shot for being competent. Though whether that will breed cowardice, or defiance is a matter of the people in question.

Tyyr wrote:

sebster wrote:The thing to remember is that North Korea is crazy, but they aren't stupid. They know what would happen if they actually started a war. Instead they provoke these instances for internal and international political gain (not necessarily for the country, but certainly for the NK leadership).

And there you have it. Kim Jong Il is more than a bit off his rocker but like most dictators he's not really interested in starting a potentially pitched war, he'd rather just hold onto what he's got. So once in a while they pull some crazy stunt like this, get some attention, let the little psycho feel important and then go back to not really doing much. Neither side really gives a damn about taking over the peninsula.

Jackpot . German unification must have been a real eye opener for Koreans. The cost of integrating DDR to BRD was staggering even considering that East Germany was considered to have a pretty decent economy by eastern standards. Does anyone seriously believe that the younger generation of South Koreans have any interest in absorbing a country that is by some calculation 50 times poorer than ROK?

So both sides play the political game, occasionally rattle some sabers and wait for a solution to present itself.

generalgrog wrote:How come the South Koreans haven't moved their capital from Seoul to some place safer, futher away from the border? They have had plenty of time to do it, in 50 years.

You try moving a city that's half your country's entire population. Seoul has the 2nd biggest metro area population in the world, I believe. It's huge. Sure, it was smaller 50 years ago, but it probably still represented a similarly massive chunk of the population and S. Korea has only become a wealthy country in the past three decades or so. Where are the resources to move an entire city going to come from?

Edit: Kim Jong-Il is nuts, but he's also crazy like a fox. He's not interested in war even a little...he just wants to retain power, and every saber-rattling he's ever done has been done with that in mind. That regime has been amazing at getting concessions and aid that way. Really, proximity to Seoul is the only major card he has to play, and he and his father have used that to keep power for how many decades now? It's actually kind of impressive in a completely loathsome, awful, tragic way.

generalgrog wrote:How come the South Koreans haven't moved their capital from Seoul to some place safer, futher away from the border? They have had plenty of time to do it, in 50 years.

GG

I am sure moving New York City or DC would go over well, since, you know, they got attacked and all.

Altered_Soul wrote:

generalgrog wrote:How come the South Koreans haven't moved their capital from Seoul to some place safer, futher away from the border? They have had plenty of time to do it, in 50 years.

GG

I am sure moving New York City or DC would go over well, since, you know, they got attacked and all.

OK so, first of all, south korea is maybe the size of Florida? And seoul was hardly the size of NY in 1960. Not to mention that it wouldn't have to be done in 8 hrs or less. They could have started in 1960 and been finished by 19whatever.

GG

Or why not take another increasingly common route and purpose build a new city to be a capital as so many other nations have done?

generalgrog wrote:

Altered_Soul wrote:

generalgrog wrote:How come the South Koreans haven't moved their capital from Seoul to some place safer, futher away from the border? They have had plenty of time to do it, in 50 years.

GG

I am sure moving New York City or DC would go over well, since, you know, they got attacked and all.

OK so, first of all, south korea is maybe the size of Florida? And seoul was hardly the size of NY in 1960. Not to mention that it wouldn't have to be done in 8 hrs or less. They could have started in 1960 and been finished by 19whatever.

GG

They were protected by Uncle Sam. Its ok, Uncle Sam will come and die for us while we rebuild our economy and sell them lots of stuff.
This is all screwed up. It should be North Korea thats terrified South Korea comes for them, with a technologically advanced military based upon an economy 10-50x better than NK's.

generalgrog wrote:
OK so, first of all, south korea is maybe the size of Florida? And seoul was hardly the size of NY in 1960. Not to mention that it wouldn't have to be done in 8 hrs or less. They could have started in 1960 and been finished by 19whatever.

GG

Yeah, just because Seoul is in a smaller country means that its has a insignificant population! How could I ever have been so misguided to assume that in 1960, they wouldn't have A) the miraculous foresight that the border would still be contested and that NK would have a degrading communist government with access to biological weapons of mass destruction and B) the realization that 1/3rd the size of NYC immediately after a large scale war is qualification for "hardly" the same size?

Gee-whiz, it should have been easy moving such small numbers of precognitive people to a completely different totally undeveloped city!

I sure do feel smarter now.

Altered_Soul wrote:
Gee-whiz, it should have been easy moving such small numbers of precognitive people to a completely different totally undeveloped city!

I sure do feel smarter now.

I never said it would be easy. But yeah I get your point. :-)

GG

Seoul has a deep and long cultural significance as well. Also RoK has had their own history of military rule. It is a scary situation and one I am glad I am not involved in.

A-P wrote:

Tyyr wrote:

sebster wrote:The thing to remember is that North Korea is crazy, but they aren't stupid. They know what would happen if they actually started a war. Instead they provoke these instances for internal and international political gain (not necessarily for the country, but certainly for the NK leadership).

And there you have it. Kim Jong Il is more than a bit off his rocker but like most dictators he's not really interested in starting a potentially pitched war, he'd rather just hold onto what he's got. So once in a while they pull some crazy stunt like this, get some attention, let the little psycho feel important and then go back to not really doing much. Neither side really gives a damn about taking over the peninsula.

Jackpot . German unification must have been a real eye opener for Koreans. The cost of integrating DDR to BRD was staggering even considering that East Germany was considered to have a pretty decent economy by eastern standards. Does anyone seriously believe that the younger generation of South Koreans have any interest in absorbing a country that is by some calculation 50 times poorer than ROK?

So both sides play the political game, occasionally rattle some sabers and wait for a solution to present itself.

The language difference between North and South Korea is staggering. Though North Koreans can understand South Koreans due to a lot of black market South Korean TV show (particularly Drama) videos, South Koreans have a hard time with the politically charged slang of the 1950s. Plus, I think ROK is about 1000 times more wealthy than the North. The North has feth all.

Kim Jong Il is suspected of having pancreatic Cancer. Yes, the big "K". His secessor will probably be his son, Kim Nam Sung (I think that's his name), the one who showed up in Tokyo a few years ago to "go to Disneyland" (duhhh- OK). KJI will probably be dead within a year and there will be some kind of secession crisis. But, even if there were to be a coup d'etat and pro ROK generals seized the reigns of power, China would invade (use any euphenism you want - the PLA would enter North Korea) and set-up their own newer, brighter, shinnier vassal state as there is NO WAY China would let the North unify with the South without a fight. If the South absorbed the North, China would have to deal with an ally of the United States and a plethora of US bases south of a border that the US had pushed to 60 years earlier. A new united Korea would have to be politically neutral - but I don't think Japan or the US would like that.

North Korea is a blackhole. Look at a map of Earth at night and you'll see that there is no light there. Poor guys.

Apparently his son was sent to Switzerland (IIRC) for boarding school for a short time. He was under an assumed name and things were hush-hush, but I think he confided to a classmate(s) that he was KJI's son. I think they said he was really into the NBA, lol. There's an article about it out there if you search for it.

Anyway, should the kid somehow retain power -- and I think it's likely KJI's done a lot of work on that front to ensure it happens -- it'll be interesting to see what happens next. Certainly the situation could even get worse.

If he's smart he'll take out a couple million from the treasury and disappear. Riding that country into the ground is a losing proposition.

Tyyr wrote:If he's smart he'll take out a couple million from the treasury and disappear. Riding that country into the ground is a losing proposition.

A couple million what?