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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/11/north-korea-threatens-south-korea-over-christmas-lights-near-border/?test=latestnews

It appears the great leader feels threatened by Christmas lights and Christianity.

"Pyschological warfare", hah! So what in retaliation to this threat by the DPRK the South Koreans are going to dress all their border guards in Santa Clause costumes?

...Honestly I give the North a couple more decades at the most before some serious political change happens. The world can only handle so much craziness.

If I was South Korea I'd be raising Christmas trees all along the boreder after that!

Heh, but you remember what happened last time when they needed to move a tree on the border don't you Castiel?

Wyrmalla wrote:Heh, but you remember what happened last time when they needed to move a tree on the border don't you Castiel?

No, actually! Do enlighten me!

Back when the border was just getting set up there was a tree between two Southern observation posts. The tree would prevent the Soldiers in one post from seing the other, and thus the North were constantly attacking the one close to their lines-pretty much allowing them to saunter into to the South. One day the South got tired of this and sent a team of soldiers to cut down the tree. Inevitably the North took this as a threat and killed the team to a man (and stole their axes). The next week the South and the UN sent out an armoured division accompanied by sappers and a infantry. There's a memorial there now (...not for the tree...though who knows, maybe its a national hero in the North).

Thus how it was that a second Korean war was prevented. Oh its just a regular heartwarming christmas story isn't it?^^

Not exactly. Full story's here; the only casualties were two Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_Murder_Incident

I saw the monument they erected when I visited the DMZ back in 2004.

Read the response, Operation Paul Bunyan.

Those kooky North Koreans. I guess seeing more lights on one "tree" type structure than are probably in their entire country is, in their minds, a huge hit on the whole "North Korea is the best Korea" thing.

Psycological warfare hey? The lights are definitely going to brainwash the entire population

I dont know what Uncle Kim wants to have to explain to his people less: Christianity, festivities or retail.

The Thread started to look crap after I read www.foxnews..

Who ares about what the NK's have to say. If you look at America and quite a few Western Countries, they feel threatened by Islamic and Muslim people that live in their country. Some belive that they shouldn't allow Mosks to be built and that all Muslims should have special codes to let people know their Muslim! or Islamic

guyperson5 wrote:Psycological warfare hey? The lights are definitely going to brainwash the entire population

It's the pattern they blink in, it's sending secret messages straight into your mind!

Also ParatrooperSimon Mosques not Mosks!

I would try and find some sort of exuse, but I got nothing. to true

Why has no one killed that guy yet?

purplefood wrote:Why has no one killed that guy yet?

It would be interesting to see what kind of government it would be after the great leader is gone. Right now North Korea is like a man with nothing left to lose.
The thing that I wonder about is what that daft bastard will try when he realizes his end is near.

Relapse wrote:

purplefood wrote:Why has no one killed that guy yet?

It would be interesting to see what kind of government it would be after the great leader is gone. Right now North Korea is like a man with nothing left to lose.
The thing that I wonder about is what that daft bastard will try when he realizes his end is near.

They've apparently already started moving the cult of personality stuff onto his son.
As for the main topic, South Korea did actually stop putting those lights on around 2003 when relations had improved. Now they've worsened again, I think they're just trying to be annoying

By the way, this is a YouTube video of North Korean propaganda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7G_ZgbBzJ4

The claims that are made are amazing.

Lux_Lucis wrote:

Relapse wrote:

purplefood wrote:Why has no one killed that guy yet?

It would be interesting to see what kind of government it would be after the great leader is gone. Right now North Korea is like a man with nothing left to lose.
The thing that I wonder about is what that daft bastard will try when he realizes his end is near.

They've apparently already started moving the cult of personality stuff onto his son.
As for the main topic, South Korea did actually stop putting those lights on around 2003 when relations had improved. Now they've worsened again, I think they're just trying to be annoying

By the way, this is a YouTube video of North Korean propaganda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7G_ZgbBzJ4

The claims that are made are amazing.

Why is it Propaganda? Look at it this way. Its a country with millions of people who live there. They might look at our western adds as "oooo ahahah western propaganda, ahaha individualism. I think we need to need to respect peoples beliefs and how they choose to think.

If he's seen US televangelists he has good reason. They're just as crazy as the little dictator.

ParatrooperSimon wrote:

Lux_Lucis wrote:

Relapse wrote:

purplefood wrote:Why has no one killed that guy yet?

It would be interesting to see what kind of government it would be after the great leader is gone. Right now North Korea is like a man with nothing left to lose.
The thing that I wonder about is what that daft bastard will try when he realizes his end is near.

They've apparently already started moving the cult of personality stuff onto his son.
As for the main topic, South Korea did actually stop putting those lights on around 2003 when relations had improved. Now they've worsened again, I think they're just trying to be annoying

By the way, this is a YouTube video of North Korean propaganda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7G_ZgbBzJ4

The claims that are made are amazing.

Why is it Propaganda? Look at it this way. Its a country with millions of people who live there. They might look at our western adds as "oooo ahahah western propaganda, ahaha individualism. I think we need to need to respect peoples beliefs and how they choose to think.

Hmmmmm... Why do I think it's propaganda? Maybe because a major claim of that video is that Kim Jong-il can start storms by shouting? I know it maybe crazy Western imperialist propaganda, but last I checked it's not possible to do that. But hey, maybe I'm just not respecting their beliefs? Maybe if I really believed, gave myself up to the socialist cause, maybe then I too could create storms by shouting.

I don't think you understood my post at all. I never said if you believe in Kim Jong-il you would be able to shout storms. Get a grip mate. All I said was before people start spouting the word "Propaganda". They should have a think about peoples morals, beliefs and such.

And at the moment Socialism is looking at lot better then Capitalism.

But it is propaganda. By all definitions of the term, it is propaganda. That's why I used the term propaganda. You asked me why it's propaganda, and I told you why. Would you like me to crack out an academic definition? Because I've literally just written a paper on it.

As for socialism, the ideals are lovely, but the theory misses out a very important factor - human nature.

Human Nature...emmm no, but if that were true, the same would go for capitalism, the strive to be better and higher on the social & economical status. Human Nature mixed in with Capitalism only creates more problems. Even now because of this. There are less rich people and more poor. If countries ran on a socialist government. That whole spectrum of poor and rich would be almost non-existent (not totally, but almost)

And yes, I would love to read your view on propaganda!

Ok, I'm not entirely sure I get your point, for some reason you seem to have put full-stops in the middle of sentences, but based on what I think you're trying to say:
Capitalism by its nature must have winners and losers, which is why poor and rich exist. For some people to become rich, others must labour in menial jobs and be poor (poor being relative, in a capitalist system there will always be someone at the bottom of the pile), which is why as minimum wage laws and improved working conditions have been enforced in Western countries manufacturing has migrated to areas with cheaper labour, such as Asia. Thus not everyone can be rich. Capitalism actually thrives off the worst parts of human nature, greed, selfish etc. It's much easier to make money if you don't care about other people.
Now in those countries that have tried socialism, the socialist system is failed by human nature, in the form of corruption and often political infighting and factionalism. As well as this socialism effectively requires that everyone agrees (people generally get peeved when they spend ages growing crops and then they're given to someone else who they don't know), socialist systems don't deal well when people don't agree, which is why socialist regimes have had a habit of tyrannical suppression of dissent.
That's why human nature gets in the way, people don't agree, other people want to keep their stuff to themselves etc.

As for propaganda... Well I wasn't offering you my view, I was offering an accepted academic definition, which I'll do my best to give.
Propaganda is the presentation of information in a biased with the intention of transmitting a specific message, usually that of a specific ideology, with the intent of provoking an emotional and not a rational reaction from the recipient.

In relation to my earlier post (for fun I might add, I didn't realise that the patently ridiculous claims contained within it would cause such controversy), the video I posted I believe clearly fits this definition, which is why I used the term propaganda. Arguably a lot of Western media also fits this definition, but as a rule is not placed in the category of propaganda because you get to a point where you have an effectively infinitely expanding inventory, completely devaluing the term propaganda. There are other criticisms as well, but that's the main one.

Now my objection was not to your argument about Western media, to some extent I agree that a lot of Western media can be seen as propaganda-like, my objection was to your knee-jerk reaction to the word propaganda. You somehow translated my use of the word propaganda to me claiming that that video represents the entirety of North Korea. I cannot see how that video has anything to do with how you 'think we need to need to respect peoples beliefs and how they choose to think'. As I've stated before, the claims are patently absurd.

Now, I think this is a pretty extensive post, and hopefully I've clarified my own position and that of large numbers of academics. I'd rather not continue this argument, because it seems quite pointless.

purplefood wrote:Why has no one killed that guy yet?

Because it's better to have a near-senile idiot in charge than someone who actually knows what they're doing?

infinite_array wrote:

purplefood wrote:Why has no one killed that guy yet?

Because it's better to have a near-senile idiot in charge than someone who actually knows what they're doing?

I don't think anyone knows what they're doing in North Korea...

Of course there's people in North Korea who know what they're doing... They're usually the ones who manage to escape..