Is North Korea really a problem?

[imrunningthismonkeyfarm]

On 18 April 2017 at 1:46 AM, and then said:

Actually, shielding from EMP is relatively simple IF a country wants to do it.  The problem with NK and it's corpulent Caesar, is that they are also working on submarine launched nukes.  They have about 70 submarines (really?) but I don't think many would be capable of a missile launch.  The issue is that it would only take ONE.  They could even slip one in on a container ship with the truck trailer containers on deck.  It could be detonated in a port or they could erect a launcher and send the thing on a high arc and detonate it at altitude.  BOOM!  It's lights out on the east or west coast and then the power grid might well collapse under a cascading failure.  I don't want to see millions of North or South Koreans die but if my choice is to risk the death of millions of Americans in their place, that's a non-starter.  China has the ability to bring him down and they'd better get busy.

Yes it does only take ONE.. Maybe the one they've been warning us about if Pakistan, India or Saudi Arabia ever become unstable. There's PLENTY of groups that would do it in a heartbeat so why hasn't it happened already? Because it's obviously no walk in the park that's why. There's endless possibilities as you pointed out many methods and many routes (though I'm sure there's already sanctions and limits to South Koreas shipping abilities).

And the choice is simple: America returns to their part of the world and stops their warmongering with Russia,China, Iran, Sputh Korea and Syria. That would result in ZERO deaths at the hands of Americans. This beats your version hands down.

We should ALL concentrate on TERRORISM.

[imrunningthismonkeyfarm]

On 18 April 2017 at 9:24 AM, and then said:

I guess I missed the threat to destroy Syria, Iran or NK.  Could it be that you are exaggerating a wee bit?  Are you saying that Kim is blustering because of Trump?  This guy has been blustering for years, just like his father before him.  He wants some more goodies like his daddy got from Bill Clinton.  Trump does what Trump wants to do.  Kind of like most presidents do. I have no need to defend him.  When some nut-job with nukes begins to regularly threaten your country, get back to me and we can talk about which options seem appropriate and what constitutes an an acceptable degree of "counter-bluster".

Laughable comments. Like the previous presidents have said: Saddam Hussain must go.. We know how that ended. Gadaffi must go.. We know how that ended... I say ended but it hasn't ended has it? No there's still suffering and many more years of it in both countries. And then there's Syria. Assad must go??? WTF? 'Nut jobs with nukes' you say hahaha.

Taking this into consideration I'd say Kim Wrogun has a bloody good reason to defend his country in any was he sees fit. And his country is fully behind him because they have seen what the past 'Nutjobs' have left behind around the world. How many wars has North Korea fought in in the last 5 decades compared to America?

Its no secret why America picks on non nuclear countries and this time, the same as the Iran situation, America should back off. 

[Farmer77]

On 4/21/2017 at 0:32 PM, Merc14 said:

maybe you should educate yourself on how we got here before predicting Trump's failure.  BTW, Now Russia is joining in on the condemnation of Lil' Kim for threatening nuclear attack.  So, Trump is the first president to get both Russia and China to condemn a North Korean act and trigger mobilization of their armed forces on the Korean border yet your prediction is NK won't take him seriously.  How did you arrive at that conclusion?  Certainly not based on the evidence as Trump is the first president to ever get NK allies to turn against them.  

Trumpians are spinning China sending troops to NK's border as being a show of force in support of trump but the reporting from S. Korea is that they are mostly medical units preparing for the potential fallout from trump lunacy. 

So basically the chinese president came away from his meeting with the trumpster so afraid the nutjob  is so unpredictable that he will actually preemptively attack N. Korea and decided to send troops to the border to deal with the inevitable fallout. 

[.ZZ.]

35 minutes ago, Farmer77 said:

Trumpians are spinning China sending troops to NK's border as being a show of force in support of trump but the reporting from S. Korea is that they are mostly medical units preparing for the potential fallout from trump lunacy.

So basically the chinese president came away from his meeting with the trumpster so afraid the nutjob is so unpredictable that he will actually preemptively attack N. Korea and decided to send troops to the border to deal with the inevitable fallout. 

Just can't resist it can you?

We get it amigo, you can't stand the man. How about just putting your insults and name calling on a loop?

[imrunningthismonkeyfarm]

On 18 April 2017 at 9:38 PM, Dark_Grey said:

Install the most secular yet minority leader we can (a majority leader would slaughter the minorities). He must understand Islam and not be willing to take crap from any rebel factions. Unfortunately, democracy and Islam are largely incompatible so trying to instill Western values hasn't worked before and it won't work now. Islamic nations need an iron fist at the helm to squash rebel/radical factions as they appear...we have learned a lot from decades of changing regimes so let's put that practical knowledge to use. Opinions, opinions, my uneducated opinions...

 

Agreed and well said.. But.. The Middle East had strong leaders who ruled with an iron fist and we destroyed them. This is where it all went wrong. And now it's irreversible. It took a long time to get Islam under control and now the west has ruined it.

Because we have laws to abide by and ISIS (& all the other groups) don't we can never beat them. When we were at war with Germany we exiled ze Germans but the west has now become too soft.

We should be much much tougher. Either keep spending hundreds of millions in servailance  on these Islamists.. Or deport them and their families & friends period.

[Farmer77]

Just now, .ZZ. said:

Just can't resist it can you?

We get it amigo, you can't stand the man. How about just putting your insults and name calling on a loop?

Oh no I really cant , especially in this thread when he's juxtaposed with pudgy kim and ill be damned if there doesn't seem to be more similarities than differences.  

 

[Space Commander Travis]

1 hour ago, Farmer77 said:

Trumpians are spinning China sending troops to NK's border as being a show of force in support of trump but the reporting from S. Korea is that they are mostly medical units preparing for the potential fallout from trump lunacy. 

150,000 or however many it is? 

[imrunningthismonkeyfarm]

1 hour ago, Farmer77 said:

Trumpians are spinning China sending troops to NK's border as being a show of force in support of trump but the reporting from S. Korea is that they are mostly medical units preparing for the potential fallout from trump lunacy. 

So basically the chinese president came away from his meeting with the trumpster so afraid the nutjob  is so unpredictable that he will actually preemptively attack N. Korea and decided to send troops to the border to deal with the inevitable fallout. 

Yh I noticed how Trumpet has changed his tune from 'China is raping our country ' to ' I lick ya boom boom Mr Chin'.

And China fell for it. Ha. Suckers!

[The Caspian Hare]

1 hour ago, Farmer77 said:

Trumpians are spinning China sending troops to NK's border as being a show of force in support of trump but the reporting from S. Korea is that they are mostly medical units preparing for the potential fallout from trump lunacy. 

So basically the chinese president came away from his meeting with the trumpster so afraid the nutjob  is so unpredictable that he will actually preemptively attack N. Korea and decided to send troops to the border to deal with the inevitable fallout. 

 

Probably more significant (and confirmable) that they turned back those coal shipments some weeks ago, coupled with earlier North Korea state television rhetoric towards implied Chinese collusion with the US that does seem to signal a major change in relations.

150K troops in the area even if true isn't necessarily meaningful anyway since there are always troops operating in China's NE theater command. Whether NK collapses due to war or internal reasons I would expect China to seize some kind of military buffer zone to deal with refugees and keep the ROK at arms length, which is not necessarily unreasonable IMO

[Farmer77]

Just now, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

150,000 or however many it is? 

Surely they're not all medics but in the event of an attack theres gonna be 20 something million Koreans flooding towards that chinese border and the chance for  freedom. I would want that 150k+ troops there to maintain order and deal with the refugees as well if i were China. 

[imrunningthismonkeyfarm]

27 minutes ago, .ZZ. said:

Just can't resist it can you?

We get it amigo, you can't stand the man. How about just putting your insults and name calling on a loop?

I don't like the man either anymore. Trump could be the anti-Christ ?

[Farmer77]

Just now, The Russian Hare said:

 

Probably more significant (and confirmable) that they turned back those coal shipments some weeks ago, coupled with earlier North Korea state television rhetoric towards implied Chinese collusion with the US that does seem to signal a major change in relations.

150K troops in the area even if true isn't necessarily meaningful anyway since there are always troops operating in China's NE theater command. Whether NK collapses due to war or internal reasons I would expect China to seize some kind of military buffer zone to deal with refugees and keep the ROK at arms length, which is not necessarily unreasonable IMO

I have been somewhat confused about the coal embargo, day before yesterday a half dozen coal ships arrived in China but noone knows what was offloaded if anything North Korean ships dock in Chinese port despite coal embargo  

The humanitarian explanation does makes a measure of sense. 

[Space Commander Travis]

28 minutes ago, SNR said:

Agreed and well said.. But.. The Middle East had strong leaders who ruled with an iron fist and we destroyed them. This is where it all went wrong. And now it's irreversible. It took a long time to get Islam under control and now the west has ruined it.

Because we have laws to abide by and ISIS (& all the other groups) don't we can never beat them. When we were at war with Germany we exiled ze Germans but the west has now become too soft.

We should be much much tougher. Either keep spending hundreds of millions in servailance  on these Islamists.. Or deport them and their families & friends period.

That's suspiciously like a Trump policy. Or it would have been if he hadn't found something to distract him (big shiny missiles!) and forgotten all the things he was talking about before he was elected.

[imrunningthismonkeyfarm]

1 minute ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

That's suspiciously like a Trump policy. Or it would have been if he hadn't found something to distract him (big shiny missiles!) and forgotten all the things he was talking about before he was elected.

Yes it's funny how I agreed with a lot of his policies but his post-election stance is un-agreeable. I really wanted to see America great again but it turns out he's just another cog in the American war machine but with a lot of money and now, even more power.. who doesn't care about you, me or the planet.

[Space Commander Travis]

I think one thing that people always seem to overlook is that N. Korea and its insane leader  say that they'd use any weapons at their disposal if they were attacked? That's what people keep seeming to overlook. And considering that America's current leader is unstable, highly unpredictable and given to emotional kneejerk responses, I'm really not sure whether that is completely insane. 

Edited April 23, 2017 by Manfred von Dreidecker

[The Silver Thong]

15 hours ago, Merc14 said:

No, he is a mad man with nuclear weapons and he has nothing to lose. You can pretend all you want but Kim Jong-un is a ticking time bomb that Bill Clinton armed with nuclear weapons.  I listened first hand to Clinton's pronouncement that his $4B payoff would stop nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula and laughed out loud while people like you argued with me.  I said five years till they lit one off but I was wrong, it was three.  

You don`t get it. When I said NK was a distraction it was to demonstrate that the issues inide of the U.S. are much more serious, but we have to pretend there is an enemy and our home is safe. I don`t think NK is a threat and if it truely is deal with just like the U.S. did in the middle east.

[Merc14]

1 hour ago, The Silver Thong said:

You don`t get it. When I said NK was a distraction it was to demonstrate that the issues inide of the U.S. are much more serious, but we have to pretend there is an enemy and our home is safe. I don`t think NK is a threat and if it truely is deal with just like the U.S. did in the middle east.

How long until he nukes S. Korea?  Are you willing to allow that to happen?  If we don't back up S. Korea and Japan then teh Chinese wioll simply allow Kim to solve their problem fro them.  And just what problems are so serious in the US that we should ignore a probable catastrophe 

Edited April 23, 2017 by Merc14

[+susieice]

Kim is now threatening to sink the USS Carl Vinson as it heads to meet up with 2 Japanese destroyers off the Philippines. 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/23/north-korea-threatens-to-strike-us-aircraft-carrier-to-show-militarys-force.html

We should put a big sign on the side, "Somebody stop me!". And everyone blames us!

[+susieice]

They also detained an American citizen who is a professor. He had gone to teach for a few weeks at a university.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/23/asia/american-detained-in-north-korea/index.html

[Astra.]

1 hour ago, susieice said:

They also detained an American citizen who is a professor. He had gone to teach for a few weeks at a university.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/23/asia/american-detained-in-north-korea/index.html

Iv'e just heard this news susie....and the first thought that jumped to mind was he is now finding any excuse to find Westerner's and start using them as hostages. IMO..anybody who is Western (including journalist's) should get out of NK immediately.

[+susieice]

He's threatened the entire Pacific in just the last week or so. I fear this man is way beyond crazy. I'd be almost willing to bet Japan and the Philippines will be threatened by Tuesday. All Westerners should indeed get out of NK, now. Kim is too far gone mentally to risk being anywhere near. 

[Einsteinium]

The US killed off 20-30% of the North Korean population during the Korean war. It is no wonder why they think they need nukes to defend themselves against us. We decimated them, utterly. Imagine having 30% of your population killed off. I honestly cannot blame them for developing nukes. Obviously they should not have them, considering how crazy and backwards their leadership is, but they do have a well founded fear of the US and our tendancy to force regime change and cause chaos and death in places far from our homeland has only served to strengthen their resolve to continue their nuclear weapons program.

The world needs to do something about it, but we cannot just keep using force without a solid political and humanitarian strategy on the back end like the failure in Iraq proves.

[+susieice]

A lot more than that will die if somebody doesn't get Kim under control, and not just N Korean. I fear he's having a meltdown of his own. The Korean war was 70 yrs ago. It's still a crazy and backwards place, like you said. 

[+susieice]

Here's a casualty list for the Korean war.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/world/asia/korean-war-fast-facts/

[DarkHunter]

39 minutes ago, Einsteinium said:

The US killed off 20-30% of the North Korean population during the Korean war. It is no wonder why they think they need nukes to defend themselves against us. We decimated them, utterly. Imagine having 30% of your population killed off. I honestly cannot blame them for developing nukes. Obviously they should not have them, considering how crazy and backwards their leadership is, but they do have a well founded fear of the US and our tendancy to force regime change and cause chaos and death in places far from our homeland has only served to strengthen their resolve to continue their nuclear weapons program.

The world needs to do something about it, but we cannot just keep using force without a solid political and humanitarian strategy on the back end like the failure in Iraq proves.

Do you have a source for this 30% drop in population cause the only source for it that I can find is from globalresearch, a known anti-west website that post almost if not exclusively fake news.

What I have found are multiple sites that had population data on North Korea before and after the Korean war.  Different sites give different values of the North Korean population but it all seems to be around 9.6 to 9.8 million in 1950 and about 8.5 to 8.9 million in 1953.  

A study by South Korea estimated 1.5 million North Korean civilians died in the war.  Once you factor in about 200,000 to 300,000 North Korean soldiers were killed at most you are looking at most 1.8 million North Koreans killed.

Given the demographic data and the South Korean study, both of which are probably off to some extent, you have a lower bound of about 1.1 million killed an a upper bound of 1.8 million killed over the course of the war.  If you put those into percentages it would be between 11% and 19% of the North Korean population killed with the actual percentage being somewhere in between those two values.