North Korea

the US has nuked its own country hundreds of times since nuking Japan, in nuclear tests like these, since at least the 50s. nuclear test sites out west made mushroom clouds that could be seen from Las Vegas hotels in the 60s. they told everyone it was safe and continue to do so. there has been a planned atomic bomb detonation proposed as recently as 2006 (cancelled due in large part by activists).

i grew up in Cold War era when the memory of school safety videos telling you what to do if a nuke drops were propaganda that raised an entire generation. the threat of nuclear annihilation is a real part of the American psyche. part of the Cold War paranoia has always been that the US would drop it again.

During the 1950s, the mushroom clouds from the 100 atmospheric tests could be seen for almost 100 mi (160 km). The city of Las Vegas experienced noticeable seismic effects, and the distant mushroom clouds, which could be seen from the downtown hotels, became tourist attractions. St. George, Utah, received the brunt of the fallout of above-ground nuclear testing in the Yucca Flats/Nevada Test Site. Winds routinely carried the fallout of these tests directly through St. George and southern Utah. Marked increases in cancers, such as leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers, were reported from the mid-1950s through 1980. The vast majority—828 of the 928 total nuclear tests—were underground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site

it has become normalized in the US through politics and pop culture and this is why we feel we are the experts on this. i also feel it is a convenient and empty threat, and has been for generations now. look at Vietnam look at Russia in Afghanistan, look at WMD's in Iraq, these were mostly territory skirmished portrayed to be global existential threats. it's also promotion for the US military budget. think of the expensive planes we can buy off this paranoia.

Again, perfectly valid points. We are where we are for many reasons and thanks to many mistakes, many our own fault. But it still doesn't really offer any solutions. Ideally, a return to talks seems like the smartest move, however unlikely right now, but it still begs the question of 'what does North Korea want, and can talks give that to them?"

For that matter, what can NK offer the world/USA? Would NK give up their nuclear program at this point, given that it guarantees them security? Unlikely. Which backs everyone into a corner.

NK is a nuclear-armed nation. It has been for quite some time now. In spite of international isolation and economic sanctions it is nearly finished developing nuclear ICBMs. The biggest reason the world continues to pretend that this is reversible is the fear that accepting NK's nuclear status will break down the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

At some point it's going to make overwhelming sense to bring NK in from the cold, so as to acquire better leverage over NK to not sell their weapons and technology to half a dozen countries that would love to buy their way into the nuclear club. As it is, NK has little to lose and much to gain by vending their capability to others. Like it or not, we're going to have to bow to reality and let NK win something tangible. The game has to be put on a footing other than war-or-no-war, because they won that game already.

good thing twitter has a policy against promoting violence this will surely be taken down any minute pic.twitter.com/6qMyshzvBz

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) September 5, 2017

For that matter, what can NK offer the world/USA? Would NK give up their nuclear program at this point, given that it guarantees them security? Unlikely. Which backs everyone into a corner.

there are other examples but maybe china is the best one--the prc and the us were mostly hostile to each other, getting into each others business in southeast asia, china had nuclear weapons and was on the brink of civil war and complete chaos for a couple decades. the us begins to withdraw from southeast asia and china is at odds with the soviet union, both sides take a risk, the global balance of power is shifting. the consensus in the united states shifted from red china terror to china as a power that had to be dealt with (at a time when america was in retreat in asia and wanted to talk). the us had similar options as they do now, i think. they could have done nothing! and hopefully let things sort themselves out and maybe the soviet union and china would work things out or the conflict would tie them up for decades (on the border and in southeast asia, which could have or did develop into a china soviet proxy war). but yeah i mean sino-us rapprochement wasn't like a charity project or the us or china capitulating to longtime foes and it was led by evil and pragmatic men, and it was basically a good thing.

so, missile tests and nuclear tests will definitely continue. north korea in 2017 is easier to deal with than china was in the 70s. the time for talk directly at high levels between the us and dprk is probably now.

The U.S. side stated: Peace in Asia and peace in the world requires efforts both to reduce immediate tensions and to eliminate the basic causes of conflict. The United States will work for a just and secure peace: just, because it fulfills the aspirations of peoples and nations for freedom and progress; secure, because it removes the danger of foreign aggression. The United States supports individual freedom and social progress for all the peoples of the world, free of outside pressure or intervention. The United States believes that the effort to reduce tensions is served by improving communication between countries that have different ideologies so as to lessen the risks of confrontation through accident, miscalculation or misunderstanding.

Ah, we're saved.

Dennis Rodman emerges with an offer to "straighten things out" between his 2 friends Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump https://t.co/2jLfZrktoE

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) September 6, 2017

lol @ "even if *Trump*"

So, instead of Ping-Pong diplomacy, we can have weirdo diplomacy? Sounds good to me!

More like Ding-Dong diplomacy if Trumps involved.

If we can get Kim, Rod and Trump in the room together, we may finally have an iconic image that supplants dogs playing parker.

Rod? Please call him by his correct nickname: The Worm.

I cal Kim "Rod," Rodman I call "Trump" and Trump I call "Kim," keep up.

iirc we had a whole thread about this, "i'm a cool rodman detente in the DPRK" or words to that general effect

Why send just Rodman when you can send a team? A ... double team.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--s2c5ZxUC--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/jqfxvvm824ybspt1uuti.jpg

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/05/reading-trump-tweets-in-pyongyang/ adam cathcart on what kim jong un probably sees and what appears in the dprk press regarding trump's statements on north korea. this is fascinating.

https://www.ft.com/content/ff7754b0-9221-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb7f0 China’s “expert community” is the best window into the country’s largely opaque foreign policy machine. Gradually this year, voices sympathetic to North Korea have disappeared from newspaper op-eds and academic journals.

http://www.38north.org/2017/09/punggye090517/ satellite images!

my contact says his associate comes out of these internal meetings feeling there is significant chance of conflict. he put it at 75%.

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) September 12, 2017

yeah but that's just unnamed conservative think tanks. i assume they've been cooking up plans for attacking and occupying north korea since before most of us were born.

see also OPLAN 5027: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oplan-5027.htm

Leo Byrne reported in North Korea News that US and South Korean defense chiefs agreed on pre-emptive strike plans on North Korea’s nuclear capable sites and weapons during a security meeting in Seoul 09 November 2015. Representatives from Seoul and Washington said a “4D” (detect, disrupt, destroy and defend) operational plan would be put in place to counter the DPRK’s growing nuclear capabilities. “Such planning is pretty standard. Military forces of most countries create hypothetical plans for various scenarios so that they have them ready if and when needed and are not caught unprepared,” NK News military analyst John Grisafi said. South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter added there will be special emphasis on using reconnaissance and high altitude drones under the new plans. “Securing and or disabling nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction would be critical to prevent North Korea from using these and/or preventing them from falling into control of another part (a foreign power or rogue forces),” Grisafi added.

Operational Plan (OPLAN) 5015, the joint strategic plan for war-fighting that was signed in November, 2015 by the military establishments of both countries, envisions limited warfare with an emphasis on preemptive strikes on strategic targets in North Korea and “decapitation raids” to exterminate North Korean leaders. It is considered to be a more offensive-oriented plan, making escalation more readily possible than its predecessor, OPLAN 5027, which emphasizes forward-defense postures.

In tandem with these plans exists Concept Plan (CONPLAN) 5029, which focuses on “sudden change” crisis scenarios in the DPRK that range from the possibility of revolt within its borders, mass internal displacement of people and out-migration from the DPRK, the need for tracking and securing the North’s nuclear weapons and materials, and social or environmental chaos that require immediate humanitarian and technical assistance. The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division (2ID) and a brigade-level unit of the ROK Army (ROKA) have been reorganized to work as a combined division to destroy the DPRK’s weapons of mass destruction in the case of regime collapse or other major crisis emanating from North Korea.

i asked myself what the point of posting that was. i don't think it's a huge deal that right wing think tanks are drawing up plans to occupy north korea. the u.s. military has had great plans, the best plans in hand for a long time. i've never been in a conservative think tank but if i was i'd tell everyone: hey, guys, let's just keep a huge military presence in east asia and not gamble it on occupying north korea unless things go really crazy, like artillery bombardment of seoul crazy.

Famouos Eisenhower quote goes here.

Any OPLAN or CONPLAN jointly executed would require ROK concurrence, so none of that seems likely to happen, as dylannn points out.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-japan-wrestler/japans-dennis-rodman-ex-wrestler-inoki-urges-lower-tensions-over-north-korea-idUSKCN1BO12T?il=0

on japanese news broadcasts today, it was inoki and then south korea's missiles.

http://nationalpost.com/news/world/seoul-readies-decapitation-unit-to-keep-north-korea-nervous-about-developing-nuclear-arsenal

Last week, President Donald Trump agreed to lift payload limits under a decades-old treaty, allowing South Korea to build more powerful ballistic missiles. The United States helped South Korea build its first ballistic missiles in the 1970s, but in return, imposed restrictions to try to prevent a regional arms race.

“We can now build ballistic missiles that can slam through deep underground bunkers where Kim Jong Un would be hiding,” Shin said. “The idea is how we can instill the kind of fear a nuclear weapon would — but do so without a nuke. In the medieval system like North Korea, Kim Jong Un’s life is as valuable as hundreds of thousands of ordinary people whose lives would be threatened in a nuclear attack.”

South Korea has now introduced three arms-buildup programs — Kill Chain; the Korea Air and Missile Defense program; and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation initiative, which includes the decapitation unit.

great.

Can our Goverment stop threatening a nuclear war?

"We're out of time" on #DPRK and "we're out of road," says Gen. McMaster. "There is a military option." pic.twitter.com/gFSvPivPnz

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) September 15, 2017

What is Nikki Haley's face doing

smelling for prey

this would be "juche bird": an end-to-end test of a north korean nuclear missile that, one hopes, doesn't kill anyone on accident https://t.co/HlvO5ZbY8J

— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) September 22, 2017

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-41356973

One for all you dotards out there

Never one to shy from misogyny and racism, North Korea has called former president Barack Obama a "wicked black monkey", while the dress sense of Mr Kim and Mr Trump's common enemy, Hillary Clinton, has been mocked as resembling both a "primary schoolgirl" and "a pensioner gone shopping".

"Rocket man" is pretty mild compared to this stuff, I guess. Would appreciate it if the administration would stop pursuing a strategy of escalation though. There's not much more to say on this topic.

idk the whole "when they go low, we go lower" strategy won him the office, could work in a nuclear standoff

"Pensioner gone shopping" otm though tbf

damn, north korea mercilessly dunking on trump

stop pursuing a strategy of escalation

the problem with escalating your rhetoric is that, while it seems like words are a weapon so cheap you can spend them lavishly, eventually you've backed yourself into a corner where you must act and your rhetoric has paved your path in only one direction.

https://nyti.ms/2ygg3zm

It said her successor, John Kerry, was a “wolf” with a “hideous lantern jaw.”

Ok lmao... I know it's good we changed the thread title but still

The big difference between past insults is KJU responding directly in a first person address instead of through the propaganda arm, people have noted that that's unprecedented. It seems bad that the Trump admin has shown no interest in descalating on their end. Have they already talked themselves into a corner? It seems like other politicians/leaders need to prioritize the imperative of reminding the public about the stakes of a nuclear war so there's pressure to descalate.

these sanctions 99% of dems support are one of the primary drivers of tensions and provide Trump w/ moral cover to cont. threatening them

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) September 24, 2017

Lol what planet

tree, i'm procrastinating writing a book review so i looked up something i read a while ago about the ape/monkey thing. i think it's wrong to say NORTH KOREA called him a wicked black monkey--like, there were american politicians that used second tier racial slurs against your sitting president--but just a korean guy, "a metal worker named Kang Hyuk." maybe kang hyuk was a huge racist, i don't know. http://sinonk.com/2017/02/23/unstable-rhetoric-few-additions-some-changes-lots-of-omissions/ this is from martin weiser's discussion of misread north korean dispatches here. bush got more monkey comparisons. i think obama got off light, compared to other american figures. north korean metal workers might be living in a racist nationalist ethnostate that uses dehumanizing propaganda but they probably aren't calling obama a monkey for the same reason that american metal workers do. see also: https://www.nknews.org/2014/06/the-imbecile-the-lecher-the-harlot-and-the-monkey/ which weiser points out some problems with but is still worth reading.

i would say that probably it's important to remember that the insults thrown back and forth by kim jong un and donald trump are pretty unimportant. i think the end result, if they don't talk but continue talking shit will be at worst a hardening of the status quo in east asia. my money is still on them settling out of court.

Finally, the question of time looms large. How this rhythm and progression or regression of events can be sustained for another three years of a Trump presidency is hard to fathom. On Kim Jong-un’s desk, a calendar sat open, a symbol of the heaviness of each day of this confrontation, too, but also a reminder that the North Korean leader — and his missile program — may last far longer than the septuagenarian Trump, or his lethargic Secretary of State. But even if Trump were impeached tomorrow, the stand-off would continue, as Mike Pence reminded us in his leather bomber jacket, and very strong words, along the DMZ so very long ago, during the April crisis of 2017.

http://sinonk.com/2017/09/21/kim-jong-un-trump-reply/

I read this on my commute this morning.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/what-its-like-to-escape-from-north-korea.html

you should all read it too.

this book also goes into some depth on this and is pretty harrowing

https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Leader-Escape-North-Korea/dp/1476766568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507646878&sr=8-1&keywords=dear+leader

if you were given the opportunity to travel to north korea as a journalist (invited as a journalist not sneaking in on a hipster gonzo tour group)...
what would your goal be? what would you ask to see?
if it's nearly impossible to do "serious journalism," is it still worth going? are you a serious journalist? could you write a quirky travel guide to pyongyang instead?

i think writing frankly about the artificiality of the state-sponsored tour is worth doing. i think we've all read versions of that story from journalists who have visited north korea, and it speaks volumes

i think at this point i would try to write about a narrow topic, something light, "tongue-in-cheek"? and just write about the process, the absurd process of trying to write a dining guide to pyongyang or whatever, a superficially positive piece on new district ryomyong but about the absurdity of the whole thing? you know?
the only stumbling block at the moment is financing at least one reporting trip to north korea.

I can’t imagine giving a shit about a “quirky” guide to anywhere in the DPRK. I would prefer my serious journalists hang out in Chinese border towns and find out how many people die trying to come across (or never find the right South Korean church benefactor and end up disappearing)

i have an invitation and i'd like to go but i can't really justify it, especially with ideas like that.