North Korea

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.

easier to get a dprk invitation as a journalist than to get a chinese j-2 visa these days, tell you what.

This is so wrong on so many levels. So, yeah, odds of war are increasing. https://t.co/SUbPtoWjPz

— Steve Saidemonster (@smsaideman) October 19, 2017

So, 'POTUS wont accept North Korean nuke armed ICBMs', eh? God, this is such a crappy way to attempt to impose your will through threats. The only way the USA could physically stop NK from having nuke armed ICBMs would be to nuke NK with our ICBMs.

Waving that threat around is incredibly stupid and irresponsible, because of the three possible outcomes, 1) NK accedes to your demands, 2) you nuke the shit out of NK, or 3) you meekly back down from your threat, the outcome you are seeking is by far the least likely to occur.

God. The books written about McMaster, Kelly and Mattis could end up making McNamara and Kissinger look like fucking humanitarians.

McNamara and Kissinger weren't spending their time and energy dissuading LBJ and Nixon from interventions in Asia.

Is militarization of the Cabinet a good look? No. But these guys are only hanging around to prevent worse scenarios.

Didn't McMaster write a goddamn book about McNamara and Kissinger fucking up Vietnam

He totally did

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dereliction_of_Duty_(1997_book)

There’s a Jesus Jones song for everything

https://genius.com/Jesus-jones-the-right-decision-lyrics

Is militarization of the Cabinet a good look? No. But these guys are only hanging around to prevent worse scenarios.

There’s a Jesus Jones song for everything

truth-bomb tbh

This is so gross:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/world/asia/north-korean-defector-parasitic-worms.html

SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean soldier’s bold attempt to defect by crossing the heavily guarded border with South Korea galvanized attention this week.

But perhaps more surprising was the disclosure by surgeons struggling to save his life of what they found while repairing his intestinal wounds: dozens of parasitic worms, some as long as 11 inches.

“In my 20 years as a surgeon, I have only seen something like this in a medical textbook,” said Dr. Lee Cook-jong, a lead surgeon.

The discovery opened a window on the dire conditions in North Korea, including poor hygiene and nutrition. The news shocked many people in prosperous South Korea.

Surgeons raced to save the North Korean soldier, whose name and rank have not been released, who sustained serious bullet wounds racing across the border while his own troops fired on him.

“We have found dozens of fully grown parasitic worms in his damaged intestines,’’ said Dr. Lee Cook-jong, a lead surgeon. “It was a serious parasitic infection.”

During a news briefing this week, Dr. Lee showed photographs of worms as long as 10 or 11 inches.

Experts in parasitic worms were not surprised, however. They said that the finding was consistent with the broad sense of conditions in the isolated, impoverished North.

Defectors to the South have cited the existence of parasites and abysmal nutrition. Because it lacks chemical fertilizers, North Korea still relies on human excrement to fertilize its fields, helping parasites to spread, the experts said.

In a 2014 study, South Korean doctors checked a sample of 17 female defectors from North Korea and found seven of them infected with parasitic worms.

...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/world/asia/north-korea-missile-test.html

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday morning for the first time in more than two months, defying demands from President Trump to halt its weapons programs and raising the stakes in an increasingly tense standoff with the United States and its allies.

“North Korea launched an unidentified ballistic missile eastward from the vicinity of Pyongsong, South Pyongan Province, at dawn today,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Pyongsong, in western North Korea, is about 20 miles northeast of Pyongyang, the capital.

The launch was also confirmed by the Japanese prime minister’s office.

er...any word on where it landed?

Odd that they launched it eastward - into the Asian landmass, probably China. That seems more like a precaution than a provocation. Also, I'm thinking that they'd tell it to self-destruct before it landed.

hasn't landed yet?

westward?

UPDATE: Office of Japanese PM confirms the North Korean ballistic missile has landed in the Sea of Japan, exclusive economic zone.

— News_Executive (@News_Executive) November 28, 2017

It's now Japanese property, I guess.

sorry. brain fart. eastward would be into ocean waters. my mistake.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPvghdWVoAAF96t.jpg

Basically, they're launching them straight up, even a bit to the West countering Earth rotation, so that they don't stray too far from telemetry range. Any ballistic missile capable of travelling 6700 km (as Hwasong-14) is also capable of going of travelling a couple thousand km straight up. Anything that reached 2000 km altitude would take at least 10 minutes to climb that far and 10 minutes to fall.

this world sucks

I can't blame NK. Look what not having a credible deterrent did for Saddam.

in this world i take a moment to google the distance from earth to the moon, in km, just in case

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPv1UfRXUAE-7eG.png

the question is what happens when they get fully capable nukes and then do something nobody wants them to do or ask for something nobody is prepared to give them.

They are capable enough now. But there wasn’t a good military solutio even if we went back in time and asked that question. Also important to remember that China and Russia became nuclear states and it’s probably good that our negotiating position wasn’t as unrealistic as our current “denuclearize” terms w DPRK.

Well, Russia going nuclear dictated the terms of US foreign policy for almost half a century, and in that conflict we came as close to nuclear Armageddon as ever before, so there's that.
But assuming NK behaves like every other nuclear power, more or less, then a nuclear NK won't be any different than a non-nuclear NK. They'll just keep to themselves and do their thing.

DPRK engages in a fair amount of military provocation and saber rattling. These are likely to continue as part of 'doing their thing', but so far these have only led to minimal bloodshed outside its own borders.

Pretty much. The audience for the launches, the saber rattling, and the reports of belicosity from the U.S., is the North Korean people.

Kim et al knows that they launch a nuke and a dozen will fly back. Their intention is to a) maintain domestic war footing propaganda, and b) deter a preemptive American strike. Game theory wise, its a pretty stable situation so long as NK maintains deterrence, and outsiders don't try to start the coup ending the rule of Kim and his allied elites. It's a pity for those trapped within.

It's obvious that the Pentagon is not so keen on preemptive strikes. Plus, major parts of the defense budget are predicated on hostilities with this imp.

genocidal rhetoric https://t.co/WTFpvMYSGl

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 29, 2017

Holodomor-ica.

Xpost Sanctions on that level would be indefensibly evil and definitely start a world war.

Sanctions on that level would be an act of war.

DPRK would call it an act of war and people wouldn’t realize the serious level of escalation we were at because they’ve been calling various things an “act of war” for years now.

dprk continues to develop icbm nuclear capability juche military first ideology
increasing free market liberalization on the dl
u.s. imperialist saber rattling
everything is fine
20 years later
we're all
friends

is there a thread for missile defense? i don't really want to start a new one, but this NYT article about how a recent SCUD missile from Yemen almost certainly was NOT shot down by Saudi defense batteries - contrary to what was claimed at the time - reminded me of my general anxiety about how unlikely it is that a nuclear weapon could successfully be intercepted, especially given the amount of time that would elapse before a countershot would even be fired (since the defender would probably want to be absolutely certain that it wasn't a false alarm before launching a counterattack).

my (obviously and admittedly limited ) understanding is that the "star wars"/SDI defense system was deeply flawed and basically a complete failure despite massive investment. have things changed since then?

dprk continues to develop icbm nuclear capability juche military first ideology
increasing free market liberalization on the dl
u.s. imperialist saber rattling
everything is fine
20 years later
we're all
friends

― XxxxxxxXxxxxxxxxXxxxx (dylannn), Wednesday, 29 November 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eating plums
out of the icebox
so sweet and
so cold
delicious

depends who you ask, Karl.

xp

Hush! The fact that the SDI missile defense is a deeply flawed, massively expensive complete failure is classified information which must be kept from our enemies.

SDI is probably a complete failure compared to its initial goal of permitting a US nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. There would be way too much radar clutter in the commies retaliatory strike from first/second stage debris for targeting, and it isn't difficult to add indistinguishable decoys to the payloads. Plus building bullet to hit another bullet is just intrinsically hard.

Against NK, there's a chance that the redundancy of launch phase and midcourse interceptors would work against a single launch. Which is why if I were NK, my retaliation would already be sitting in a basement somewhere in LA or NY.

On the other hand, military research boondoggles are how we fund a lot of basic science and engineering education in the US.

Another data point: Saudi Arabia's upgraded Patriot missiles failed to intercept Houthi launched ballistic missile in 5 out of 5 launches.

When not operated by US crews, the Patriot and its descendants perform poorly, it’s true.