North Korea

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.

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

which makes them sort of not boondoggles? No more so than that fusion reactor that 20 some odd countries are building in the south of France or wherever

you mean ITER? not a boondoggle.

Buck Turgidson lives

Using plausible estimates, I find that (under optimistic assumptions) 87% of western pundits are functionally insane https://t.co/NZ12E2IgfL by @kevinrogerjames pic.twitter.com/ydbiRmvRr7

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) December 6, 2017

oof. i guess i'm glad @kevinrogerjames only has about a dozen followers on twitter

the thin line between satire and reality in dr strangelove is quickly dissolving

it was always mighty thin... the only reason the film is a comedy is they tried to write it 'straight' and kept laughing.

not sure how substantive a shift this actually is but this seems positive to me

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said tonight the U.S. would be willing to enter negotiations with North Korea without requiring that it agree beforehand to give up its nuclear weapons program.

— NPR (@NPR) December 12, 2017

Some disagreements on that. Interesting back and forth in this thread from NK watchers.

Don't strain yourself too hard looking for change in NK policy from Tillerson. 1) Nothing he's said is new for the US position, and 2) nobody believes Tillerson speaks for Trump, not least NK

— Van Jackson (@WonkVJ) December 12, 2017

FFS

White House says not right time for North Korea talks, despite Tillerson overture https://t.co/rmT79dOTXg pic.twitter.com/rGEdw9c4SL

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 13, 2017

While we are playing, people starve

there's been for the past few years, a disagreement on how much north korea is suffering, with people like lankov on one side N Korea and the myth of starvation arguing that upwards of 70% of people are making money in private market ventures / food is being exported to china / reforms in agriculture have fixed a few lingering problems -- but even he agrees that most people are chronically malnourished and some regions of the country have remained basically as shitty as they were a decade before-- and aid workers, who still report that people are starving.

i hope it comes across on this thread but i'm sympathetic to north korea. i think sanctions should be lifted. the u.s. trying to starve out the kim regime isn't working and is unnecessarily cruel.

but at the same time the government of the dprk has a history of using starvation as a weapon against the north korean people. In North Korea, hunger isn’t a function of production, but of state policy -- so, like lankov is right and things are improving, for example, people are being allowed to tend their own private plots, but those harvests have often been seized by the state. and these private plots are only sorta tolerated Farmers Baffled by Order Reversal / North Korea orders all privately cultivated crops to be cut down even though they're feeding at least half of all north koreans: State policy controls how much food is imported, how much is spent on things like fertilizer and machinery, who can grow what and where, what can be sold, how much is seized from those who grow and sell it, where the harvest goes once it’s collected, who gets a ration and how much, and how effectively foreign aid agencies can deliver aid. -- the border with china being more tightly sealed is also a factor, and also the government going after remittances (and also sanctions trying to hit remittances, too).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGinGQrofos

not sure if it's been posted before, but a great series of blog posts on a couple of friends who traveled by train from Vienna to Pyongyang. The photos as they travel from Siberia through North Korea down to Pyongyang are fantastic.

that is super old

p sure we talked abt it a few yrs ago and posted the link

thats rly the best way to see the real nk but very difficult to get in thru there especially now

https://www.ft.com/content/21a0407e-eadd-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23

The last New Yorker piece where the guy had gone a few times in previous years and returned not long after some incendiary Trump tweets was really good. Also recounts meeting with NK diplomats in New York.

love that blog of photos of the trip from austria to pyongyang, great stuff

Looking at that football game above, I wondered briefly which colour uniform was the DPRK until I saw the women in red looming almost a head taller than the Japanese team. That's not a typical characteristic of Koreans compared to Japanese people is it?

South Koreans tend to be slightly taller than Japanese people

I assume this applies to healthy North Koreans, as well. The North Korean men I’ve met have mostly all been around 5’8”-10”, with very few being taller and bigger (fatter)

The height of the North Korean women I’ve met has varied a lot more, from 5’0” to 5’8”

Tall Asians: C or D?

i want to say something on this north korea thread about oil shipments. i think the situation is interesting not because it shows the chinese are violating sanctions--maybe they are but not with ship-to-ship transfers of refined fuel probably--but the power of the informal economy where i assume this oil is going and the problem of enforcing any of these sanctions. all along the road, it's been the same situation anyways, where the kim regime gets what they need and forces the rest of the population to fend for themselves.

there are much easier ways to violate sanctions-- i mean they could have just ran ships to nk harbors and sold oil and then denied it, too. but there's a pipeline that's exempt from sanctions (because they can't turn it off without damaging it) that runs from the liaodong peninsula to sinuiji and north korean refineries. ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum sounds like smuggling-- chinese authorities just seized a few days before this a shipment of smuggled fuel meant for ship-to-ship transfers.

russia is far less enthusiastic about sanctions and still probably aren't thrilled about the huge amount of smuggling by russian ships -- but it's proof i guess that there's big money in smuggling oil right now, especially as sanctions hit. the price of oil in north korea has risen which makes smuggling profitable. if china is defying sanctions they'd be sending it thru the pipeline or running ships. oil is still moving but it's harder for people working in the burgeoning market economy to get it, if the state is getting the small supply, and they've got money to spend on fuel from chinese profiteers, or russian ones.

with established smuggling routes + evidence of a huge operation conducted by smugglers to bring in refined petroleum, it's harder than you might think to shut down fuel smuggling. when you're talking the chinese northeast + dprk + russian far east, lots of people trying to make money off the situation, deep deep corruption... it's hard to say, you know, just stop the boats and enforce sanctions! southern europe has a problem with organized crime bringing in oil from isis, even.

Now the regime has decided to let its people invest directly in production, and thus seems to have de facto legalized ‘pseudo-state property.’ If this is true and if the regime does not renege on such commitments, North Korea’s economy could see an investment boom as more private investors feel free to create new, larger businesses, under the cover of the state. That said, without outside support, the necessary longer-term investments in infrastructure will probably not be possible due to a scarcity of funds.

http://www.38north.org/2017/12/pward122117/

i would buy a theory that china is overlooking something like smuggling fuel because it helps keep alive players in the new market economy which are the most effective element there is pushing north korea toward reform.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/29/574508075/south-korea-seizes-ship-suspected-of-at-sea-oil-transfer-to-benefit-north-korea

The Hong Kong-flagged ship was chartered by Taiwanese company Billions Bunker Group and previously visited South Korea's Yeosu Port on Oct. 11 to load up on Japanese refined oil and head to its claimed destination in Taiwan, the authorities noted.

Instead of going to Taiwan, however, the vessel transferred the oil to a North Korean ship, the Sam Jong 2, and three other non-North Korean vessels in international waters, they said.

"rare" a/k/a the exact same thing he says every new years pic.twitter.com/kOKvzUgwtO

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 2, 2018

Hope is not a plan except when it comes to not starting a nuclear war, when it turns out it definitely is https://t.co/XVRHtpH1zE

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) January 9, 2018

It may in fact be the case that North Korea is the biggest threat to US national security, but that's just another way of stating the obvious, which is that 2018 America is the safest country that's ever existed in human history https://t.co/O5aqeQ3lZB pic.twitter.com/Hq5Goq3f1t

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) January 16, 2018

just wondering. has anyone with decent credentials released an independent and credible estimate of NK's progress toward hydrogen bombs? I know a recent NK test was publically deemed inconclusive in terms of whether it was a fission or fusion device, but government sources about such matters may be tampered with for policy reasons.

Kelsey Atherton Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang have writing that’s worth seeking out in that vein https://www.popsci.com/north-korea-working-theromonuclear-bomb

ty. I was aware of most, but not all of the info in that article and the additional info was worth the time spent reading it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/asia/north-south-korea-olympics.html

North and South Korea will march together at the Olympics (!)

wow... that's never happened since the war, right?

Folks in the pub today thought it was a ridiculous idea, but I couldn't get a reason why...

north and south talks are a good thing folks

reunification, though an admirable and great idea, is less likely to happen

but anything that will subdue tension and promote camaraderie between the two koreas is always a good thing

maybe a north korean athlete will do something so athletically impressive that both countries will just put all their differences aside and agree to unite in their honor

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-american-scientist-whos-seen-north-korea-nuclear-secrets/

^ This is exactly the kind of reporting that every American needs to see x100. It portrays DPRK's nuke program in the correct frame of reference, as a rational deterrent to attack and a blue-chip insurance policy against getting Saddamed by the USA. Next step is to get someone talking about how to prevent DPRK from selling its nuclear technology, by giving it an easier path to respectability and inclusion by the global community.

Also I’d like more Americans to see the point he makes about how stereotypical thinking might be informing a lot of the underestimation of NK’s capabilities.

wow... that's never happened since the war, right?

this did happen at the OS in 2006 Turin as well....

This is unsettling, to put it mildly. Victor Cha is quite conservative, but apparently Trump is demanding someone who is genuinely nuts. https://t.co/0bplSQuVmC pic.twitter.com/9KrYqTNb1C

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) January 30, 2018

Apparently Cha was asked if he would be ready to help manage evacuations of American citizens in South Korea and expressed reservations about a strike.

so we gonna lose seoul tokyo and LA and set off a massive humanitarian crisis on the peninsula or what