North Korea likely to carry out nuclear test

If you didnt imagine yourself some right to force you ideology on others then maybe people like nk wouldnt feel the need to direct funds at arms rather than the population.

You are aware how much ideology is forced onto people in the DPRK right?

I've been to Pyongyang, the showcase capital. People there have to prove themselves as loyal to the regime to live there. They have 3 TV channels (but there's only 1 available in the rest of the country), all of them existed purely to promote Juche and criticise of the west. They have radios in every home, which can be turned down but it is impossible to turn them off, and all foreign radio stations are jammed. Visitors have every picture they took checked, and they would take your camera and delete it if they deemed it unacceptable.

Not to mention the class system, based on your family's perceived loyalty to regime. If anyone in your family history has been perceived as 'hostile' you are unable to shop at stores, receive healthcare and you must live in one of the very impoverished areas. People who didn't cry at Kim Jong Il's death were forced into labour camps.

I'd much rather the US be the world superpower than the DPRK, at least you can figure out the US' motives be they bad or good.

If they toned all that down to the point of cuba the west would still be hostile to them. Is it a wonder they are hostile to the west? It they let voices of descent get a foothold these people would then be supported by the west with the aim of destabilizing the regime.

We have a system where the media controls the government. They have a system where the government controls the media. Not much of our wonderful free media is in favour of a change. Its as unanimous in its support for democracy as nk's media is in support of their regime.

I believe if they toned down the indoctrination and also improved the human rights situation, more of the world would reach out to them. Denmark, for example, has been calling for exactly that throughout their relations with DPRK.

The difference is that we have the option to have a negative response to that media, whereas the people in DPRK would suffer serious repercussions if they did. We are able to maintain a viewpoint other than the one promoted to us, and are able to voice dissent.

Hmm. Don't you think people like you bear some of the responsibility for the situation there? If you didnt imagine yourself some right to force you ideology on others then maybe people like nk wouldnt feel the need to direct funds at arms rather than the population. If, the second nk reduced censorship you wouldnt use that to bombard them with propaganda they wouldnt be so steadfast in their refusal to do so. Most of what you criticize them for can be seen as a defensive posture against people like you.

You have an interesting take on the situation.
I research North Korean economics at university, so I've had to do my fair share of research into its politics, culture and history.

The statement that the more North Korea is pushed, the more it will resist is true. But I doubt that relaxing the pressure on North Korea will facilitate more genuine cooperation with the international community - more likely, it will be seen as an opportunity to milk as many resources and concessions as possible, while relinquishing as little as possible.

But, an interesting take nonetheless.

NK don't have the capability to mass produce warheads.

They might have hodge-podged together a couple of low-yield devices, so it'll be interesing to see what happens there.

It'll be even more interesting to see how they respond to all aid being cut to the country.

So they'd still spend all their money on nukes and tanks while nobody was in any way a threat? Why? Surely once the threat had gone their next move would be to demonstrate the greatness of the ideas of their leader by showing their society working in a more convincing manner than they do now.



At one timed they seemed to want to spend on constructive stuff. Something changed their priorities in a genuine enough way for them to take a loss of face over their worlds tallest building attempt.

The truth is we dont know what they'd do. While the west continues its hostility to anything communist or non democratic we wont find out.

I don't think you understand the North Korean mindset. For North Korea, the military is not directly tied to the perception of a threat. A strong military is representative of the "greatness of their ideas" - it's representative of a nation that can protect itself in its own right, and can demonstrate its strength on the global stage. The relaxation of pressure will not necessarily correlate to a relaxation of their emphasis on militarisation, and I can say with absolute certainty that the nuclear programme will not be relinquished.

After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, North Korea developed a mindset that while its "allies" faltered and crumbled, it remained steadfast. It's how it justified its alienation and isolation in the international community; it's how it legitimised its rule throughout the hardship and famine: "We are strong. Everyone else buckled before external forces, but not us." So, the correlation between militarisation and internal opposition is not strictly functionalist.

Their large-scale infrastructure investments and impressive performance are all geared toward the same thing - demonstrating that North Korea is strong. That image you attached is supposed to represent North Korea becoming a modern, industrialised nation that can rival the West. It's all about rivaling and surpassing other nations - North Korea does not want to be perceived as weak in any capacity.

Simply relaxing our treatment of North Korea, especially if our cooperation is contingent on their demilitarisation, will not have the effects you're anticipating. And you're not the first to suggest, or even attempt, such an approach (Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy is the most famous attempt). North Korea milked the opportunity for all it was worth, and relinquished as little as possible in the process. There's nothing to suggest other attempts will have a different result.

I have my own theories for how to reintegrate North Korea, of course...

Kim's administration also outlined two other major policy components. The first was the separation of politics and economics. In practice, this meant that the South loosened restrictions on its private sector to invest in North Korea, limiting its own involvement essentially to humanitarian aid. This was initially meant both to improve the North's economy and to induce change in the North's economic policy, though the latter goal was later (at least officially) de-emphasized.

They'll probably end up bombing themselves. Do they have the capabilities to hit targets in Europe and beyond yet?



Pro Israel

Anti-war

Hmm. Don't you think people like you bear some of the responsibility for the situation there? If you didnt imagine yourself some right to force you ideology on others then maybe people like nk wouldnt feel the need to direct funds at arms rather than the population.

If, the second nk reduced censorship you wouldnt use that to bombard them with propaganda they wouldnt be so steadfast in their refusal to do so. Most of what you criticize them for can be seen as a defensive posture against people like you.

What right does the North Korean government have to force its ideology on the people? My ideology, and South Korea's ideology, would grant the people much more freedom - a lot less would be forced upon them than currently is.

And the North Korean government does not care one iota about the population; if it did then it would recognise that South Korea is superior in every single way and surrender.

It's a defense designed to prop up the dictatorship. You could argue that Stalin's purges were defensive because people opposed Stalin; it had to be done or he would have been overthrown.

Communists value equality over freedom. Its their thing.

They're at war. Far fewer brits wouldve died during ww2 if we'd just surrendered. Does that mean we didnt care at all? Or does it mean that we did care but that we also cared about standing up for our way of life?

But do you really think that if the average North Korean was aware of how the average South Korean lived they would want to support communism?



But that comparison is invalid; if Britain had surrendered hundreds of thousands of people in Britain would have been killed as a result and the UK would have been oppressed by fascism forever. If North Korea surrenders then its wealth will increase tenfold, its citizens will have more freedom than ever before, and it will have access to the rest of the world. The surrender of Britain in World War 2 would have harmed its population and the rest of the free world; the surrender of North Korea now would benefit its population enormously.

And if people let them be, lifted sanctions and embargoes and showed them that they were willing to accept peaceful communism it it would be better for their population too. The details of ww2 are irrelevant, the point is that when a foreign power tries forcing its ideas on you resisting them doesnt mean that you don't care about the population.

But the fact is that if the North Korean people were even aware of what South Korea is like they would rebel. They are kept ignorant by their government because the government does not care about the population. They know that if South Korea annexed the North that the North would flourish and prosper - they know it and yet they want the exact opposite to happen; they want to take over the South and run it into the ground like they did to their own country.

Private Message: retard
1 Minute Ago: 20th April 2012 18:21
daves5625see
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Join Date: Apr 2012
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retard
Can you please remove yourself from the gene pool? Preferably in the most painful and agonizing way possible? Retard



Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a
garbage compactor, or by getting your cranium smashed in.


STFU s_ithead, before you get your head kicked in.

What I'm talking about is a change in attitudes towards communist dictatorships which would remove their need to keep such a military because the threat would be gone, rather than dressing up as Gandhi. In my instance, spending all your money on a military would become incorrect strategy. Excessively stifling the thought of your population would become incorrect strategy. Does the north korean leadership believe its propaganda about a military being the only way to show north korea as being among the a-list? The a-list have more skyscrapers than military. And they'd have difficulty showing their great strength at not buckling under external forces when external forces weren't pressuring them anymore.

You compare my thoughts to an insult to the intelligence of the north korean leadership when actually theyre more faith in their intelligence.

North Korea will take what it can get, and give as little as possible. It doesn't see the benefits being offered by the international community as outweighing the concessions being demanded. Softening the stance on North Korea has been done before, with little success. North Korea knows that the international community flip-flops between a tough, no-nonsense stance and a more diplomatic position. It responds to the former with belligerence, and the latter by taking all that's offered and relinquishing the bare minimum - then reverting back to its old position either when the well is dry, or the international community gets fed up.

I believe that North Korea needs to be eased back into the international community, and I think the focus should be investment and trade. North Korea is cash-strapped and entirely reliant on foreign aid. If this system were exchanged for an equal and mutual exchange of goods and products, with a focus on foreign direct investment, North Korea would be able to fund the revivification of its industries, and there would exist a long-term and beneficial link between the international community and the regime. It would not be a link based on friendship or mutual agreement - it doesn't need to be. It would simply be something that North Korea would not want to abandon or ruin - a permanent source of much-needed revenue. Making North Korea dependent doesn't work, and pushing it into a corner doesn't work, either. It needs to be on equal terms, without political motives. This shouldn't accompany demands that North Korea shut down its nuclear programme, or other such concessions.

Easing North Korea out of its alienation and back into the international community will relieve its paranoia and volatility - and I think more cooperation on its belligerence and militarisation should follow as a natural consequence.