War in Korea is close

[BlackSwordsMan]

That's all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.

[Nbadan]

I'm pretty sure the population of NK is treated as slaves already. Only the military structure has a healthy supply of food, and they can simply make the peasants work harder. It's pretty bad there for the people.

How do you know that? You have friends in North Korea? We made the same mistake in thinking that a majority of the population in Iraq feared Saddam and while Saddam was a murderous dictator, his strength made a majority of Iraqi feel safe..

[Nbadan]

From the most dangerous man in Korea:

On March 26, the South Korean ASW frigate Cheonan was sunk off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula. The working assumption, supported by the findings of an international commission put together by South Korea, is that a North Korean minisub was responsible.

Lee decided to respond in a manner suitable to South Korea's new stature, as the president of an aggrieved world power, not the controlling authority of the southern half of a divided nation.

He spoke before the Asian Security Summit and exhorted responsible, joint efforts on security; he solicited and received the explicit support of the United States; with US support he succeeded in having the issue taken up by the United Nations.

He did not coordinate with China or give any solicitude to the six-party talks.

North Korea may have miscalculated in assuming that the United States would respond to an outrage like the Cheonan by resuming its engagement with Pyongyang.

But South Korea and the United States seriously miscalculated if they assumed that China would be eager enough to burnish its responsible stakeholder credentials in the West by joining the public condemnation of North Korea.

The most significant event in North Asian relations in 2010 was probably China's refusal to support any meaningful sanction of Pyongyang over the Cheonan issue at the United Nations.

It was the first overt indication that China would resist a re-ordering of Korean peninsula affairs by South Korea and the US without Chinese participation.

It was also a clear signal that China had decided that the intangible psychic benefits of shoehorning itself into America's definition of what a "responsible stakeholder" should be in Korean affairs carried negligible practical advantages and, indeed, brought with it serious strategic liabilities.

In the face of Chinese and Russian resistance, the UN process yielded a meaningless president's letter instead of a Security Council resolution.

United States President Barack Obama tried to put a good face on things and score some political points against China by accusing it of "willful blindness" and conducting a series of high-profile joint naval exercises around the Korean coast.

The Chinese, for their part, displayed a complete unwillingness to back down, excoriating the US for actions that China deemed provocative and "heightened tensions on the peninsula".

Just in case somebody hadn't received the message, China's President Hu Jintao received a visit from Kim Jung-il in Changchun in August, signaling to the world that China stood behind the Kim dynasty and the approaching succession of Kim Jung-eun.

Asia Times

[nkdlunch]

Why is a Mexican so concerned with American politics anyway?

[TDMVPDPOY]

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/wor...-1225977962630

FORMER US defence chief William Perry said North Korea was capable of producing one nuclear bomb a year and that Washington should consider high-level talks to defuse tension

the question is whose selling them the uranium and whose building them them the reactors?? i dont think NTH KOREA has the technology to build reactors unless under the help and guidance of china/russia/iran...