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This is all well and good, as long as you have electricity. But as Venezuelans are finding out as we speak, you can't very easily transmit bitcoins over radio if you don't have any electricity to power your radio in the first place. North Korea? Most don't have electricity to speak of either.

The DPRK has been declaring war, or claiming war has been declared against it 200 times since 1997. It's basically the default thing for the DPRK to do.

https://www.nknews.org/2017/09...

Despite the very public statement, Ri's comments are far from the first time the DPRK has claimed that declarations of war have been made against it.

The phrase "declaration of war" appears in Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) English language articles over 200 times since 1997 - a search of NK Pro's KCNA Watch database shows - and many of those entries echo Ri's press conference.

In fact, Ri's comments aren't even the first time that North Korea has claimed Trump himself has declared war on the country.

On September 22 and 23, six articles were published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in response to Trump's UN General Assembly (UNGA) speech on September 19, during which he threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea

"The United States has great strength and patience but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," Trump said during his UNGA address.

The six KCNA articles carried statements from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country of the DPRK (CPRC), the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (CC, WPK), various military officials and citizens, all of whom claimed the speech represented a declaration of war.

"Trump's rubbish is the open declaration of war against our supreme dignity, state, social system and people, and an unpardonable extra-large provocation," the CPRC statement said, according to KCNA.

So aside from Trump's recent comments, what constitutes a declaration of war in the eyes of the North Korean state?

THE COUNTRY THAT CRIED WAR

In April, KCNA published a memorandum by the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) that provided a recap of what, it claimed, were declarations of war against North Korea.

A review of the memorandum reveals a broad set of criteria. For one, policies from North Korea's opponents have been cited as a declaration of war.

In 2003, for instance, the MFA considered President George Bush to have openly declared "nuclear war" against North Korea "by putting it as a target of preemptive nuclear strike," according to the memorandum.

Accusations against the DPRK also qualified. Again in 2003, KCNA said that U.S. claims that North Korea was engaged in "drug smuggling, counterfeiting of money, suppression of religion, human traffic (sic) and training of computer hackers" as well increased pressure on aviation and merchant vessel activity, qualified as a declaration of war "no matter how hard they may try to cover up them."

The adoption of sanctions against the country have also inspired this response from North Korean state media and in 2006, the year of North Korea's first nuclear test, it claimed that the adoption of UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions against the country was a "de facto 'declaration of war'."

"The UNSC 'resolution,' needless to say, cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of a war against the DPRK," the MFA said, following the adoption of Resolution 1718.

The same claim has been made repeatedly following the adoption of subsequent UNSC resolutions as well as after the U.S.'s imposition of unilateral sanctions. Further UN action against North Korea has also inspired similar responses.

In November 2014, a UNGA committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of a draft resolution recommending that North Korea be referred to the International Criminal Court.

North Korea's National Defence Commission (NDC) responded with the following statement: "The brigandish 'resolution' against the DPRK's genuine human rights means the most undisguised war declaration to infringe upon its sovereignty," the November 23 NDC statement read.

The joint milit

North Korea isn't that technologically adept, their regime certainly doesn't foster the kind of environment where the required talent can exist readily.

That's nonsense, or wishful thinking at best. Obviously there are talented people there too. I'm assuming the 'kind of environment' you refer to is the Western ideal one: creative, free, entrepreneurial etcetera. But people can be pretty creative is the alternative is horrible enough too, and that seems to work quite well there. As you can see, for example, here their computer technology may be somewhat outdated, but well past the 8" hard disk stage - more like beginning of the 21st century. Looks like the US has the 'handicap of a head start' here.

It's not mispronounced; the first screenshot in this article shows that the menu item (third from the left) is in fact spelled "manbang" and pronounced (using X-SAMPA) as /man.baN/, equivalent to how a conservative English accent would say "man bang" (with open front unrounded A) Here's the Wikipedia article on Korean phonology if you want to analyse it yourself.

...Is it possible you're salty because someone forgot to invite you to participate in Manbang?

Lets be real. Seoul has more conventional weaponry pointed at it than any city in the world. DPRK doesn't need nukes to turn their southern neighbor's most famous and most important city into a crater.

While not quite a scientific article, I think they get the idea better than you do.

Realistically, no US President will overtly do a thing about North Korea. It has served China as a distraction and a buffer zone, and China ultimately will step in and claim NK as under their protection, sending in PLA troops like the USSR sent in Russian tanks if one of their puppets ran into trouble.

DPRK is as much a headache for China as they are useful; they are as apt to embarrass China as to be their puppet to tweak the RoK and the US.

However, this doesn't mean surrender to them. Let them make all the threats they want to, and ignore them, just like you do the Goatse troll on Slashdot.

Ignore them if you want, cave to them when you get tired of their bluster, but understand that they are actively trying to subvert and attack the US. Just because they are incompetent now, I for one, do not suppose that they will always remain so. Just as Bin Laden got a lucky shot in, so too might the DPRK

North Korea is saying they are going to pre-emptively strike the USA with nuclear weapons. Why aren't we all building/hiding in bomb shelters right now?

Because their 'attack the US' map has the ICBMs not taking great-circle routes. Some NK PR flunky hacked that map together with a Mercator projection and a ruler. Here is the GC route from Pyongyang to Austin, TX, one of the cities supposedly on the list.