Slashdot Mirror
North Korea Says War With South Would Go Nuclear
A reader writes "According to reports from the Uriminzokkiri, the official website of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons, and '[will] not be limited to the Korean peninsula.' The article goes on, 'The Korean peninsula remains a region fraught with the greatest danger of war in the world. This is entirely attributable to the US pursuance of the policy of aggression against the DPRK (North Korea).'"
Is this really any different from the rhetoric they've been using for the past however-many years now?
I wouldn't be eager for the war to actually heat up these days, though. Hyundai's been making some pretty spiffy cars lately; be a shame to have their production interrupted.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I think you forgot the "stuff that matters" part. I don't know about you, but a story about a real case scenario involving nuclear warfare seems pretty worthy of attention.
right...
a war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons, and '[will] not be limited to the Korean peninsula.'
So what they're saying is if tensions rise the only safe response is to proactively nuke North Korea until they glow.
Well alllll righty then. B-bye now!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They don't mean any of this seriously.
They are just posturing so that the new leader can retain support of the old guard as power changes hands, and angling for more international aid money, food, etc. (so they can continue spending on edifices of adjective-Leader and rattletrap military "tech")
NK has been issuing statements like this for years. I take a peek at their news site every so often and there's always something that reads like this.
Not sure why Yahoo! or AFP or anyone else would suddenly consider this news. But I can take a few guesses.
I think "Nuclear Launch Detected" is already a familiar phrase to South Koreans.
Didn't we (and by we I mean the US and the UK) just finish "liberating" 2 other countries on much flimsier pretexts than this. We've got a crackpot dictator AND genuine WMD's (although the phrase WMD seems to be getting applied to anything larger than small arms nowadays) surely in the spirit of not being hypocritical warmongering oil fetishists we must now "liberate" North Korea.
Somehow N. Korea got nuclear weapons before they invented the Internet (let alone the wheel)...HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
I don't like how the concept of total annihilation of a country is so easily bandied about. Not just this post, but all over the place. There are 24,051,218 people in North Korea (says Wikipedia), and only a large handful of them are actually causing this problem. How is it even conceivable to murder 24 million innocents (brainwashed, maybe; evil, no) because we don't like the guys in charge. Maybe the North Koreans can talk like that because the people talking are totally insane, but anyone else in the world shouldn't even have this cross their minds. Godwin called, he'd like to remind you that 24 million is four holocausts.
Dear whoever made Stuxnet: I don't care who you are. I don't want to know. But please mess these guys up. Overspin some centerfuges. Junk up some technical schematics. Generally make them miserable and ineffective.
But the actual uninhabitable part doesn't happen for a couple of hours after those very, very important 8 seconds.
And that is assuming that (a) everything is launched that is supposed to, (b) it goes where it is supposed to, and (c) it goes BOOM when it is supposed to.
Yes, but if Kim Jong Il is hidden away in a deep bunker then the only important person in North Korea survives. I'll bet outside of a few high ranking friends who would also be in said bunker it really doesn't matter to Mr. Kim who else might or might not survive.
That is way MAD doesn't work with North Korea. Or Iran. It just doesn't matter if the civilian population survives or not. It's war, you see and there will be casualties.
After you have cried wolf so many times that people ignore you then you need to move on to wolves with fricken laser beams, and then eventually wolves with ICBMs. After that maybe it's time to try something different. Maybe something with sharks.
That is probably the best way I can view North Korea now, simply crying wolf. We all know of their lack of abilities when it comes to nuclear armament. We also know that they lack the ballistics to reach the US or anywhere of real interest. I think the ballistic they test fired (which had the potential to reach Japan) failed miserably. I they have the potential to make something go boom, but in the end, no real means on delivering on it. In regard to the whole war games we (US) participated in, and the threat that followed. I predicted (correctly) what would happen. And I wonder if it will happen again. It is quite simple, NK hates to tarnish its own name. So when it makes a threat and does not follow through, it must distract the people with some news so they forget about the threats. For example, they threatened to initiate war and kill all of us (as usual). Well, obviously they did not follow through with the plan (especially suicidal since we had the Washington carrier there) so they needed a distraction. So what did they do, they announce they had nuclear weapons. It is like trying to hold something shiny in front of NK's people to distract them. I really hate NK though... I hate them because I have mix feelings and the blame is on them. I hate the idea of war and thousands if not millions of people dying. But at the same time, I really wish garbage like them would be wiped from the planet. We have like what, 60,000 troops over there now. They live there, that is there home. Imagine if we did not have to have them over there. Imagine if some of the troops in the middle east no longer have to go for another tour because of us bringing the troops back from the DMZ. In the end, I think a nuclear war would be bad against NK. They will have all the important people hiding like rats underground while the poor and rest of the people would suffer above ground. Bunker busters are the way to go! P.S. I curse Starcraft because when I read this, the first thing that went through my mind was: "Nuclear Launch Detected".
I am not sure if this is true anymore or even if it were ever true; but I was told at the height of the cold war we had the capability to make the entire world uninhabitable in 8 seconds.
With what? Doctor Who technology? It takes tens of minutes just for ICBM-launched warheads to reach target. Bombers take hours. That's longer than eight seconds right there.
And we know how powerful nuclear bombs are. Even the 40,000 or so warheads at the height of the Cold War aren't that effective. I suppose we could seed all those bombs with cobalt and fire them off with intent to kill as many people as possible. That might drive to extinction any unshielded lifeforms above a few kilograms or with a longish lifespan. But anyone who is deep underwater or hangs out in a moderately deep underground cave for a few years, is probably going to survive.
I think a lot of people realize it, and realize the fact that it still doesn't entirely explain the fact that the DPRK appears to be heading on a course more warlike than they've been on in a long time.
What would you suggest we do? Preemptively attack? While China isn't exactly in love with North Korea, NK does serve as a valuable buffer zone for them and they aren't going to take any aggression from us in their backyard lightly. We must find a way to neutralize North Korea that China can get behind or we're in for World War III, or at the very least massive trade disruptions that would crater our economy, given how dependent we are on China.
Even regardless of the China factor, it's hard to come up with a way we could neutralize North Korea, even with the element of surprise, that wouldn't end up being devastating to South Korea. By most estimates, for example, NK could completely level Seoul in about 2 hours with their massive artillery force. It's hard to come up with a way to stop that without irradiating the entire peninsula, which obviously would be bad for SK as well.
Even assuming we could somehow find ways around those problems, you still have the North Korean people to deal with, who have been indoctrinated from birth to believe their Dear Leader is a god who is the only thing keeping them from being devoured by the rest of the world. These people, of all ages, have literally been training for a war with the US for almost 60 years. We wouldn't exactly be greeted as liberators by the vast majority of them.
If this was an easy problem to solve, it would have been solved by now.
You're pretty much spot on. Just remember that their military power isn't all that great. Sure they've got lots of soldiers(read cannon fodder), but they don't have the training to make up for it. A lot of countries are still on the whole 18th century method of soldiers. 3 weeks of training, hand them a gun and send them out. China does it, N.Korea does it, Russia does it. Manpower based armies are dead, especially when you can take out the commanding leadership with one missile, and leave all the gunts on the field brainless.
Om, nomnomnom...
It's easy to be nonchalant about it when you don't like in Seoul. If war breaks out, Seoul will get hit by North Korean artillery nonstop. The other major concern is that China would get involved, and nobody wants to see the US and China going at it, either directly or via proxy. If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago. The only thing that could make those risks bearable would be if the alternative is an aggressive, uncontrollable nuclear state, and that's exactly what North Korea is becoming.
Not really.
8 seconds is too short a time frame. The delivery systems for nuclear weapons take longer than that to reach their targets. An ICBM launch from the continental US to what used to be the USSR or vice versa takes at least twenty to thirty minutes of flight time (though a launch from bases in Europe or a ballistic missile sub near the coast would obviously be faster than that). This doesn't factor in the time it takes to authorize a launch.
And making the entire world uninhabitable is pushing it. During the cold war, most of the targets for those missiles would have been in the northern hemisphere (North America and Eurasia); there would be survivors elsewhere in the world. This doesn't even get into the fact that fallout is not universally lethal, meaning that just because a given region has been contaminated it does not automatically follow that everyone there is doomed.
In a worst case scenario a full scale nuclear war could mean total human genocide, thought most of the deaths would occur weeks or months after the bombs fell due to radiation poisoning and starvation. A more likely scenario is a massive die-off and the complete collapse of civilization on a global level, as well as regional human extinction in the participating countries.
This is still terrifying obviously, but it's nowhere near the fictional Armageddon that many people associate with the words "nuclear war".
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
There is the legend of the C-Bomb. It's one of those stories of dubious veracity, but it is said that towards the end of it's span the USSR constructed a superweapon. Basically a cluster of hydrogen bombs around a cobolt packing, which would render the surface of the earth uninhabitable if detonated. The ultimate deterrent. As the country collapsed from within, the war never came, and the bomb still sits in a disused base somewhere... as none of those involved in it's construction ever wanted to reveal their part.
The movie Dr Strangelove was directly inspired by this story.
When George Bush declared North Korea to be part of the "Axis of Evil", it was doing Kim Jong-Il a favor, making both Kim and Dubya sound like bad-asses that their populations should respect. Kim may be following in his family traditions of bat-shit insanity and sociopathic disrespect for the people he's ruler of, but he's still playing mostly for a local audience, and secondarily for other world leaders playing for their own local audiences.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is entirely attributable to the US pursuance of the policy of aggression against the DPRK (North Korea).
Is that even true? I'm not overly inclined to trust the US government, but shouldn't we have heard by now about a 'policy of aggression' if we were conducting one? From as unbiased a view as possible, is there any truth to this allegation whatsoever? Are we, or even - can we be construed to be pursuing a policy of aggression against North Korea?
I'm genuinely asking...
That isn't a legend, it's an idea that was seriously proposed. And no, nobody ever built it. To begin with, by the middle of the cold war it wasn't necessary.
"Second strike" capability, that is the ability to launch a devastating counter attack when all of your airfields and missile silos are replaced with glowing craters, made destruction mutually assured, and therefor made the war unwinnable. A single SSBN with a payload of twenty MIRVed missiles has enough firepower to level several opposing cities, more than enough to be a deterrent, and the oceans offer a huge range of hiding places. You don't need a doomsday device to ensure an enemy will not be able to win with a preemptive strike when you have boomers.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Not at all.
They are completely sane, and completely ruthless, and they don't think like you do so NEVER take North Korean propaganda at face value.
This is perfectly standard NK gamesmanship repeated down the decades. They are rational, calculating, and smarter than naive Westerners. This game is very old news, as any Cold War vet can attest.
The Norks are magnificent at classic Cold War penis-waving, they are the finest of trolls, and they are NOT going to commit suicide. Unlike Jihadists, who are horny to die for Allah, Norks leadership are rational and want to stay rich and powerful. Know and understand the difference.
That is not to say the NK masses won't willingly die in droves if ordered, just like the last time, but that is what masses of simple people are for.
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The whole thing with N. Korea is stupid beyond belief that all the other countries of the world AND the U.N. has let this continue (Zimbabwe, too).
Well, there is no cease fire from the early 50s, so lets go in and finish off all the big govt buildings in PY and demand surrender or else.
Nothing like stirring up war during Christmas in honor of the Crusades.
Lets see now. Who would come to the defense of North Korea...No one. Now isn't that dandy.
But Kim Jong Mentally Ill has been doing this for a long time, so we can wait until the time is good...or they just have a revolution. Either way it will be horrible, but KJM Ill has set it up this way and I don't see a way out without a lot of people dying of either starvation or war. That is his choice, because he won't abdicate & surrender.
I am not sure if this is true anymore or even if it were ever true; but I was told at the height of the cold war we had the capability to make the entire world uninhabitable in 8 seconds.
It was probably 8 minutes and based upon Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM). ICBMs going over the north pole would take 20-30 minutes but SLBMs off the coast could hit their targets in as little as 3 minutes.
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them. Some of this stuff is secret for a good reason, and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
Nope. The US has a very strong "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons. Granted, they're the only country to ever actually use them in warfare, but in point of fact the destruction caused at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a significant factor in shaping that policy.
As far as that goes, every other major nuclear power, past and present, has the same policy for the same reasons. By "major nuclear power" I mean the US, Britain, France, Russia and China; Iran and NK don't count (yet) and Israel won't admit to having the bomb.
If the Korean war restarts in earnest, it will be a conventional war right up until either North Korea nukes something deliberately, or somebody makes a mistake (which is always possible). Neither the US or China will risk escalation on their own. Nobody wants to be the one responsible for a nuclear war.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
It's easy to be nonchalant about it when you don't like in Seoul. If war breaks out, Seoul will get hit by North Korean artillery nonstop. The other major concern is that China would get involved, and nobody wants to see the US and China going at it, either directly or via proxy. If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago. The only thing that could make those risks bearable would be if the alternative is an aggressive, uncontrollable nuclear state, and that's exactly what North Korea is becoming.
Nobody's on North Korea's side if they go to war, not even China. China's only interests in NK are, in order:
1) Prevent millions of North Korean refugees from flowing over the border to China (it's not like they're going to go to their other neighbor through all the robotic sentry guns.
2) Serve as a buffer between the pro-US South Korea and China's eastern border.
China will support Kim so long as he remains a posturing blowhard, but the moment he actually tries to invade--and triggers all those millions of refugees that China dreads flowing into their country--they'll turn their backs on him instantly.
I'm pretty sure they completely stand behind what they're saying. Its already well known that China has absolutely no interest in supporting N. Korea in a war against S. Korea and the US. This pretty much means that N. Korea is going to lose. And if N. Korea loses, I can promise you that we're not stopping our push at the DMZ. We're going to oust Kim Jong II for good. With the downfall of your empire and convictions of war crimes against you imminent, what do you think you would do, especially if you were a psychopath like him?
My hope is the ratcheting up of the posturing levels to new ridiculous heights during the handover could be to allow Kim Jong-Un to adopt a more moderate policy without completely collapsing his power base. A event-free handover followed by "Welp, guess we should stop our unsustainable policy of isolationism and get with the international program" would probably result in the generals ousting Un, whereas "Oh shit, Glorious Father went a little too far, better do something to avert invasion, right guys?", even if the outcome is the same, may go down better.
Or I could be talking complete nonsense and am simple unaware of the magnitude of NK's regular levels of crazy.
And the category of the story... ie, this is at tech.slashdot.org. And right before the title it says "Technology:"
Obligatory TBBT quote: But Aquaman sucks!
Ignore this signature. By order.
"Dead hand" is not what's being discussed. The GP was talking about a doomsday device situated on home soil set to contaminate the atmosphere with radioactive cobalt if a war broke out. Dead Hand was a fail deadly launch system for normal ICBMs. These are two different things, though I'll grant that Dead Hand is similar in concept and purpose.
If you want to know about the doomsday deterrent idea try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_device
Scroll down to the bit with the "doomsday machine" proposed in the 1950s in the US, which in turn was the basis for the same idea that appeared in "Doctor Strangelove".
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
This is once again assuming that North Korea didn't already know that little bit of info that directly pertained to them and was visible to three million people.
This is tech news?
Well it does give you a chance to make a "would you like to play a game?" reference.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that only ~1k out of ~250k have been released right? That is less than one percent.
I for one would prefer for DPRK to know it won't have allies if push comes to shove. Generally speaking, when little guys realize their big brother won't help them in a fight, they act less aggressively. But of course posturing plays an important role in negotiating a better deal.
There is the risk that information might destabilize their control and lead to violence. There is also the risk that the US and China plotting in secret to overthrow a nuclear power would lead to violence as well. Which situation is more dangerous, who can say?
The leadership of the DPRK is the literal embodiment of Orwell's Animal Farm. Disneyland Japan is just one tiny example of the hypocritical luxuries the leadership takes while their people suffer horribly.
Unless the initial press-only Wikileaks docs were leaked to N. Korea, this most recent flare up, which started when N. Korea shelled S. Korea and S. Korea shelled them back, started before Wikileaks took its dump. It seems more likely that Kim's failing health and the transfer of power to his youngest son are responsible.
Also, starting a nuclear war in response to finding out you only (massive, nuclear armed) ally wants you to sit down and shut up seems counter productive. Not to say that anything N. Korea does is sane: but I doubt it was a secret to N. Korea that China wanted N. Korea to make like it wasn't there (though the kid might not have been happy to hear it). The Chinese have the most to lose by a destabilized East Asia, whereas the N. Koreans have virtually nothing to lose. I'm sure China has spoken to them directly about the matter. They probably said something like: swing your dick around a few times to save face about the shelling, then go back to barely being there.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
If you've studied the situation you'd know that North Korea and China have had a love/hate relationship for a long time - China is one of these last best friends in the region but for the last couple years there have been reports of angry meetings and requests from China for North Korea to behave.
Publically speaking - yes China supports North Korea to keep the hard liners happy, but it should be no surprise they secretly wish the Kim family would just go far far away.
That's just the point I was making... I don't think they would ever let it get to all-out war, because they know internally that for them, erm, the only winning move is not to play.
There are some nice buildings in central Pyongyang. I like the blue roofs you see on a number of them. On the other hand, maybe that' just because everything else in the city, except the trees, is a kind of washed-out gray.
Of course, most of the houses look like prison colonies. Makes me think of the houses in "A Wrinkle in Time," with all of the kids in the front yards bouncing their balls in unision....
By far, the roads are the creepiest part. Like the entire city was hit by a neutron bomb, and was left standing, as a skeleton of the civilization that once lived there.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Is it a coincidence that all this talk about nuking other countries is coming a couple of weeks after the release of that cable by Wikileaks?
This kind of rhetoric has been going on for years as have a number of dangerous military confrontations. You really can't pin this on Wikileaks.
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them.
There have been many redactions in the documents to protect individuals. In recent years it has been the lies of governments that have cost so many lives. Now it's time for some truth.
All of this always makes me think of an article that ran a few years back (not on slashdot) that was interviewing several people who had managed to defect/escape from NK into China and other places. These were average citizens...
One of them told how her job was to collect the pamphlets that were dropped by US planes, and how she feels so incredibly foolish now, because she and all of her coworkers had to use sharpened sticks to pick them up. They did this because they had been told that the US pamphlets which espoused democracy and freedom were covered in some kind of an acidic solution that would eat away their skin if they touched them.
She acknowledged how (in the light of having escaped and seen the world around her for the first time in a more impartial manner) very silly it was to believe such a thing, but reiterated that everyone who worked with her truly believed this to be true.
This sort of thing makes me very nervous about the idea of invading North Korea. The people are so incredibly ignorant of the world around them and we know so little about them besides the fact that they're not well educated and starving, that it seems dangerously possible that going to war with them would mean going to war with an entire country of zealots...this does not seem like a good option.
Yes, you're quite certain, but why? As a former Nuke/Chem/Bio defense officer with the US Military, I can assure you that an attack on US soil with nuclear weapons would result in the big metaphorical glass parking lot becoming reality. They can take out a city center or two. We can and probably would literally kill 100% of their popualtion, unless our Comander in Chief excercises almost litterally inhuman restraint. We regularly trained back when I was in to drive M1A1 series tanks through four hour old craters just for the scenarios where the government opts to hunt down any and all survivors of the initial exchange and wants them all dead before any get a chance to surrender. We're talking the deaths of every man, woman and potentially every day old infant in North Korea as a matter of official doctrine. Although I have hopes we would do better than absolute genocide, I sure wouldn't bet on it, because the 300 Million + surviving Americans are mostly going to be wondering why we even try to avoid fallout drifting into South Korea or China, let alone what happens to the North. I trained from some of the response plans in the 1970s and they're finally public. We had plans that dedicated a Megaton for every village of over 500 people. Hell, in the 50's we had plans that involved seeding their croplands with radiocobalt isotopes so nothing would grow for a thousand years, and then crashing the nuclear powered, plutonium fueled, unmanned bombers that delivered it into their cities after they had spent a month each flying back and forth over the whole country. We've gotten more precise since then and started giving a damn about not poisoning the whole planet, but not less lethal. North Korea stands to lose literally 100% - it doesn't get any worse than that.
Who is John Cabal?
Psychologically, it matters to the Norks. They don't think as we do.
BTW they nearly pushed the UN forces into the sea before reinforcements arrived. The nasty fate of Task Force Smith is still studied as an example of poor preparedness.
Google "Blue House Raid" for examples of how they do think.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
They are completely sane
If they really were completely sane, they would understand that their nation would be a lot more prosperous if they abandoned their nuclear ambitions and attempted to rejoin the world community. Heck, even Moammar Qaddafi gets it, and made some pretty huge concessions to get reaccepted on the world stage.
I for one would prefer for DPRK to know it won't have allies if push comes to shove.
Yes, let's corner a nuclear armed animal and make him very afraid.
Kim Jong * will not survive any governmental change. They know it.
Nothing personal really, I guess that is the scenario, but calling not committing genocide on a scale shadowing everything that happened in the whole history of manking "literally inhuman restraint" seriously creeps me out. Are you sure your planners haven't returned their membership card to humanity quite some decades ago? Or do you mean by "literally inhuman" that those in power are indeed the Lizard People?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Yeah, and we'll be greeted as liberators, right? It'll only take six months, tops.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Nope. The US has a very strong "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons...
No we don't. Not for North Korea. In April 2010 we extended our no first use policy for almost everyone, but very specifically excluded Iran and North Korea.
Our policy still indicates that we are very much interested in exhausting all options, and everyone seems to get that Nukes are terrible (though as little as a few years ago Bush had allowed for us to Nuke anyone that might have WMDs, or a towel on their head).
But we specifically excluded NK in our no first use policy. I don't think we'd ever want to be the ones to use them first, but we could.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
nuclear powered, plutonium fueled, unmanned bombers
You know, I thought you were serious until you put this part in. Now I'm just laughing... We barely have "unmanned bombers" now, much less in the 50's.
Have you read my blog lately?
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
This is completely false. The North Korean military was completely and utterly routed to the Chinese side of the border in almost every single China-DPRK border province. North Korea was entirely defeated when 300,000 Chinese troops moved at night under orders of strict silence to repel the joint American and South Korean forces that were standing just on the south side of the Yalu and Tumen rivers.
Then there are the Crab Wars of the 1990s between South Korea and North Korea. There were a small number of victories on the littoral seas in the beginning for North Korea, but they soon began losing every skirmish they started and had to stop provoking the losses of their own ships. The DPRK lost this entire campaign.
3 weeks of training, hand them a gun and send them out. China does it, N.Korea does it, Russia does it.
What exactly were you smoking when you wrote that?
Cause, you seem to be mistaking world's largest armies for some African warlord's "army" of "child soldiers".
Russia - 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18-27. 18 months until couple of years ago. And those are just your civilians - there are over a million in active service and almost as much in reserve.
China - 24-month service obligation. But they don't enforce it as they have way too many soldiers already.
About 7.5 million in total.
North Korea - 42 months and longer. And their army is the 4th largest in the world.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When was it demonstrated that North Korea actually had nukes? I only remember a failed test and a lot of posturing. Googling turns up nothing, although I may not be looking correctly. What am I missing?
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
No, the UN forces flat-out defeated the North Korean Army in 1950. The war only lasted beyond that because the Chinese took over. Just look at the strengths of the top 5 combatants (Wikipedia numbers, yeah):
Yes, Communist China fielded 3.5x as many troops as the North Koreans. On top of that, right before the war they gave the North Koreans 70,000+ ethnic Korean soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, including two already-organized, experienced ethnic Korean divisions that had fought in the Chinese civil war. Kim Il Sung invaded the south only after Mao promised to send forces if the USA intervened. The Chinese Communists really, really threw their support behind North Korea.
Are you adequate?
"Is it a coincidence that all this talk about nuking other countries is coming a couple of weeks after the release of that cable by Wikileaks?"
Maybe I'm just rational, but if I just found out my ally doesn't really have my back against my enemy, I would have to re-think the whole enemy thing and reassess why my enemy was still my enemy and see if I could use this to my advantage rather than threatening nuclear war.
I see no advantage of threatening nuclear war, if I was North Korea I would ask China and South Korea for a few trillion in aid and open the borders.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Having plans like this public and running these drills hopefully means we never have to find out.
And destroying without a shadow of a doubt North Korea's ability to hit us with another Nuke probably means such overkill with nuclear bombardment of the possible silo locations that almost nobody in North Korea would survive.
I never want to find out just how far we would go in that scenario, but I imagine it's far.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
I can't believe that you're trying to frame "not committing genocide" including, in the GGP's own words, every "day old infant", as "going to do nothing".
For fuck's sake.
People on Slashdot don't get it at all you really believe in some Pollyanna ideal that people in the world love each other. With someone like North Korea it is kill or be killed show no mercy because they will certainly show you no quarter. If you don't understand that there are people out there still brutish and uncivilized then you are very naive. And hopefully someone so naive is not in charge when that time comes.
One could argue that we are still uncivilized and brutish and that is to some degree true because that is how the world STILL works you must protect you and yours or others WILL take it from you and have their way with it.
Power talks and UN resolutions do squat.
I disagree on the hesitation part. I think it's 99% bluff for political purposes. While the NK leadership is weak and arguably stupid, I stop short of thinking they are actually 100% bugfuck insane. Which is what it would take to pull that trigger.
Look, imagine if somebody could walk away with 100 million dollars, would they do ? Many would! You KNOW that many would.
Well, In NK, the top leadership have most of what they want. Hell, they are driving new mercedes. They have Rolls Royce there. They have homes that would be equal to what millionaires have here. And it is free for the taking. So, would walking away with 100 million dollars do for you? Nothing.
Now, imagine if you could kill somebody and make lots of gains, with little repercussion? Would you do it? Few would. Part of that is because they would wonder if there really was so little of repercussions. They will constantly wonder if they will be held accountable. BUT, if they KNOW that they will be held accountable, then VERY FEW WOULD DO IT.
Finally, if somebody launches a nuke against the USA, or a NATO nation, and the KNOWN response will be TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF ALL LEADERS AND EVERY MEMBER OF THEIR FAMILIES, and possibly their nation, do you think that OTHER nations will try that? Think that Iran, Burma, and now Venezuela will try it? DO you think that China will do it (who is the only major nation that is in active production of nuke warheads)? Nope.
Since MAD can not work here, then we need for every small nation to understand that ANY USE OF A NUKE WILL MEAN THEIR TOTAL DESTRUCTION. Then and only then, will you not see any of these nations use one.
But if NK believes that they can send one into SK and America will do nothing, do you think that NK would send one in? I KNOW that they would.
If you really wish to avoid war, then make certain that the other side knows that war will mean their total annihilation. BTW, if NK does attack and we do nothing, then Iran will be next to attack. And it will occur quickly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That DPRK would use nukes in an all out conflict with ROK was always a "duh" thing. NK still exists as a country for two reasons only: first, they can deal a lot of damage to SK in a war before going down, and second, they don't start a war. If they did, it is certain that they would get steamrolled very quickly by combined militaries of pretty much everyone else in the region except China, backed by NATO. So once the war starts, they might as well use everything they have. More importantly, before it starts, they'd better make sure everyone understands that.
So, really, I do not see any news to speak of here. Much less relevance to WL.
Actually, most North Koreans wholeheartedly support their government. I've met several IRL and online, and at the World Expo, and they've all had pretty firm opinions on the subject. Saying North Koreans want to be free is like saying Chinese want democracy: it's a fiction of the West and has fuck-all to do with reality on the ground.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
China's only interests in NK are, in order:
You missed one. NK is like China's Pit Bull, the scary looking dog you own so nobody messes with you. Or the slightly unbalanced "bad cop" which the good cop has to apologise for while it's all part of the play. However these days China doesn't need NK as much, and I'm sure NK knows that. That isn't a good situation for anyone, and I'm sure China has wanted to remain reassuring. Post Wikileaks, that's now an even more interesting situation.
NK has made China confident enough to be a player, letting in US commercial interests knowing it has bargaining power while NK lays on the crazy. China uses them at times to negotiate, though it's certainly a two-edged sword for them. With that in mind, you can be sure that China is at least partly responsible for NK's behaviour. The Chinese are very good chess players, and I think we'll see just how good they are in the next few years.
Oh, yes, nukes have tech in them. Let's just post the whole Reuters newswire because that is delivered with technology!
It's not an unreasonable point, because this is going to be all over non-tech news sites anyway, so can be discussed there - why add more noise to Slashdot and push down the actual tech news?
:D
;)
However, your comment reminds me of the famous remark from Bobby Fischer, the brilliant and mad chess player, who arrived at this chess club one morning to find everyone discussing Russia placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and the prospect of nuclear war. Apparently he stood this for about five minutes before erupting in anger: "Gentlemen, what has this got to do with chess?"
I'm not objecting to your voicing annoyance - far from it, I can relate. I feel the same every time a Star Wars or Star Trek story appears as I don't understand why, as a C programmer, I am required to share a social overlap with a bunch of comic geeks. However, Slashdot is a community of sorts and discussion is one of the main attractions of this site (we all know it's not the editing). When something is big enough, it's interesting to know what a community you belong to feels about it.
True, it doesn't have much to do with chess, but I'm not Bobby Fischer.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Somehow failed but still with a probable nuclear reaction. And they have equipped with nuclear enrichment facilities that would make Iran jealous.
But I also am of the opinion that NK is not ready to make nuclear war. They could kill millions in Seoul and Osaka with a few nukes but they would lose and be destroyed very quickly in retaliation. Their nukes stocks is not enough to have a credible M.A.D doctrine.
By the way, these are only saber rattling because of the power changing hands. It will probably calm down.
However, the recent south Korea exercice to protect civilians from artillery shelling in Seoul indicate that the South may be considering taking serious steps.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
When was it demonstrated that North Korea actually had nukes? I only remember a failed test and a lot of posturing. Googling turns up nothing, although I may not be looking correctly. What am I missing?
In 2006 they announced a test, and there was considerable proof that it was a real nuclear bomb. See wikipedia or google for it.
> You know, I thought you were serious until you put this part in.
> Now I'm just laughing... We barely have "unmanned bombers"
> now, much less in the 50's.
It was called Project Pluto, although IIRC there was a different name for the airplane/cruise missile that was to use the Pluto ramjet. After spending some time working on precision targeting systems, the designers realized that the weapon didn't need to hit any specific target; it just needed to fly back and forth over the enemy's terrain at low altitude where the combination of supersonic shock waves, direct radiation, and exhaust fallout would do more than enough damage. The autopilots of the 1950s were more than sufficient for that task.
The project was canceled in part due to concerns about its existence being overly proactive (as stated in the Wikipedia article), but also because the designers finally realized that even in the non-eco 1950s there would be nowhere on the planet that they could test it.
sPh
He's talking about Project Pluto, which you can read about on Wikipedia. It was canceled for being "too provocative" after several technical milestones were met.