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Postcard From Pyongyang: The Airport Now Has Wi-Fi, Sort of (apnews.com)
Eric Talmadge, writing for AP: North Korea is one of the least Wi-Fi-friendly countries in the world. Having a device that emits Wi-Fi signals can result in detention and a major fine. Worse, if you are a North Korean. Public use of the internet is a concept that just makes North Korean officials really nervous. But here's a sign that might be changing. North Korea's main internet provider appears to have put up a Wi-Fi trial balloon at the international departure area of Pyongyang's airport. It's a logical place to start. The service is only available, or even visible, to travelers who have already cleared customs, which included me last week. The reporter was unable to actually get the Wi-Fi to work, however.
North Korea is one of the least Wi-Fi-friendly countries in the world.
They could drop the word Wi-Fi from that sentence and it would still be true. I really cannot fathom any sane reason to travel to that country.
Killing Benigno Aquino is what toppled Marcos' regime. I actually met Aquino when he was an MIT fellow. My first reaction when I heard he was going back was "Marcos will have him killed." Doing it before Aquino even got off the tarmac was a mistake; he should have met with an "accident". But then that was only the culmination of a whole train of mistakes, which started by allowing a young, charismatic politician to become the focus of opposition hopes.
So your analogy doesn't really work. The lesson for a tyrant is don't let your opponents become publicly notable. Keep people you can't trust inside the country where you can watch them and restrict them effectively. If they do manage leave the country, don't let them back in, or even adopt the pretense that they're free to return. Kill them while they are *languishing* in exile with no prospect of return. These are all lessons the DPRK has followed assiduously.
Practice makes perfect applies to tyranny as much as anything else, you just can't be half-hearted or half-assed about it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Some day, yes. It won't be from within any time soon though. The military is way too strong and the populace too weak and well-controlled to really get anything going. Of course if and when it does get going, it would by necessity have to be a surprise to everyone not involved so I suppose its possibly that they've been planning something for 20 years that they'll spring on the DPRK any day now.
Outside violence would likely have to be initiated by DPRK themselves though. China still supports them and nobody else is going to initiate action against them while China's hovering in the background. As long as North Korea just continues testing and threatening with their nukes rather than actually using them, its unlikely even the US will try to stop them.
are really unwilling to admit to.
Nobody's unwilling to admit it. They're just unsure what to do about it. Attacking NK has a good chance of pissing off China, and nobody really wants a war with China at this point. If China themselves decide to annex NK then there might be something doing, but the rest of the world won't have much involvement.
And even if China does take action, we're likely to end up with another, possibly even more tense standoff as there's a chance they'd want the entire Korean peninsula rather than just half of it.
But for fun lets say China just steps out all together and the US is free to attack NK themselves. What then? Do we try to merge it with South Korea? Do we annex it ourselves and try to hold it as a colony? Attempt to set up a puppet government which has worked oh-so-well in South America and the Middle East when we've tried it before. Or do we just destroy everything and then walk away and leave them to their own devices? Merging with SK sounds like the best option but that's a lot of hatred built up over the last few decades so that wouldn't be easy by any means (never mind the purely practical aspect of figuring out how to de-mine the neutral zone.) And none of the other options sound particularly good either.
ashamed to have let the Cancer that is North Korea live for so long.
North Korea is bad but its not the worst we've seen, or ignored. We've got an ongoing genocide in Myanmar right now. It was only a couple of years ago that Syria was using chemical weapons against its own citizens. Rwanda wasn't all that long ago and the list goes on. Sure we took a pot shot at Syria, more because Trump wanted try blowing something up after he came into office than because it actually accomplished anything, but otherwise we've pretty much left all of those things (and many others) to play themselves out.
Malnutrition and hard work, no matter how repressive, is still better than being flat out slaughtered in most peoples' opinions.. especially when you're comparing a slow, painful death like the sarin gas attacks in Syria.