Anyone think that the US intervention in korea caused and is escalating these problems? From M*A*S*H reruns i see we went to war there, and I've heard that we still have troops stationed in SK. What happened with vietnam? I get pencils from there and we left in defeat. Let 'em solve their own problems.well, that's a marvelous analysis of the situation...
the current crisis is not about the US presence in the ROK. It is about the DPRK's internal problems - a fearful leadership, limited resources, and a need to re-build the pipeline of aid that has kept the country going for a decade and a half.
too many acronyms. everyone knows mash, I don't know what ROK or DPRK are, but communism fails if we leave it alone. Not because we put sanctions on the country or saber rattle at them. It just doesn't work. I'd like competing contries for pencil manufacturing. We use alot in our tabletop game.
Republic of Korea and Democratic people's republic of Korea, IIRC.
I eat stuff all the time, because I don't live in the DPRK. In fact, I think I'll reheat myself a slice of extremely delicious Chicago style deep dish pizza.Very funny, G.I.
Decadent petty-bourgeois liberal intelligentsia, eating fast food made from the blood of the Yellow Man, the Brown Man and the Black Man.
The DPRK is a funky get down juche party and everyone knows it. Just ask Dennis Rodman.
Vive le Bachuan!
This pizza specifically is quite good. Made mostly from ingredients sourced by local, or at least semi-local, farmers. They get all their cheese from a small and independent dairy in Wisconsin for example. And it's delicious.
I think the point about oppression is fairly moot. Yes we've done it, and are doing it, but so are they. The DPRK rules with fear and paranoia, sending entire families to deadly work camps if even a single person voices dissent, or even dissatisfaction with the Dear Leader.
The real point is that their country is failing. The lives of the common people have deteriorated over the past 50 years. They aren't just stuck in the 40's or 50's, in some ways they're stuck in the equivalent of our 1890's.
The state run factories are shut down, they don't actually produce anything. The workers are required to show up and spend the entire day doing nothing though. They can bribe their supervisor to skip work, but it's very difficult to find work that pays enough to cover the bribe. Also, such work is technically illegal. They get paid for showing up, but it isn't enough to really buy anything. The women of the DPRK have essentially created a black market economy, mainly doing a lot of the basic things that happen in most normal economies.
In that black market they are able to earn enough to buy additional food (technically food is free in the DPRK, but it's scarce), either just more of it or of better quality and not just the empty, and easy to grow, empty calorie foods.
I'll take my deep dish pizza over what they have any day.
Eating pizza
Yes, it must be delicious, to gorge yourself in a society built on nuclear terrorism, imperialist murder and massacres of the workers and students.
--
Comrade Jeff, I am from Bachuan, not Vietnam.
You didn't actually refute anything I said. I've already agreed with you that the US has committed atrocities and suppressed human rights in many places.
I've been to South Korea, I'd be happy living there, even though they don't have any good pizza. They still have lots of excellent food, and that food is actually available to the common people. I'd even live some place like Indonesia or Malaysia, where food is still easier to obtain than in the DPRK.
Starting around 1900, US farmers began to use tractors instead of horses. Their adoption was slow for a long time as they were too heavy, too expensive, high maintenance and dangerous. There were probably 4000 steam tractors and double that many gas tractors. Ford eventually came out with a much smaller model that was very affordable which helped encourage more widespread use in the 20's. It was something like 1/15 the weight of older models and much simpler to maintain.
The tractor was one of the primary inventions that freed up significant portions of agriculture labor to become more industrialized.
In the DPRK, the ox is still the most common means of powering a plow. That is what Juche has bought them. A third of their workforce has to work on farms and they still can't produce enough food to feed their people. The DPRK requires at least 500,000 metric tons of basic staples to meet their food needs from outside their own borders.
Life is not much fun in DPRK. The Kim dynasty haven't exactly lived up to the tenets of Grandfather Pei Thought. But if you think we're going to listen to lectures from glutinous gwailo gourmandizers who can't even feed your 1.6 million homeless children, then I spit in your face.
[Turns to Comrade Nuclear Technician]
Take us to Defcon One, comrade.
Vive le Bachuan!
Good for you. Good for you. Not everyone here has that copout.
I was old enough to vote as of 1996, and I've never voted Republican. I may sometimes have felt like I was voting for the lesser of two evils, but I've never voted Republican.
As for this petition.... declare North Korea a state? Seriously? Can we even DO that?
Yes & No. We can declare States. Though I don't think Korea is an option do to them not being our Territory or Ally. I think the term is Territorial State...
We technically can declare England, Japan, Israel, & a few others as States should they come under attack. This allows us to freely support them. We actually used a Threat of this to stop an invasion of Japan during the Cold War by Russia.
We told them that if they invaded Japan we would declare them and then they would have invaded U.S. Soil violating one of the Treaties we had with them.
Though this required a lot of Paperwork after the fact and most nations wouldn't like it unless they really needed/wanted our help. IIRC though it now requires a contract with the nation beforehand. Or them to be one of our Territories/Protectorates.
Anyone think that the US intervention in korea caused and is escalating these problems? From M*A*S*H reruns i see we went to war there, and I've heard that we still have troops stationed in SK. What happened with vietnam? I get pencils from there and we left in defeat. Let 'em solve their own problems.
Don't get your history from TV comedy shows, even good ones ;-)
There was also no Vietnam-style intervention in Korea. What happened is that Korea (as a whole) was invaded and occupied by the Japanese before WWII. At the end of WWII, the Soviets invaded the northern half of the country and the USA invaded the south to destroy the Japanese occupation forces. That done, the country was divided into two zones which the Russians and Americans would help get back on their feet, after which time elections would be held and the country restored to full independence.
This didn't actually happen, of course. The Russians, later with the cooperation of the newly-Communist Chinese, set up a puppet Communist government in Pyongyang. The Americans established, though rather more transparently, a capitalist-style, Western-friendly democratic government in Seoul. The two sides couldn't agree on how to reunify the two states with diametrically-opposed ideologies. North Korea armed up heavily and invaded South Korea (with Stalin's nod and wink). South Korea and the USA, after losing ground early on, drove back and defeated the North Koreans but, at the moment of apparent victory, were then defeated by a Chinese counter-invasion. After three years of toing and froing up and down the peninsula, both sides ended up exactly where they started and agreed to a ceasefire (though never a peace treaty). And hence where we are now.
The Americans are in South Korea with the full support and appreciation of the South Korean government. If the South Koreans didn't want the Americans there, the Americans would leave.
communism fails if we leave it alone
When? Communism fell in Russia because the USA and the West bankrupted them by tricking them into an arms race they couldn't afford. Other than that, Communism is going strong (at least titularly) in Cuba, China and North Korea.
Communism fails because it is a deeply flawed ideology: nice in theory, but so open to abuse and corruption that it's unworkable, and thus transforms into totalitarianism. But it is tenacious, and hangs on for decades if someone outside doesn't try to bring it down.
In that black market they are able to earn enough to buy additional food
Yup. North Korea is so close to the edge that shutting down the black market (as the government threatens to do a few times each year) could tip the country into famine.
Let's just blow up the earth, that'll solve all the problems we have, and create only one for us. A simple solution to so many problems. Thoughts?
It'd be cheaper to release an engineered virus that (almost) wipes out mankind. Seven thousand+ years' recovery time for Mother Nature should be pretty entertaining before the next "WTF" moment.
What is becoming possible is genetically tailoring viruses to target specific groups, or even individuals. Of course, that requires massive amounts of DNA samples to work with... where would the states get that?
And, to fully moot the point, either has been, or will be, super classified.
What is becoming possible is genetically tailoring viruses to target specific groups, or even individuals. Of course, that requires massive amounts of DNA samples to work with... where would the states get that?
Easily, actually.
Me simplified.
Don't get your history from TV comedy shows, even good ones ;-)
Historical response by werthead
... see above
You do know more than I on the history of korea, and I was happy to read it without wiki.
The Americans are in South Korea with the full support and appreciation of the South Korean government. If the South Koreans didn't want the Americans there, the Americans would leave.
but trapper and hawkeye were drafted!
When? Communism fell in Russia because the USA and the West bankrupted them by tricking them into an arms race they couldn't afford. Other than that, Communism is going strong (at least titularly) in Cuba, China and North Korea.
Communism fails because it is a deeply flawed ideology: nice in theory, but so open to abuse and corruption that it's unworkable, and thus transforms into totalitarianism. But it is tenacious, and hangs on for decades if someone outside doesn't try to bring it down.
Communism failed because they went bankrupt. I don't think they were tricked, the us spent as much if not more on defense, and still spends more than any other country. China isn't as communist as it was, and is tending more towards free market principles (at least economically). The poverty rate in china has shrunk by leaps and bounds recently. This was done without an invasion by the US with anything other than dollar doller bill yo.