So what's up with North Korea?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 4:09 am

Earlier today, I heard something about North Korea's new dictator offering some kind of reduction in its nuclear arsenal in exchange for foreign food aid. Anybody else know more about this?

If North Korea is legitimately aiming to transition to a more friendly relationship with its neighbors, that could be pretty nice world news. Might also make Iran look pretty bad.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 4:31 am

It's possible that the latest is saner than his father or grandfather. Or maybe being the Spare and not the primary Heir and not really being expected to take power made him less exposed to the hero worship/aggrandizement machine and he's therefore somewhat more grounded in baseline reality.

I'm not joking too much on that, either. The propaganda machine in DPRK is...insanely pervasive. Here's an interesting read about it, albeit one that's somewhat dated.

If he wants to try to get the country to calm down from hysterical and schizophrenic shouting about how they're so awesome everyone else is against them, more power to him.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 5:14 am

From what I understand, North Korea had a policy that a citizen could go to China if they where able to pay 2.5 tonnes of food. Kim Jong Eun has reduced that amount to 1 tonne. So he is opening up North Korea, however so slightly.

Interestingly, the food aid is in things like 'power bars' and things like that, apparently the state department though food like grains and rice would end up going to banquet tables and not to the common people.

I also heard the North Koreans have developed plutonium based nukes, which tend not to be as explosive as uranium based nukes. They are more radio active however.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 6:33 am

North Korea's brinksmanship comes in waves. They allow South Koreans to help them build a joint-owned industrial park, then they shoot up a couple of South Korean islands for no reason. And so on. The basic game theory is that if they just constantly ramped up the aggression, people would tune it out or even call their bluff by invading. But as long as they alternately raise and lower the stakes, then they can get concessions after each temper tantrum.

The basic problem is that they don't make enough food to feed their people, and they aren't really part of the global economy. So they can't simply provide some other non-food goods and services for international currency and then buy food on the open market. As such, their base banditry has to tread a careful line between not being taken seriously enough to get food aid and being taken seriously enough to get preemptively nuked by Russia.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 7:03 am

Did a bit of news googling, and I think these three links have most of the current story.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/02/world/asi ... index.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-01/opin ... PM:OPINION

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/thi ... _blog.html

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:05 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:As such, their base banditry has to tread a careful line between not being taken seriously enough to get food aid and being taken seriously enough to get preemptively nuked by Russia.

Errr no. People actually cheer them on. Consider Russia's neighbors:


Neighboring Country	Popular opinion
Norway	"we don't border them, dumbfuck"
Finland	"kinda Nazi"
Ukraine	"orange rabies"
Belarus	li'l bro
other Eastern Europe	"Nazis!!!"
trans-Caucasian states	"zomg Muslim terrorists!!!"
Kazakhstan	"yellow threat"
Mongolia	"Wait, is it a real country or just some place Genghis Khan was from?"
China	"ZOMG YELLOW THREAT"
North Korea	BFF
Japan	"don't ogle our islands"

I am being bloody serious here. For a lot of Russians, North Korea represents the ideal, only it's small and poor and inhabited by funny yellow people and that's why it's kind of a shithole.

Popular Opinion: I'd better quoteblock this so people won't quote me out of context wrote:The Soviet Union failed because it wasn't isolationist enough, what with containing all those wacky ethnic republics with their wacky "non-Russians". Currently, Russia is populated by pure-blooded golden-haired blue-eyed True Russians and dirty illegal immigrants, some of the latter having managed to establish themselves as Russian Citizens by bribery / fakery / blood contamination / because the policy makers are dirty traitors. So we have to close the borders, kick out everyone who looks "non-Russian" and shoot those who insist on staying. Then we'll be just like North Korea, only better, because we're huge and rich and white.

North Korea is thus the perfect neighbor for a prospective crazy isolationist nationalist state, doubly so because the neo-nazis can point at them and say, "See? We're not Nazi Germany, here's one state we don't want to glass. Now if only more countries were like North Korea."

And that is why Russia is extremely unlikely to initiate sanctions against North Korea. Russia is a kleptocracy, and when you're robbing your own people you need to keep them reasonably quiet. Getting on board is apparently a-okay - past events have shown that you can sign an international agreement that fucks over Russians with relatively little noise (compared to, say, a simple law against gender discrimination that would ban employers from specifying the gender of applicants). Telling North Korea to please stop being crazy would piss people off for no profit.

Note: despite all the racism, there's a notable lack of "they want to steal our wimminz" component - instead, it's reserved for Western Europe and the US - see,

Popular opinion wrote:the "West" is so poisoned by women's rights and the gay agenda that the white people there can't breed and have to mail-order women from Russia to harvest valuable white genetic material.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:37 pm

But the support of Russia and China of North Korea are both contingent on them not actually starting World War 3. As long as North Korea periodically blows something up in South Korea and provokes the United States to spend tens of billions of dollars to point guns at them, then it "makes sense" for the leaders of China and Russia to keep supporting them diplomatically.

But the moment that North Korea got crazy enough that nukes actually started flying around, they would be too big of a liability. In fact, any foreign country whose continued existence involved people use "Vladivostok" and "Hellfire" in the same sentence would be too much of a liability no matter what the costs were to the other side of the table.

That's why North Korea has to dial it down from time to time. If they pushed things too far, China and Russia would leave them hanging - or even discover a North Korean Plot that forced them to take action themselves.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:51 pm

The sad thing is, North Korea is the dream for most small dictatorships, the ideal end-state. It is a more-or-less self-sustaining dynasty with relative freedom from international intervention. It doesn't matter if they're a paper tiger so long as the cost of invading them is slightly higher than the cost of leaving them alone to their crazyness. It's Jonestown on a national scale. In its current form, North Korea could probably survive for another century, until their military apparatus fars so far behind that it no longer constitutes a viable threat. Or widespread food riots lead to regime change.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:11 pm

Ancient History wrote:until their military apparatus fars so far behind

Innocent typo or mockery of the language? You decide!

Ancient History wrote:Or widespread food riots lead to regime change.

Why would they riot against the regime when the people are told that it's the US' fault that they have no food?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:43 am

Maj wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Or widespread food riots lead to regime change.
Why would they riot against the regime when the people are told that it's the US' fault that they have no food?

My guess: if they get desperate enough, they'll either stop caring, or they'll look to get someone new in charge who will be more friendly with the US so they can get some food (or whatever it is they believe).

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 2:52 pm

The new guy hasn't done anything insane yet, whereas the Beloved Leader was acting strange if he wasn't doing anything crazy. It's hard for a place like North Korea to get a different leader and not improve at least a little bit.

Kim The Jong-Illest was fucking nuts. Maybe Jong-Un has at least a tiny bit of empathy for his people.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 4:21 am

KJI seems like he was a little genius. That whole thing of putting all your dodgy old artillery shells in a giant hole in the ground and blowing them all up at once so you could pretend you had a nuke for long enough to let you build an actual nuke: smart guy.

Shame about all the starvation, but starving people are really hard to motivate into doing anything like trying to overthrow the government, and he does feed all their first-born sons for them if they're loyal.

Sure, I'm happy as to be in a country where we almost all get fed, but I don't think KJI was insane at all. The people liked him while living in about the most repressive shit-hole on the planet. Mind you, fake wars worked well for GWB too, so who knows.