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[Büge]

Expectations that things are going to change for the better in SK are pretty naive, though. The population does not want change (they have been brainwashed extremely effectively) and the government does not seem to be growing a conscience anytime soon.

Well, that's kinda what a sixty-year ceasefire does to you.

[Büge]

[Sharkey]

[Bal]

North Korea is populated by an absolutely wasted people. They have been so indoctrinated that if you gave them freedom they'd probably mill about until a few of the braver of them started oppressing one another, and the oppressed would feel relief, because the world is right again.

[Mongrel]

Decontamination in small batches has worked out okay (see the refugees who have escaped to China, SK, etc.).

I think maybe we don't give the North Korean people enough credit for knowing their country is fucked up wrong, though their frame of refence is certainly well-tilted.

Like there's an understanding that something is not right, because hey, we're all starving and dying and so are all their relatives. But the ability to properly figure out or understand why has been suppressed as harshly as just about anything. Usually the US is scapegoated in the NK media and SK gets off comparitively mildly, but even that doesn't fully convince every citizen.

[Bal]

There's also no evidence that this is not the natural order. Certainly the Dear Leader is (was) perfect, and so things couldn't be better anywhere else.

[Mongrel]

While broadly true, we don't know how many fragments of the outside world leak in. Clearly some people know things are better outside, or they wouldn't be trying to flee. And not just the upper-echelon folk who would reasonably be expected to be in the know.

In recent years, common folks are paying human smugglers to get them out. It's hard (like $40,000 per person), but some of the proletariat are getting the cash together (there's very small and limited free-market stuff in NK... maybe comparable to Cuba). Who knows how well the Army can stop this sort of thing, considering most of them have fewer bullets than Barney Fife. I doubt the guards on the border with China are high on the quatermaster totem pole.

The important thing here is that human smugglers actually exist and make a living, which means there's some limit to the regime's reach and fair demand for the service. Maybe the regime looks the other way on purpose because it's easier to just let troublemakers get rid of themselves, but the state is so crippled and wasted, Occam's razor probably applies (i.e. that the smugglers are colluding with, or buying off mid-level elements of the army).

[DestyNova]

Now what happens?

 An announcement that he has transcended his mortal body and now watches over his people from the heavens.

[Mothra]

Really though! I'm genuinely baffled to hear they straight-up told the country he died of a heart attack on a train, like any old mortal chump, rather than weaving the tale of how he exploded into brilliant divine radiance, choosing to finally transcend his earthly form to rule from the heavens, where he has always been.

All like, rising as stardust into the night sky, his face forming from the stars and winking like in Dragonheart.

[Brentai]

"I can't believe it," a party member named as Kang Tae-Ho was quoted as saying. "How can he go like this? What are we supposed to do?"

Another, Hong Sun-Ok, said: "He tried so hard to make our lives much better and he just left like this."

Their attitudes seem to reflect less reverence and grief and more rage and abandonment.  I guess if my God was an incarnate being with terrible hair, I'd be pretty upset if he left my world a broken shitstain and went and died of too many cheeseburgers too.

These people don't worship the Kims so much as they have formed some sort of emotional codependency on the Kims.  It's really a pretty good strategy if you want unbroken loyalty, since they can really hate you as much as they want and they still won't turn on you.

Anyway Jong-un seems to have all the ambition of a soggy paper towel and he's not in a terribly good political position anyway so unless he turns out to be a straight up Larsa I'm guessing that Sul-song's gonna be playing him like Jim Henson with his hand up a plush butthole.  At least until China taps her on the shoulder and tells her to quietly move aside before things get ugly.

I mean yeah, the land itself is of less than zero value to them, but a system of perfect human control and populace that's been pushed to the absolute limit of human ability?  You KNOW they love that.  Also pretty much any outcome that doesn't involve them taking control and leaving Jong-un as a puppet dictator is going to end up highly inconvenient for them.

[Mongrel]

I don't know for sure that China will bother though. Not if they don't have to. NK is so crazy that even China is fairly wary of them by most accounts.

China just figures "better the totally lunatic devil we know and have some strong leverage over, to some crazy western-friendly devil we don't."

China actually called Kim Jong Il on the carpet a couple times when he was getting extra crazy. The Standing Committee's probably hoping they can keep that going, though I bet they don't care if it's the generals or Kim Il-Puffy in charge, so long as the regime is stable and kowtows properly to Beijing.

NOW, that said, this MAY be a chance for Beijing to increase their direct influence - if we assume that at least some of the time Kim Jong Il was willing to annoy or disobey Beijing, then China may be able to prop up the winner in a power struggle, to Beijing's benefit. But we may never know just how personally beholden Kim was to China. If he was already in up his eyeballs, there may be little functional change for the Chinese.

[François]

Internet rumor has it that Kim Jong-Un was assassinated in the NK embassy in Beijing.

It's based on Chinese twitter reports, and apparently that type of rumor is common, so you can take it with a grain of salt.

If it was true though, I wonder what manner of repercussions it'd have.

[TA]

The rumor is also that the PLA is crossing the China/NK border.

[Shinra]

it'd be a brilliant move from the Chinese. They get to expand their borders and seize the natural resources of north korea and the rest of the world would look at them as heroes for squishing a piece of shit dictator and his regime. The NK don't get a whole lot freer, but at least the chinese brand of slavery is a little less soul crushing.

[Classic]

The Dalai-Lama wants to have some words with you Shinra.

[Shinra]

The Dalai-Lama wants to have some words with you Shinra.

If you are seriously making the argument that the Chinese treat the Tibetans worse than Kim Jong Il and family treat(ed) the North Koreans, I think you need to go turn on a tv, read a book, or just point your browser to wikipedia and read for a while. The fact that we even know about Tibetan oppression is proof positive that the Chinese people have it better. The only things we know about what goes on in NK comes from escapees, and what we hear is just the tip of the iceberg.

And if you think I was making the argument that the Chinese people are free at all or that their regime wasn't tryrannical, you need to learn to fucking read:

The NK don't get a whole lot freer, but at least the chinese brand of slavery is a little less soul crushing.

Edit; just perspective, anyone caught in NK using a cell phone for the next 3 months will be tried as a war criminal and executed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9040152/North-Korea-threatens-to-punish-mobile-phone-users-as-war-criminals.html source.

[Thad]

Shinra.  Be nice.

Classic.  Avoid the sarcastic one-sentence posts.

[Shinra]

 

Ok boss.

[Mongrel]

I wouldn't sweat it anyway guys. This has an obscenely high probability of being 100% bullshit as it is. The rumours of the Chinese crossing the border are (if anything) a bigger indicator that this is just bunk. 

[Shinra]

I wouldn't sweat it anyway guys. This has an obscenely high probability of being 100% bullshit as it is. The rumours of the Chinese crossing the border are (if anything) a bigger indicator that this is just bunk.

Well, that much is almost certainly true. If the Chinese were managing a stealth invasion of NK, I suspect Chinese internet would mysteriously be down and Chinese phone service would be mysteriously undergoing maintainance until they were ready to declare NK Chinese territory.