North Korea announced about four hours after the launch that it had succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit. "The satellite is rotating normally in its orbit," the Korean Central News Agency reported.
North Korea doesn't really operate in the real world
I have to wonder what use the Hermit Kingdom has for a communications satellite when they have no Internet or cell phone services, save for government officials.
the US, EU, Japan and South Korea condemned the launch, thought to be a cover for a long-range missile test.
yeah, north korea doesn't scare anyone. Like that country full of sand and mountains that's named after a dog. Nothing came out of that either.
Fido, obviously.
North Koreans conduct second nuclear test. (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/24/nkorea.nuclear/index.html)
Amusingly their conventional weaponry is still more powerful by the kiloton.
China is pretty sick of their shit, yeah. They provide damn near everything that lets North Korea function, but can't get any concessions out of them. I don't know that China would go to bat for us on this particular case, but it's getting worse between them.
You guys do know that North Korea has enough artillery pointed at Seoul to level it, right? That's why we pay attention to them even if they're a bit silly.
The Kang Nam left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago with the USS John S. McCain close behind.
This looksbadBOGUS! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090624/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_nuclear_91)
North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map
"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
You know... I actually thought 'nah, that must mean someone else, maybe someone from WWII?', so I did a quick search on Wikipedia, typing "John S. McCain". I was directed to John McCain's page and saw the tag at the top say "Redirected from John S. McCain" and so I thought, "Hm, I guess it is that funny." and went ahead and hit 'reply'.
::(:
2) Tanks don't work as well in jungle.
Korea
A few notes:
1) An army marches on its stomach. NK is proven to be unable to feed its population in peacetime. Expect things to get worse in wartime.
2) Tanks don't work as well in jungle. Ask the Israelis how their push into lebanon went in 06. This is important as the Merkava is a more modern and respected tank than the decade-old Abrams.
3) Fixed defenses eventually fall. Ask the french in WWII.
4) A side effect of endless COINops, Canadian doctrine for urban fighting has evolved into something to which destroys the garrison advantage of defending forces. I would suspect the american's doctrine to be on par at the bare minimum, if not supreme as they have had more hands on through two nations, as opposed to the hottest province of one.
NK would not be able to invade SK without Chinese assistance.
You know... I actually thought 'nah, that must mean someone else, maybe someone from WWII?', so I did a quick search on Wikipedia, typing "John S. McCain". I was directed to John McCain's page and saw the tag at the top say "Redirected from John S. McCain" and so I thought, "Hm, I guess it is that funny." and went ahead and hit 'reply'.
::(:
The reason why Senator McCain's torture time during any political debate was relevant to service was because his father was also high in the local hierarchy. He refused to be released until his brothers in arms were the same. Nothing like a 3rd Generation Patriot..
2) Tanks don't work as well in jungle. Ask the Israelis how their push into lebanon went in 06. This is important as the Merhav 4 is a more modern and respected tank than the decade-old Abrams.
A few notes:NK gives priority to the army in food rationing. It is essentially a feudal state in this regard. In lots of regards actually, but I digress.
1) An army marches on its stomach. NK is proven to be unable to feed its population in peacetime. Expect things to get worse in wartime.
2) Tanks don't work as well in jungle. Ask the Israelis how their push into lebanon went in 06. This is important as the Merhav 4 is a more modern and respected tank than the decade-old Abrams.Explain this to me because I am not the most military literate in this regard but:
3) Fixed defenses eventually fall. Ask the french in WWII.No one builds them expecting them to survive. They're meant to be a sponge for the opponent's military strength. Both the US and the USSR built mountain fortresses during the Cold War. They were meant to suck up ICBMs and thus reduce how many could be used on other targets, not invincible fortresses.
4) A side effect of endless COINops, Canadian doctrine for urban fighting has evolved into something to which destroys the garrison advantage of defending forces. I would suspect the american's doctrine to be on par at the bare minimum, if not supreme as they have had more hands on through two nations, as opposed to the hottest province of one.
NK would not be able to invade SK without Chinese assistance.See B. I fail to see how they couldn't overwhelm the initial defense forces. I mean, Seoul is right fucking there.
We have a bad habit in the US of assuming that the Korean War was exactly like the Vietnam War but a little earlier and somehow or another we won that one.Most people barely know anything about the Korean War. It was actually extremely unpopular at the time and calling it a victory rather than a stalemate is a tad silly.
Any invasion of NK is always going to come down to three things:I mean I suppose that could be implied but no one's mentioned it.1) Food
2) China's involvement
3) Just how effective is that state-issued brainwashing anyway?
4) US and allied forces going into a meat grinder not seen since Vietnam.
Maybe the chassis is, but they've been packing that thing with the latest tech since the beginning.
See B. I fail to see how they couldn't overwhelm the initial defense forces. I mean, Seoul is right fucking there.
Any invasion of NK is always going to come down to three things:I mean I suppose that could be implied but no one's mentioned it.1) Food
2) China's involvement
3) Just how effective is that state-issued brainwashing anyway?
4) US and allied forces going into a meat grinder not seen since Vietnam.
Also NK has stores of chemical weapons. :victory:
Navy Stuff
4) US and allied forces going into a meat grinder not seen since Vietnam.
Iraq War I (they will resist bitterly!), Iraq War II (We can do this with three guys and a jeep!)
Wasn't this the other way around? Iraq War I was dudes surrendering to camera crews while kicking Saddam in the junk and boogie out, Iraq War II was three guys and a jeep busting into Baghdad, then getting blown to smithereens over too many years and counting because Guerilla War?
SEOUL, South Korea — Punching their fists into the air and shouting "Let's crush them!" some 100,000 North Koreans packed Pyongyang's main square Thursday for an anti-U.S. rally as the communist regime promised a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation" for any American-led attack.
Several demonstrators held up a placard depicting a pair of hands smashing a missile with "U.S." written on it, according to footage taken by APTN in Pyongyang on the anniversary of the day North Korean troops charged southward, sparking the three-year Korean War in 1950.
North Korean troops will respond to any sanctions or U.S. provocations with "an annihilating blow," one senior official vowed — a pointed threat as an American destroyer shadowed a North Korean freighter sailing off China's coast, possibly with banned goods on board.
"Let's crush them!"
"fire shower of nuclear retaliation" for any American-led attack... on the anniversary of the day North Korean troops charged southward, sparking the three-year Korean War in 1950.
"an annihilating blow..."
4) US and allied forces going into a meat grinder not seen since Vietnam.
Well, we haven't really seen any scary wars since Vietnam, so it's not really hard to put a "not seen since" there.Quote4) US and allied forces going into a meat grinder not seen since Vietnam.This is the funniest thing I've ever read. Seriously, good laugh, guys.
Americans can steamroll North Korea, just like we took Baghdad....North Korea's weaponry is in a much finer state than Iraq's. They didn't fight a war a decade ago and are autarkic enough that their military is maintainable with or without most sanctions. I mean, most of it's going to be bombed but they've been building in bunkers and mountains and all over the place. It's what most of their budget is for.
It wouldn't be guerrilla style fighting like VietnamWhy not? The current power structure has a vested interest in the current regime and ceding North Korea to NATO+ would be stupid beyond belief for China or Russia.
The biggest problem in starting a war with North Korea at this point is the initial damage they could do to South Korea. And it'd have to be a surprise attack, because if the South could mobilize at all the North would be done for before they had the time to hit the switch. Sure, they have huge numbers but they couldn't fight a multi-faceted war by any stretch of the imagination.Why wouldn't they be the first to strike? Any invasion scenario involves having them already attacked something or other. They'll be firing first. That's the whole point of all that artillery and thus wipe out industry/military/command areas and throw the South Koreans into disarray.
Robert Koehler's article about the military aspects of both sides (http://www.rjkoehler.com/2009/06/21/south-korea-would-win-war-with-north/) is a good read.That budget figure on the bottom is rather misleading from, well, every possible standpoint. NK doesn't publish reliable figures and currency conversions are pointless for a society that intentionally isolates itself from the international market. And outdated doesn't mean useless as the article is implying.
The whole thing just doesn’t add up. My worry is that we make a big demand about seeing the cargo, and then there’s a tense standoff, and when it’s all over we discover that old man Kim set us up to look like George Bush searching for nonexistent W.M.D.
HIGH WATER, RISING TENSIONS -- North Korea marked its 61st anniversary Sept. 9 by vowing to "mercilessly annihilate the US imperialists" in response to any aggression, just days after Pyongyang announced its continued pursuit of a uranium-enrichment program. The hermit state also opened a dam on the Imjin River without warning on Sept. 6, sending 40 million tons of water across the border into South Korea, where six people were swept away. Seoul has demanded an apology, calling the North's excuses for releasing the water "not acceptable."
By RPGs launched by US imperialists
Living in North Korea is like living in the post-apocalypse.
You still wonder if their guns can even fire straight.
So yeah, not sanity (other than the pragmatic sanity of self-preservation)
You all are kind of underestimating the NK military here. We are talking about the 5th (4th?) largest military in the world, whose troops, perhaps more importantly, come from a region that by all appearances resembles a cult more than a country.
In general you want to try to avoid a military confrontation here not necessarily because you'll straight up lose but because victory will be so phenomenally costly that you'll forget why it was you bothered.
Taking the fight into NK would be a nightmare, on the other hand.
Having a huge military is only impressive when half of your army's job isn't 'be the guy who holds a few rounds of ammunition so you can pick up your buddy's gun when he dies'hence, why stalingrad was a major coup for the germans
The Merge Topics link is blocked by Websense for being a game site.
The Merge Topics link is blocked by Websense for being a game site.
Wait, is this something that only started happening AFTER the word "game" stopped being in the URL?
I think, when it comes to North Korea, my main fear is that a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula is probably inevitable, simply due to the fact that they've been huffing their own fumes for years.
When I say I hope NK to launches an attack, it's not because I gleefully want to see explosions or want to dance on the regime's grave. I just want them to get the hell on with it and get it out of the way.
Also, if I were O-Dawg, I would be damn well calling SK and China and asking them "So what do we do if these guys really do go on tilt to the point SK simply can't hold back any longer?". Because letting a hot war start on China's immediate land border is bad news on a scale I don't care to contemplate.
Also, if I were O-Dawg, I would be damn well calling SK and China and asking them "So what do we do if these guys really do go on tilt to the point SK simply can't hold back any longer?". Because letting a hot war start on China's immediate land border is bad news on a scale I don't care to contemplate.
All this talk about how we could crush NK and just roll in and takeover sure does remind me of 2002.
I don't think anyone would assume that killing or capturing one million fanatics is a cakewalk - no matter how unarmed/underarmed they are are.
Well, I HOPE no one's making that assumption.
EDIT: Luckily, the decision to invade NK will ultimately rest with the Government and people of South Korea, rather than the United States Congress.
All this talk about how we could crush NK and just roll in and takeover sure does remind me of 2002.
Yeah, that was the original one. The animated one we got afterwards was disappeared in the Great Forum Software Update.
As a country that's stripped itself of most natural resources and is the distance of the pacific ocean away, I'm pretty sure there are more pragmatic reasons China has for not invading us.
All this talk about how we could crush NK and just roll in and takeover sure does remind me of 2002.
Yeah, but to what end? Iraq had oil fields. What are you going to do with North Korea, put up animation studios?
Maybe you should stop browsing forums from work.
They are not serious, I would say, because they did not reveal anything new. The attitude of China towards North Korea has been known for the last few years. The Chinese have been saying it privately a number of times, and here they didn't even make a great secret of it: they will probably support North Korea as long as it stays afloat, but once it hits a wall, once it goes down, they understand that there is no alternative to the unification under Seoul's control, and they are ready to accept it.
My post is largely humorous, but it does hint at a major problem. In the video that Buge linked, they say that NK has a population that has been deluded in to believing the hype and propaganda about the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung. To force-feed them all red pills now would be dangerous as they discover that the world does not, in fact, revolve around The Great Leader.
China's less of an ally to North Korea and more the hand keeping pressure on the handle until a bomb squad arrives.
Dude started his military career as a 4-star general.
Probably been drinking as much Kool-aid as anyone else in that country.
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.
Now what happens?
"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."
The Dalai-Lama wants to have some words with you Shinra.
The NK don't get a whole lot freer, but at least the chinese brand of slavery is a little less soul crushing.
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.
the chinese brand of slavery is a little less soul crushing.
The Dalai-Lama wants to have some words with you Shinra.Considering that the reshaping and remodeling of the Tibetan Buddhism, is one of the big goals of China's imperial genocide, it's funny that you'd use the phrase "soul crushing" when the idea of a soul is a spiritual or religious construct.
Women become more powerful in North Korea while everyone suffers. (http://www.npr.org/2012/12/28/168193827/out-of-desperation-north-korean-women-become-breadwinners)
"Women, because of their prominence in the market, are at the forefront of acts of civil disobedience," Noland says, emphasizing that civil disobedience is still extremely unusual in North Korea. "The protests are generally reactive and defensive in nature, but women are very prominent in them."I wonder if this could lead to positive social reform.
The extra burden women carry is beginning to have social consequences, with young women hoping to delay marriage to avoid taking on a husband. For men, their emasculation within their own households is now a fact of life.
So hey, changing the subject, wasn't there supposed to be some kind of missile test scheduled around this time? What happened to that?
Oh yeah, I heard about that! So where are they gonna go from that, supposedly?
North Korea, poised to conduct a nuclear test any day now, has posted a video on YouTube depicting a US city resembling New York engulfed in flames after an apparent missile attack.
Former deputy assistant secretary of state and ABC News consultant Col. Steve Ganyard, USMC (Ret.) told ABC’s Martha Raddatz the State Department’s decision not to debrief Rodman is “ridiculous.”
“There is nobody at the CIA who can tell you more personally about Kim Jong Un than Dennis Rodman," Ganyard said, "and that in itself is scary.”
So I guess they hit unpause, but haven't yet touched the D-Pad?
Yeah, but really, North Korea threatens to turn South Korea into glass on almost a daily basis. The biggest thing the North Koreans do is bomb islands near them occasionally. Neither side wants to ever go to war. North Korea knows they can't win, but like to act like they're in charge for The People. South Korea knows they could win, but would incur a heavy loss for a few months and North Korea unloaded on them, and then would have to take in all of North Korea's subjects and integrate them. Neither sound really wants that.
So remember, if you ever see North Korea totally flipping its shit and trying to threaten the south, remember, it's not for you or South Korea. It's for The People.
Jeez, the bit about using meth as a substitute for real medicine. That whole country is like a macroeconomic glorious trainwreck. I almost hope it keeps struggling on forever as a sort of living cautionary tale.
and Korea's economy could actually improve with the boom in available labor.
NORTH KOREA: APRIL FOOL
At least nobody here is doing the "But NK can hit Seoul! Millions would die in minutes!" thing. Which is apparently mandatory everywhere else. Nevermind that the longest range NK artillery could only hit the comparatively much less populated northernmost outskirts, or that that artillery had an absurdly high failure rate, or that the location of those emplacements is very well known and wouldn't be in existence very long. I'm not saying it would be a completely bloodless curb-stomp battle for SK, but the threat there is consistently overstated.
Ahaha. The lastest headline this afternoon is "North Korea approves nuclear strike on U.S." :lol:
NK has apparently been sitting on a lot of natural resources for years that they can't really do anything with
Natural resources include coal, petroleum, lead, tungsten, zinc, graphite, magnesite, iron ore, copper, gold, pyrites, salt, fluorspar and hydropower.
I suspect this originally started as posturing. But I think we are past that point. The only thing we can hope is that if he does launch an attack, it either fails spectacularly or takes a minimum of human life.
A personal pet theory I have is that as soon as NK launches an attack, China invades and annexes the country. South Korea would probably make a huge stink about it, but I think the EU and America would breath collective sighs of relief at it not being their problem. NK has apparently been sitting on a lot of natural resources for years that they can't really do anything with, not to mention a relatively docile people who are already accustomed to treating the Chinese as allies. What might take decades of work for other countries could take a few years for China.
While it would suck for the NK people to go from one communist regime with no respect for human life to another, I don't know what kind of alternatives there would be. I think the reason we haven't seen war so far already is how much of a fucking nightmare it would be to get involved in a conflict with them. It's easy to write off the North Koreans as backwards dirt farmers, but they have one of the largest (if not the largest) standing armies in the world. They have nearly two thousand tanks on par with the Abrams and have spent years preparing for a ground war on their own soil. A ground war with them would be a fucking nightmare, their countryside is bristling with anti-air batteries, and I don't think anyone wants to nuke them.
Just as a minor point, I do think that the NK military won't be nearly as useful as it looks on paper.
Of course a non-zero number of those tanks and artillery pieces and missile batteries will actually fire when their triggers are pressed, and some of those may even hit their marks, but how many is a big goddamned question mark.
Yeah, I mean, sheer volume means you can't discount them; they'll do some damage for sure. But expecting efficacy that rivals a competent professional modern army seems like a bad bet here.
Yeah, I mean, sheer volume means you can't discount them; they'll do some damage for sure. But expecting efficacy that rivals a competent professional modern army seems like a bad bet here.
FWIW, you don't need good efficacy when you have an army of 3 million infantry and six thousand tanks. I think SK would be in for a serious hurt if the North decided to roll out tomorrow. Seoul would fall overnight, though I think that the south could eventually draw them into a stalemate long enough for the US to land troops to reinforce them.
There's no ground war scenario based out of south korea that isn't a nightmare, though. Even if we are outgunning them ala Iraq, the NK army is fucking huge. Unreliable equipment and poorly fed soldiers don't mean much when you have 3 million of them and a good percentage think, literally, that their leader is God and the only reason he experiences suffering is the enemies he is fighting right now.
Yeah, I mean, sheer volume means you can't discount them; they'll do some damage for sure. But expecting efficacy that rivals a competent professional modern army seems like a bad bet here.
FWIW, you don't need good efficacy when you have an army of 3 million infantry and six thousand tanks. I think SK would be in for a serious hurt if the North decided to roll out tomorrow. Seoul would fall overnight, though I think that the south could eventually draw them into a stalemate long enough for the US to land troops to reinforce them.
There's no ground war scenario based out of south korea that isn't a nightmare, though. Even if we are outgunning them ala Iraq, the NK army is fucking huge. Unreliable equipment and poorly fed soldiers don't mean much when you have 3 million of them and a good percentage think, literally, that their leader is God and the only reason he experiences suffering is the enemies he is fighting right now.
Does this scenario also assume that South Korea has no army and afterwards NK comes over to America and kicks our asses too?
though I think that the south could eventually draw them into a stalemate long enough for the US to land troops to reinforce them.
FWIW, you don't need good efficacy when you have an army of 3 million infantry and six thousand tanks.
China to everybody: be cool (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90883/8202601.html).
FWIW, you don't need good efficacy when you have an army of 3 million infantry and six thousand tanks.
[citation needed]? Sources I can find agree on about 1.1 million active-duty North Korean military personnel -- all of them, not just infantry corps -- against about 720,000 South Korean and already deployed U.S. troops. Combine the technical and training advantages of the South Koreans with the sixty years they've had to prepare defenses against ground invasion, and I think the North would need an awful lot of efficiency indeed.