North Korea

WWWTT wrote:

Here's a good rule of thumb, democracy=good chance US can change the government to one that it wants, dictatorship=US enemy(calling someone an enemy is the first step to military invasion). Any questions?

I have one: If the rule's that simple, why does the US enthusiastically support dictatorships that are friendly to it (too many to list, but on the Korean peninsula, Park Chung-Hee comes to mind) while condemning and subverting not only opposing dictatorships, but opposing democracies (Allende, Chavez, Papandreou)? I mean, c'mon, this is anti-Americanism 101, and I say this as an American-born man who finds himself in the anti-American camp more than half the time. Surely the most obvious distinction isn't whether a country is a dictatorship (Saudi Arabia/North Korea) or democracy (Netherlands/Turkey), but whether the government that issues from that political system ends up doing what Washington wants or not. And indeed, there's a very solid argument to be made that when America demands a transition from dictatorship to democracy, the results are often worse for America than a prior friendly dictatorship was; Iraq's current Shiite-led government is less pro-American than Saddam was in the 80s. The belief that democracy is the ultimate tool to bring every country on the planet into America's orbit can reasonably be called the "Bush delusion".

@cco

i don’t recal the US or Canada for that matter calling Saudi’s Arabia an enemy. Come to think of it, I don’t even recall the government calling the Saudi a dictatorship? Regime is also another word that the corporate media and the government like to throw around when the definition of dictatorship isn’t flexible enough to meet their agenda.

Hey wait a second bro, you cut off my comment! I also said I never recalled the US and Canada calling Saudi a dictatorship!

Mr. Magoo wrote:

I don't want to argue too hard here, because you're actually living in Korea and such.

But I wonder whether the unfortunate moral of the story is that Qaddafi showed weakness, and that's the kiss of death for strongman dictators?  Your timeline suggests eight years between Qaddafi agreeing to ease up on the nukes, and Qaddafi getting the Mussolini treatment.  What changed?  Surely it's not just a given that if you cease developing WMDs, they come to get you.

If they don't like you, they come to get you. If you have WMDs, that makes it harder for them to come get you. You don't need the WMDs if they are okay with you.

The story that sounds most credible to me is that they came for Qaddafi when he rejected the dollar standard in favour of the gold standard. When he played by the U.S.' rules it was fine. In fact when taking a quick peek I found articles to that effect even pre-dating his death.

On the other hand, the NK regime is on very bad terms(TM) with the U.S., so they absolutely do have a legitimate claim to needing to be able to defend themselves for self-preservation - in the same way that a group of bank robbers who've already killed a few hostages and are surrounded by SWAT needs their AK-47s, or whatever guns people would actually use in a heist.

Magoo:

re: the Lankov piece again, I don't think he's neccesarily arguing that the nuke agreement was part of a deliberate plot to eventually attack Libya, since, as you say, that makes the eight-year timeline a little hard to explain. Just that giving up the nukes made it easier for Qadaffi to be ousted when the west(and yes, I hold certain European countries accountable for that too) decided they wanted him gone.

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If they don't like you, they come to get you.

But they don't like lots of leaders.

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in the same way that a group of bank robbers who've already killed a few hostages and are surrounded by SWAT needs their AK-47s, or whatever guns people would actually use in a heist.

Who will put their hand up to say "... and in that case, they have every right to whatever weapons will prevent their apprehension.  Bank robbers don't have the same beliefs about innocent lives as we do, and it's not for us to try to 'wake' them"? 

I'm only asking because you seem to be acknowledging that DPRK aren't just a placid nation of farmers whose only wish is to be left alone, to farm.  Unless nukes grow on a vine.

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Not really any specific individuals or families.

So... no specific family comes to mind?  No specific family??

And I'll explicitly state that I did NOT include North Korea in the countries we don't like because the North Korean government's tyranny is in a category all of it's own compared to anything else going on in the world right now or in the last few decades. I have nothing but sympathy for the North Korean people, and I even understand the lack of options faced by their leaders - but frankly I find it appalling that you'd justify and even seem to cheer for the enslavement and starvation of millions of people - and, apparently, the nuclear obliteration of hundreds of millions more - just to stick it to the U.S. imperialists. Your solution is magnitudes worse than the problem you claim to want to solve.

Ya I don’t think so
https://www.liberationnews.org/un-hypocrisy-and-human-rights-html/

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Who will put their hand up to say "... and in that case, they have every right to whatever weapons will prevent their apprehension.  Bank robbers don't have the same beliefs about innocent lives as we do, and it's not for us to try to 'wake' them"? 

I'm only asking because you seem to be acknowledging that DPRK aren't just a placid nation of farmers whose only wish is to be left alone, to farm.  Unless nukes grow on a vine.

I guess I wasn't clear. I'm not saying the NK ruling party has any "right" to anything. I'm just saying that through their past and present reprehensible behaviour they've put themselves in a position where they do need WMDs in order to survive. Not necessarily nukes, technically - as long as they can destroy Seoul with other weaponry they have a hostage of sufficient importance. But broadly speaking if they say they need WMDs to defend themselves, well, that's true. Doesn't mean they are blameless by any stretch.

In some sense, I was suggesting that the bank robber's claim would be facetious as it ignores all the context of the situation or how they got to that point. Likewise with NK.

WWWTT wrote:

And I'll explicitly state that I did NOT include North Korea in the countries we don't like because the North Korean government's tyranny is in a category all of it's own compared to anything else going on in the world right now or in the last few decades. I have nothing but sympathy for the North Korean people, and I even understand the lack of options faced by their leaders - but frankly I find it appalling that you'd justify and even seem to cheer for the enslavement and starvation of millions of people - and, apparently, the nuclear obliteration of hundreds of millions more - just to stick it to the U.S. imperialists. Your solution is magnitudes worse than the problem you claim to want to solve.

Ya I don’t think so https://www.liberationnews.org/un-hypocrisy-and-human-rights-html/[/quote]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea

Human rights in North Korea are the principles that dictate the legal rights of citizens in North Korea. In North Korea, human rights are severely limited.[1] Despite numerous rights being de jure guaranteed by the country's constitution, rights groups such as Amnesty International and nations such as The United States have asserted that in practice, there is no de facto right to free speech, and the only radio, television, music and news providers that are deemed legal are those operated by the government.[2][3] According to reports from Amnesty International and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, by 2017 an estimated 200,000 prisoners[4] are incarcerated in camps that are dedicated to political crimes, and subjected to forced labor, physical abuse, execution[5] and human experimentation.

The North Korean government strictly monitors the activities of foreign visitors. Aid workers are subjected to considerable scrutiny and they are also excluded from places and regions which the government does not want them to enter. Since citizens cannot freely leave the country,[6][7] it is mainly from stories of refugees and defectors that the nation's human rights record has been constructed. The government's position, expressed through the Korean Central News Agency, is that international criticism of its human rights record is a pretext for overthrowing its Juche-based system, while the abuses of its critics go unpunished.[8][9]

North Korea's human rights record has been considered among the worst in the world and has been globally condemned, with groups such as the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the European Union all critical of the country's record. Indeed, most international human rights organizations consider North Korea to have no contemporary parallel[10] with respect to violations of liberty.[11][12][13][14]

The General Assembly of the United Nations has since 2003 annually adopted a resolution condemning the country's human rights record. The latest resolution of December 19, 2011, passed by a vote of 123–16 with 51 abstentions, urged the government in Pyongyang to end its "systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights", which included public executions and arbitrary detentions. North Korea rejected the resolution, saying it was politically motivated and based upon untrue fabrications.[15] In February 2014, a UN special commission published a detailed, 400-page account based on first-hand testimonies documenting "unspeakable atrocities" committed in the country.[16]

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The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has officially acknowledged the widespread human rights violations that regularly occur in North Korea.[33] United Nation's Human Rights Resolution 2005/11 referred to specific types of abuses within North Korea:

Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, public executions, extrajudicial and arbitrary detention, the absence of due process and the rule of law, imposition of the death penalty for political reasons, the existence of a large number of prison camps and the extensive use of forced labour;

Sanctions on citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea who have been repatriated from abroad, such as treating their departure as treason leading to punishments of internment, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or the death penalty;

All-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association and on access of everyone to information, and limitations imposed on every person who wishes to move freely within the country and travel abroad;

Continued violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, in particular the trafficking of women for prostitution or forced marriage, ethnically motivated forced abortions, including by labour-inducing injection or natural delivery, as well as infanticide of children of repatriated mothers, including in police detention centres and labour training camps.[34]

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The issue of forced labor is also common in North Korea, especially in the mining and textile industries as reported in the U.S. Department of Labor's 2013 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.

According to Human Rights Watch, children (some as young as 11[36]) are forced to work on farms and construction sites at the behest of the government, and may be demanded to gather scrap metals and other materials by schools to be sold.[37] The labor can be intensive and children living in the country's Kwalliso (detention camps) are also forced to engage in heavy work.[36]

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North Korean citizens usually cannot freely travel around the country,[32] let alone travel abroad.[6][7][32] Emigration and immigration are strictly controlled.[32][72] Only the political elite may own or lease vehicles, and the government limits access to fuel and other forms of transport due to frequent shortages of gasoline/petrol, diesel fuel, crude oil, coal and other fossil fuels (satellite photos of North Korea show an almost complete absence of vehicles on all of its roads throughout the country, even in its cities). Forced resettlement of citizens and whole families, especially as punishment for political reasons, is said to be routine.[73]

North Korean refugees who flee to China are often later forcibly repatriated back to North Korea by authorities, are routinely beaten, and sent to prison camps.[74] This is because the North Korean government treats emigrants from the country as defectors.[74] This treatment is more severe in cases where North Korean refugees have come into contact with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are associated with South Korea or with religions, especially Christianity.[74] In cases where the North Korean government discovers that contact has occurred between refugees and these NGOs, the punishments for these refugees are torture and execution upon their repatriation back to North Korea.[74]

But it's okay, because, (and I quote from your article) "conditions in North Korea are vastly better than those in other developing countries", "that conditions in North Korea compare so well with countries elsewhere in Asia with plentiful and fertile farmland and which are well-integrated into the world economy speaks to North Korea’s heroic resistance to U.S. efforts at isolation and forcible regime change", and of course we "should understand that imperialism is the foundation of modern capitalism".

Those terrible U.S. imperialists "require ever-cheaper resources and labor power", and "opposing imperialism is ... imperative for all people in the hubs of global capitalism in the struggle for socialism."

I have just one question. If the U.S. quest for cheaper labour power is so terrible, and the North Korean regime is so noble for resisting U.S. imperialism, then how do you justify this?

I have just one question. If the U.S. quest for cheaper labour power is so terrible, and the North Korean regime is so noble for resisting U.S. imperialism, then how do you justify this?

Don't want to justify any of this. After all, this is a debate forum on the internet. I'm just pointing out that if one was to actually look, you can find perfectly reasonable opposing arguments. Now obviously, if you want to dig up dirt on North Korea on the internet, a whole lot of stuff is going to come up. And no surprise since there's a media propaganda war going on. And we all know this very well. But maybe some people have forgotton about all those WMD Iraq was supposed to have in 2002? And the UN weapons inspectors going into Iraq were US plants? 

When North Korea signals they want to go into negotiations, that's going to change in a heart beat! And you know it!

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war.

But evidently, far less than what was necessary to win it.  Or else how did it end in an armistice rather than a victory?  It's pretty hard to call it "overkill" if it wasn't even enough.

I also found this little note, from Walkom's article, interesting:

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Technically, the war that began in 1950 when Pyongyang invaded South Korea is still ongoing.

So this fight began when the skinny kid smashed his glasses on the big bully's fist?  Or what?  The situation is all America's fault how again??

That war began when the "arrogant" leaders in the North after throwing the vile Japanese out of their country refused to agree to have the US split their country into two nations. Of course if they had just agreed with the bully he would not have beat them up and raped their mother ansd sisters. Like the US troops did during that war and in most if not all other wars they have been in since they started their genocidal pattern with my Acadian ancestors.  

Meanwhile with the propaganda wars the North Koreans are posting these pictures and other like it of our school children being forced to do hard labour.

The World's Real Nuclear Menace Isn't North Korea    -      by Joshua Cho

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/29/the-worlds-real-nuclear-menace-i...

"In light of the nuclear brinksmanship with North Korea being frequently compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis and discussion of hypothetical worst-case scenarios, it's worth reviewing the United States' record and examining whether North Korea is really the belligerent nuclear menace the world needs to liberate itself from..."

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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That war began when the "arrogant" leaders in the North after throwing the vile Japanese out of their country

Seems they timed the throwing out of Japanese forces to exactly coincide with the U.S. defeating Japan in WWII.

Just like the Chinese did as well although they had to also defeat the US toadies after defeating the Japanese. And like the Soviets who timed their defeat of Germany just as the US was single handedly running across Europe. Fuck I missed out on the US indoctrination camps as a youth. Where did you go for yours?

My wife’s grandmother helped the Korean resistance by giving them food and medicine.  

The Japanese gave up Korea because they lost the war to the Allies. While they were harassed by the Korean resistance the reality is they were in no way “driven out by them”. Sorry but those are the facts.

The Koreans were pretty much united in their resistance under the Japanese occupation (with the bulk of communists being in the northern part of the country, close to China). The real division happened when the Soviet Union and the USA divided the country into two areas of responsibility. The now “Grandfather Kim” rose through the ranks in the communist north, got in power, and then rewrote history to show he lead the resistance that kicked out the Japanese (ect ect). Of course the north becomes communist/Eastern dominated and controlled while the south was leaning more towards the USA and the West.  The two armies, being infantry armies, were about equal and were mostly defensive in nature. The Soviet Union upset that balance by giving NK about 200 T-34/85 tanks and hundreds of artillery pieces which made the NK army more than capable to go on the attack... which it did.

The rest of course is history.

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When North Korea signals they want to go into negotiations, that's going to change in a heart beat! And you know it!

What's going to change?  The UN will send in inspectors?  Or DPRK will stop boasting about having perfected the People's Nuclear Annihilation Sword of Ultimate Victory?

[quote=Bec.De.Corbin]

 all the communist had to run up north... 

[quote=NDPP]

Not surprised....

AP: US Allowed Korean Massacre...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap-us-allowed-korean-massacre-in-1950/

"The most important thing is that they did not stop the executions, historian Jung Byung-joon, a member of the 2-year old commission, said of the Americans. 'They were at the crime scene, and took pictures and wrote reports...The commission's estimate of 100,000 dead is 'very conservative'."

How Canada Can Lead North Korea Peace Talks At Vancouver Summit

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/01/03/how-canada-and-l...

"If we Canadians think a lasting peace with North Korea will be obtained by insulting and starving the population of that beleagured country we are as foolish and as heartless as those who put their faith in bombs..."

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I'm thinking Justin Trudea is going to come away from this upcoming meeting in Vancouver empty handed and probably with another little failure on his already growing list.

Assuming he's even personally in attendance, what's supposed to be his "win"?

When he agrees to finally stop pointing Canada's nukes at Pyongyang?

It's super-duper if Canada wants to try to take the lead here, but realistically, the bombast from both DPRK and the U.S. will stop when DPRK or the U.S. stops it.

Assuming he's even personally in attendance, what's supposed to be his "win"?

Ya that's a good question! I'm assuming a peace treaty? Or probably something a couple notches lower? Who knows? Realisticly I should probably guess that this meeting is another publicity stunt that the major palyers on the Communist side see right through and are more than happy to give it back in spades if given the chance.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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The North Koreans have a perfect example of what happens when a country signs a deal with the US.

By "US" do you mean "UN"?

Haha.  I know.  Same difference, right?

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I'm assuming a peace treaty?

I'm not sure I'm ready for Canada to stop bombing DPRK.

There was only a cease fire treaty in which, in all ironies considered here, the DPRK withdrew from (last year)... It’s a good thing Trump has a bigger button on his desk...

I can only hope and pray it’s wired to an air bag under his seat... 8-D

Have a great weekend everybody.

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After watching the war mongering emminating out of the White House about Iran and its nuclear program, despite the UN giving Iran a thumbs up for compliance, what country would want to sit down and trade anything away to get the US's signature on a treaty.

Then DPRK should only worry about getting the rest of the UN's signatures.  Screw Uncle Sam!

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Why? Is the UN about to stop the US from having annual mock invasions that may or may not turn out to be real.

Is it about to stop DPRK from some 21st century nuclear proliferation?

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If South Korea and North Korea wanted to sit down and work out a peace treaty without US involvement then there might be some hope of success.

What about DPRK's good friends?  Should they be invited, or no?

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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Why? Is the UN about to stop the US from having annual mock invasions that may or may not turn out to be real.

Is it about to stop DPRK from some 21st century nuclear proliferation?

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If South Korea and North Korea wanted to sit down and work out a peace treaty without US involvement then there might be some hope of success.

What about DPRK's good friends?  Should they be invited, or no?

I think the people of Korea should decide amongst themselves and all their "friends" should back off and agree to abide by whatever deal is negotiated.