I'm a North Korean politics enthusiast, AMA

I've noticed a lot of people on here really don't understand what's going on between NK and the US, or why the Media is freaking out over Trump's remarks. If you have any questions about US-NK relations, or North Korea in general, feel free to ask.

Some basics:
>Is Kim Jong Un batshit insane?
No. He's clearly incredibly evil, but his actions have shown him to be very cold and calculating. He murdered his half-brother in Malaysia in order to prevent a possible coup. He killed one of his top generals in 2013 for the same reason.

>Why is NK trying to get Nukes?
There are several reasons, the primary being deterrence. After Qaddafi got coup'd, NK has accelerated its program: Kim sees them as necessary for his regime's survival. It also allows them to strong-arm their way into the international stage, as Mao did with China in the 70s. (The similarity between the two gameplans are striking)
It also bolsters support back at home among the populous, who reportedly have grown distrustful and resentful of the Kim regime as foreign media has become increasingly easy to smuggle across the border.

Many commentators believe that this signals NK actually wanting to co-operate and eventually negotiate a deal with the US; there's further evidence of this in their actual memos.

>Do they really have a functional ICBM that could hit the US? Are they really nuclear?
Yes and yes. However, they've yet to proven that their missiles are accurate enough, and they've yet to field test nuclear re-entry vehicles.They claim the former, but because they don't have functioning satellites (the two in orbit are in-operational), it's hard to gauge if that's actually true; as they have no way to prove it.

>Would they actually use them?
No, not unless the US signals that they're about to or planning to invade. They've said this explicitly in almost every state-memo regarding the US & SK. There's little reason not to believe them, they're not suicidal.

Other urls found in this thread:

38north.org
nknews.org
popularmechanics.com/military/a6212/north-korea-and-flattening-seoul/
nknews.org/2017/07/the-great-helmsman-and-the-marshall-what-maos-legacy-says-about-n-korea/
japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/07/20/asia-pacific/no-response-north-korea-ahead-proposed-military-talks-seoul/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping-pong_diplomacy
freekorea.us/2017/03/27/u-n-report-shows-china-others-are-still-havens-for-north-korean-money-laundering/
un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-22/north-korea-link-said-to-be-probed-in-n-y-fed-account-theft
38north.org/2017/08/rcarlin080817/
38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NKNF-Babson-Positive-Economic-Inducements.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=kerDyBz-MbU
youtube.com/watch?v=wlvCpUpknLY
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

>Why is the media freaking out over Trump's comments?
Because they were off the cuff, unrehearsed and uncalculating. US-NK dialogue is notoriously scripted, as each word needs to be as explicit as it can. There's little room for ambiguity, especially on the US side. Normal dialogue is tit for tat: NK threat for ambivalent, but reassuring response mostly meant for US allies. Despite its slowness, this was a comforting interchange, and was largely the main form of communication between the US-NK since the failure of the six-party talks in 2013.

Diplomacy, especially concerning nuclear war, is about small and steady de-escalation. Each side makes comments and promises that they can follow up on so that neither side loses face and credibility; Trump made a promise he can't keep, and NK called his bluff; this is a huge win for the Kim regime.

>Why can't we just bomb the shit out of them?
There are several reasons:
1) Seoul, the capital of South Korea, which remains one of the US' foremost economic and political allies in SE Asia (arguably stronger than Japan), would be decimated even without nuclear weapons. The invasion and destruction of Seoul by the North could take place in less than an hour, putting 25,600,000 civilians in crossfire. Obviously, this is unacceptable for the US. Not to mention that now Japan, Guam, and a good chunk of America are now also in the cross-hairs.

2) We actually don't know where all of the nukes and artillery are. The majority are kept far underground in undisclosed locations and in tunnels leading into South Korea. Even if we could take out most of them, there'd likely be enough left to do serious, serious damage to Seoul or Japan. This, again, is unacceptable.

3)There's no reason to, diplomacy is still an option. At this point, there's no talking NK out of removing or destroying their missile programs, but we can negotiate a nuclear freeze, and encourage them to integrate into the world economy by slowly shrinking military presence.

>What about the THAAD, AEGIS, and other anti-ICBM systems?
There remains serious doubt w/r/t their actual capabilities, having never been field tested. They're also incredibly easy to overwhelm. Were NK to launch even a handful of nukes, and if those nukes had dummy systems in place, anti-nuke systems would be rendered useless; there's also no promise that they'd actually destroy the nuke, even if they weren't overwhelmed. As of June 2017, 10 of the 18 (55%) hit-to-kill intercept tests have succeeded, which isn't a very promising figure.

>Why doesn't China do anything?
There are a couple reasons, the foremost being that they don't especially feel the need to. They don't want potentially millions of NK refugees on their border, let alone a US-backed regime on their doorstep after a war.
China's exact influence on NK is also a bit sketchy, and has shifted quite a bit since they stopped being Communist in the 80s. Former US diplomats have reported that NK diplomats actually make fun of China, and that doing so has been a good method to gain their trust. So their only influence on them at the moment is largely economic; but given NK's huge money-laundering and theft operations, Kim might not really care.

>Is there anything to do?
Yes. Diplomacy. Promise a shrinking of US presence on the peninsula and promise aid in return for a nuclear freeze. South Korea's cultural diplomacy efforts under Moon have been hugely encouraging. Even if no deal is struck, it's important to have communication systems established, as the US and Russia did during the cold war. At the moment, no such system exist, leaving vast amounts of room for misunderstanding and miscalculation

common sense: the post

Lastly:

>Wow, this shit is complicated and interesting as hell, where can I learn more?
38North, an independent thinktank dedicated to understanding NK, is by far the best public and free resource there is online.
38north.org
It's regularly updated by experts, and there are full reports of every single missile launch and nuclear test.

There's also NKNews, which is great but is behind a paywall. I breifly had a subscription, but decided against it:
nknews.org

You'd think so, but the amount of comments on Sup Forums and twitter that are: BOMB THE NORKS WE'VE TRIED EVERYTHING is depressing as hell

Why all the saber rattling? Is it just to put on a show for the citizens?

The most recent saber-rattling had two purposes: to test the new SK president Moon and to test Trump. It's also always been the case. Again, it's also NK's primary method of talking to the West. Both sides trade threats and retorts until they reach a point for negotiations. Nixon, whose presidency most mirror's Trump's, used brinksmanship when dealing with Mao.

But like you said, it's also a show for NK citizens. One of the reasons the Kim regime has survived for as long as they have is because they poise themselves as the only thing preventing their citizens from being destroyed.

>The invasion and destruction of Seoul by the North could take place in less than an hour, putting 25,600,000 civilians in crossfire.
conventional artillery can not hit the majority of seoul.

>What about the THAAD, AEGIS, and other anti-ICBM systems?
neither of those systems can intercept ICBMs. the only operational anti-icbm system in operation is the ground-based midcourse defense system.

>Promise a shrinking of US presence on the peninsula and promise aid in return for a nuclear freeze.
that is obviously not on the table. north korea is not going to give up their nukes, or even freeze development on them, unless there is an absolute withdrawal. even if trump was willing to give up south korea, he is not willing to give up japan.

Nice info OP. Thanks for making a thread about actual politics. I have been wondering; if war breaks out, which NK will lose, will China or maybe even Russia try to snag a bite of territory under the guise of 'peacekeeping' or something? Both Russia and China had parts of Manchuria under controle in the past.

When the downfall of NK comes, will they try to reclaim something of it?

Why don't they simply integrate into world economy, similar to East Germany?

I get that Kim doesn't want to lose his wealth but the US could promise not to touch a single penny and let him keep his millions (billions?) so he can remain rich.

Is it simply pride? They don't want to be absorbed by South Korea? The US could encourage South Korea to invest billions into the North. It's the same country after all.

No, it's Kim being the grifter his father taught him to be. His father did the same thing - make threats, launch missiles, fuck with the US troops and aircraft - all for one reason: lifting sanctions, and money and food for their people. His father taught him how to strip the country bare for their big military toys, and then make a few threats, and Liberals in Washington would give them billions in aid. Clinton did it, Obama did it. Susan Rice, that despicable piece of shit, went to the media just today, to lecture Trump that he should just "get used to NK as a nuclear power".
And, Iran will start some shit soon, too. They got paid off by Obama to stop their nuke program, you know they did'nt, and the minute Trump gives in to NK, Iran will be looking for another handout.
That's what this is all about. Kim isn't gonna nuke Guam, he's playing chicken with Trump, trying to make him blink.
If I were Trump, I'd triple down on sanctions, refuse to give NK another penny - and tell them that privately and publically - and sit back and say "Ball's in your court, Kim." Kim HAS to back down, or his people starve, and overthrow his fat ass.
Clinton and Obama encouraged this fat little grifter to act like this - I really hope Trump keeps telling him to shut his fat mouth and sit the fuck down.

>conventional artillery can not hit the majority of seoul.
False. Seoul is only 35 miles from the 38th parallel, very much within range of conventional artillery.
popularmechanics.com/military/a6212/north-korea-and-flattening-seoul/
The city wouldn't be flattened or wiped off the map, but that also doesn't especially matter.

>neither of those systems can intercept ICBMs
This is true, and I should've specified. The AEGIS and THAAD are designed to intercept IRBMs. The GMD is the only system designed to intercept ICBMs, as you said, but my point about their potential inefficiency still stands.

>that is obviously not on the table
It's unlikely that NK would attack SK, Japan, or nearby allies were the US to downscale its operations. They're not suicidal, and there's little evidence that the regime is serious about re-unifying Korea. I'm also not advocating a total removal of US presence from the area; that's obviously impossible. But in their memos, NK has only consistently asked for the US and SK to cease their bombing/invasion practices.

>will China or maybe even Russia try to snag a bite of territory under the guise of 'peacekeeping' or something
This is something that I can't comment very much on, but it seems unlikely, as they'd end up in a political quagmire with the US, SK, Japan, etc. There's very little for them to gain from that, they'd likely be better off trying to strike economic deals with whatever regime got put in place, given the trillions of untapped raw materials in NK.
But who knows?

Good post, but you are ignoring the China vs USA angle, which is the most important here. China wants Americans out of the Pacific. Kim is a pawn in that game. As you've said, America is already pushed to a corner. The goal is to push you to sell out your allies and your allies to be wary of nuclear annihilation if they side with you.

OR YOU WILL BE SLAVE!

What would happen if North Korea does release a barrage of nukes and they successfully hit major US cities?

Will the US economy cripple due to the trillions of dollars being spent of reparations?

Will China just take over becoming the world super power?

Correct, but America can't starve Kim, because China and Russia support him.
No, the way for China to win is to get Trump to attack.

>Will the US economy cripple due to the trillions of dollars being spent of reparations?
You literally got it the other way around. Reparations CREATE money.

Explain.

>Diplomacy

Won't work now. North Korea won't give up its nuclear program because as you yourself pointed out, it saw what happened to Gaddafi. It has no reason to trust US, and the past has shown that even if it did agree to one of these deals it will inevitably renege on it. The US would not withdraw its troops from the Korean peninsula (especially under the current administration), nor would the North actually follow the rules of a "nuclear freeze".

>South Korea's cultural diplomacy efforts under Moon have been hugely encouraging.

To say his attempts at negotiation have been "hugely encouraging" is nonsense. He's been shut down by the North in the most humiliating way possible, by completely ignoring him and focusing on trading words with the US instead.

I'm not some happening-fag, but you are utterly delusional if you think 1) NK will actually freeze it's nuclear program (and that we can trust them to) and 2) that the US would willingly withdraw forces from ROK.

>Seoul is only 35 miles from the 38th parallel, very much within range of conventional artillery.
>Of the vast artillery force deployed by the North along the border, only a small portion — Koksan 170-mm self-propelled guns, as well as 240-mm and 300-mm multiple launch rocket systems — are capable of actually reaching Seoul. Broadly speaking, the bulk of Pyongyang's artillery can reach only into the northern border area of South Korea or the northern outskirts of Seoul.

>It's unlikely that NK would attack SK, Japan, or nearby allies were the US to downscale its operations.
and you're ignoring china with it's constant border adjusting?

>But in their memos, NK has only consistently asked for the US and SK to cease their bombing/invasion practices.
and the US has only asked for NK to stop fucking threatening to glass SK. surrendering the entirety of SK, for whatever reason, is absolutely untenable.

Invest? In a corrupt regime like Kim's? LOL. That's literally throwing money away.
NK has nothing to offer the world economy. They don't grow enough to export anything, and they don't make anything anyone would want, their technology is 80's era Soviet overstock.
If you "invest" in NK, all you're doing is building Kim a new mansion.
The only acceptable future for NK is the toppling of the Kim regime, and re-unification with South Korea.

He has the facts right, but his conclusions show him to he a liberal.

>Why don't they simply integrate into world economy, similar to East Germany?
There are signs that this is their end-goal, aiming to eventually reach a deal that Mao did with Nixon. This is worth a read:
nknews.org/2017/07/the-great-helmsman-and-the-marshall-what-maos-legacy-says-about-n-korea/

The amount of public-works projects and infrastructure Kim has rolled out in the previous couple years is worth keeping in mind as well. However, they can't afford to that at the moment. In Kim's eyes, his first priority is ensuring the survival of his regime before tackling NK's dismal economy. Were they to suddenly open to the world a la Japan at the turn of the century, it's likely that the population would lose faith in the regime. At the moment, Norks rely exclusively on the government for their needs; were they to go full capitalist, that support system and the legitimacy of the government could quickly collapse. Kim obviously doesn't want that.

It's in Kim's interest to leverage deals with his nuclear weapons over time; it will prove to be a very tricky balancing act.

>They don't want to be absorbed by South Korea?
This is also true.


>Good post, but you are ignoring the China vs USA angle, which is the most important here
I addressed that in Quite honestly, it doesn't seem like China wants much of anything to do with this conflict. The US will first have to leverage a deal on the South China sea before they really get China's support.

>Is Kim Jong Un batshit insane?
>No. He's clearly incredibly evil
Stopped reading there. Go to plebbit, this might work better there.

If NK launched against anyone, NK would cease to exist as soon as our warheads reach them.

There would be no reparations, as there would be nobody alive to give them to.

Understand, we can reduce the entire country to radioactive glass.

But we're not going to. Kim isn't that insane. He just wants sanctions lifted while getting to keep his new nuke toys.

>an earth quake destroys your house
>you need to hire companies to rebuild it
>for that you need money
>you get it from the banks
>they print it
>you pay the companies
>the workers of the companies can feed their families and use the money for consumer goods
>the economy is richer by the amount the reparations created

>What would happen if North Korea does release a barrage of nukes and they successfully hit major US cities?
North Korea is destroyed and the world economy tanks.

>North Korea won't give up its nuclear program because as you yourself pointed out, it saw what happened to Gaddafi
As I pointed out earlier, it's useless to expect that NK will ever give up its nukes. That doesn't mean that diplomacy is suddenly off the table. The US will have to learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea like we did with China. We can still de-escalate the situation and give NK little reason to further its nuclear program, given that they've now established detterence.

My point is essentially that NK has won its survival; the US must now find ways to adapt to this, as war is clearly not a rational answer.

>nor would the North actually follow the rules of a "nuclear freeze"
At this point in time, there's not a great reason for them not to, given that they've finally acquired functioning nuclear ICBMS. Trading economic and humanitarian aid for de-escalation is a decent deal. It's by far the best out of all of the awful options the US now can reasonably follow.

>To say his attempts at negotiation have been "hugely encouraging" is nonsense. He's been shut down by the North in the most humiliating way possible, by completely ignoring him and focusing on trading words with the US instead.
This is false and you misunderstand how NK-SK dialogue works. Nobody actually expected Moon's diplomatic efforts to work, they're far more about re-opening communication channels; which has been dead between the two nations since ~2012. The Norks have responded to every request, and if you read the actual memos, they've responded in a relatively friendly way: this is huge, and it's encouraging for further efforts down the road.

Diplomacy is all about reading between the lines and small victories of de-escalation.

Yeah but what if NK has developed some big yield nuclear bomb, it would take years for it to decay.

You can't really compare nukes to an earthquake, the lands which are radiated would literally be uninhabitable for years.

>Were they to suddenly open to the world a la Japan at the turn of the century, it's likely that the population would lose faith in the regime.

Lose faith? His head would be on a pike in front of his royal palace soon after - he and his government have been outright lying to their people for decades, the people know it, because western information is getting in. There's a reason why NK had barbed wire fences on their beaches, it's to keep their people IN. If NK opened it's doors to western capitalism, it would be the sudden and fatal end to the Kim family, all it's members, and most of the upper members of the Party. If the peasants in NK found out today that they make $1000 a year compared to the average 30k a year of SK, there'd be blood in the streets.

Kim can't stop what they're doing, because it would mean the end of his life. There's no way he'd survive that, physically, let alone politically. For god's sake, they tell their people his grandfather invented hamburgers. The lies they tell the people there are hilarious, but what's sad is a lot of them believe it.
The only way to bring NK to the world stage in a healthy and meaningful way is by bloodshed. It's too far gone for anything else. Even if he stepped down, they'd hunt him down and skin him alive for what he's done to the NK's.

Actual useful and interesting information. Thank you OP.

>as war is clearly not a rational answer.
what are you going to do, sit around and smile as they threaten to nuke you?

when will the threats stop? when will the threat of regime collapse cease? when will they stop testing missiles?

you can't just assume that north korea will act in the same way that china is.

Typical libshit talking points. Bill Clinton's democuck diplomacy with his nuclear power deal is why they have nukes now, and Obama's Iran deal is why Iran will have nukes in the future if Trump doesn't do anything about it.

I'm tired of you faggots who think you're so smart getting us taken for a ride. You have proven yourselves to be fucking retarded. GTFO.

>The US will have to learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea like we did with China.
Fuck you, you fucking liberal appeaser.

No, we don't have to accept it. The world can cut off NK from everything, and let his people starve, until they hand over their nukes, destroy all their labs, and stop their missile testing.

Susan Rice floated the same bullshit this morning. It's liberal pap. It's liberal bending over and taking it in the ass, instead of leading.

You're no NK expert, you're a liberal apologist. Fuck you, fuck NK, and fuck that fat grifter.

>Nixon, whose presidency most mirror's Trump's, used brinksmanship when dealing with Mao.
I know Nixon used this strategy against the Soviet Union and North Vietnam, but I did not know he used it against China. When was this?

>>Would they actually use them?
>No, not unless the US signals that they're about to or planning to invade. They've said this explicitly in almost every state-memo regarding the US & SK. There's little reason not to believe them, they're not suicidal.


Wrong. What about the sanctions? wont that piss them off?

This.

The press and the world are freaking out because we finally have a leader in office who stands up to grifters like Kim. I was just reading that China is sniveling about it - well, maybe if you helped shut the little fuck down, we wouldn't have to do this, China. Wake the fuck up.
Putin's being quiet, because he's an opportunist. If anything goes down, he'll quietly annex the land they're disputing with NK, and when the dust settles, he'll be allowed to keep it.
It's fucking disgusting how real leadership is now called "reckless" and "dangerous". If Obama was still sleazing around the White House, a C-30 would be on it's way to NK with pallets of cash. Fuck that.

Also when china vs india war breaks out, the world will be distracted won't north korea will take advantage of it?

Yes, exactly.

>what are you going to do, sit around and smile as they threaten to nuke you?
Yes. The threats are purely for posturing; they've always done this.
Unless the US postures itself, as Trump's comments did on Tuesday, to give the impression that we're about to invade, NK won't do anything.

>when will the threats stop?
Perhaps never. This doesn't suddenly mean it's rational to go to war, nor does it mean that relations can't improve.

>when will the threat of regime collapse cease? when will they stop testing missiles?
When they're confident that they've achieved deterrence, which will only happen if the US begins to downscale its military operations in the area.

>you can't just assume that north korea will act in the same way that china is.
There's little reason not to. Mao too focused on working on nuclear weapons over feeding Chinese citizens, and look how it's turned out for them. I'd likely do the same if I were North Korea.

You're being unreasonable. I've never said that any sort of deal with North Korea, or that the deal with Iran, were anywhere close to ideal or effective. I'm also not so blind to think that there are any better options. Learn to live in the real world where you have to actually think about consequences. I also in no way defended Clinton's deal or Obama's actions; neither went far enough with sanctions or hardline diplomacy.

>The US will have to learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea like we did with China.
>Fuck you, you fucking liberal appeaser.
The Norks have undeniably won their survival. The US is going to have to adjust to this, as military means of removing them are absolutely unreasonable. There is no getting rid of their nukes without total bloodshed.
>inb4 "that's a good thing"
Don't be retarded and start living in the real world.

/thread

>What about the sanctions? wont that piss them off?
Not enough to invade or launch attacks. The people will starve, and discontent will grow among the higher class, but that's not enough of an incentive for Kim to throw everything away; that wouldn't be rational. Sanctions exist solely to bring them to the negotiating table, as has been done in the past. They're designed to breed discontent and threaten the regime from within without military action, leaving Kim little choice other than to negotiate.

>Yes. The threats are purely for posturing; they've always done this.
general of the fucking year.

>Perhaps never.
okay, so we're just supposed to let a progressively better armed nuclear north korea sit around festering for the next 50 years until it has hydrogen bombs and ssbns, and we're supposed to completely ignore the threat of regime collapse, traitors (i'd like one of those doomsday machines), and random acts of war?

>When they're confident that they've achieved deterrence, which will only happen if the US begins to downscale its military operations in the area.
regime collapse will still be a threat no matter what, and if anything it will become an even bigger threat once north korea gains more nukes. you know what happened in your glorious fucking china with nukes.

>There's little reason not to.
you're an idiot. the chinese have always seen you as a potential enemy, but they are generally more concerned with their own turf. the north koreans hate you with the power of a thousand suns.

>As I pointed out earlier, it's useless to expect that NK will ever give up its nukes. That doesn't mean that diplomacy is suddenly off the table. The US will have to learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea like we did with China. We can still de-escalate the situation and give NK little reason to further its nuclear program, given that they've now established detterence.

The US won't allow the DPRK to pursue a larger nuclear stockpile (and that is the North's secondary goal, because it will assist in unification with the South) for a number of reasons, but the most important of which is that it would set a global precedent. The North is the only nation on this planet to withdraw from the NPT and pursue a nuclear arsenal, if they get away with that then you are essentially marking an end to the era of non-proliferation. The same experts who write those articles you link admit that the North trades tech with Iran and will continue to do so. There is no reason to believe that they won't assist the Iranians in developing their nuclear capabilities.

>At this point in time, there's not a great reason for them not to, given that they've finally acquired functioning nuclear ICBMS. Trading economic and humanitarian aid for de-escalation is a decent deal. It's by far the best out of all of the awful options the US now can reasonably follow.

You're advocating for a return to the carrot and stick policy of the previous decade with more carrot and less stick. It didn't work then, and there's no reason to believe it will work now. If you reward a nation that breached the NPT and developed nuclear weapons even under sanctions with "humanitarian aid" you are making a massive mistake and setting a horrible global precedent.

Cont.

>Nobody actually expected Moon's diplomatic efforts to work, they're far more about re-opening communication channels; which has been dead between the two nations since ~2012. The Norks have responded to every request, and if you read the actual memos, they've responded in a relatively friendly way: this is huge, and it's encouraging for further efforts down the road.

NK completely ignored the "military talks" proposal that was scheduled for July 21st refusing to even turn up.

japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/07/20/asia-pacific/no-response-north-korea-ahead-proposed-military-talks-seoul/

No response is not "responded in a friendly way".

>Diplomacy is all about reading between the lines and small victories of de-escalation.

You're not reading between the lines, you're parroting what you've read from experts passing it off as your own opinion with a dash of extraordinary wishful thinking.

>Trading economic and humanitarian aid for de-escalation is a decent deal
thanks Mrs Rice, i'm sure that will work just about as well as it did during your term.

>Yes. Diplomacy. Promise a shrinking of US presence on the peninsula and promise aid in return for a nuclear freeze.
With all due respect, sir, this has been tried, and look where we're at now. Now, I'm no expert, but I believe that if we were to take such actions, Kim would determine then that he could eventually reunify Korea. He'd reason that if he just kept pushing and pushing, as DPRK has done for decades, he'd get that too.

Reason number 825 we need to glass Nork...

Diplomacy clearly hasn't worked. How many decades are required before this is patently obvious?

>that wouldn't be rational.
i'll be glad when economists and commentators drop the rational actor theory.

even if kim went mental one day and tried nuking, his military staff would stop him.

>because it will assist in unification with the South) for a number of reasons
There's little evidence that Kim is serious about pursuing reunification. Nukes or no Nukes, it's suicide.

>but the most important of which is that it would set a global precedent
This is the more important point, to which I agree. The US will have to find a way in order to dissuade states from pursing nuclear weapons, so that Kim's plan doesn't get repeated. To this, I haven't got any advice.
>There is no reason to believe that they won't assist the Iranians in developing their nuclear capabilities.
This is also true. The only way to in any way prevent this is to try to negotiate a nuclear freeze deal-- one that is inevitably going to be as flawed and ineffective as the Iran deal; it's also the US' best, if not only, option at the moment.

>If you reward a nation that breached the NPT and developed nuclear weapons even under sanctions with "humanitarian aid" you are making a massive mistake and setting a horrible global precedent.
It's not about rewarding them, it's about facing the reality of the situation: North Korea has nukes, and they're not going to go away. The question is how to establish communications to de-escalate the situation and establish incentives to prevent them from further advancing and proliferating it. An economic deal, alongside cultural exchanges with SK, is the only option.

You're making it sound like I think any of this is a good thing, when I clearly don't. I'm just not retarded enough to think war or military intervention is a better option. Clearly gradual economic, humanitarian, and cultural integration-- things that can only be achieved through diplomacy and sanctioning, can in any way ease this issue. This is my main point.

Hardly. Until recently, with the new sanctions in place, the US has not very seriously pursued NK sanctions or diplomacy, thinking them as an eventual and inconsequential threat.

Stop feeding the larper, folks. He's a fucking spastic.

>Clearly gradual economic, humanitarian, and cultural integration-- things that can only be achieved through diplomacy and sanctioning, can in any way ease this issue. This is my main point.

It's like the ghost of Neville Chamberlain is speaking to us directly.

either that or the NYT opinion pages have become sentient.

Except that it's worked before.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping-pong_diplomacy

Yeah, how dare I try and understand how diplomacy works.

that's not accurate goyim
reparations can create money, but only in times of recession when money printing slows down and when people can't afford to spend as much. either that or when an economy is actually nonexistent and needs something to jumpstart it (IE Israel and shoa shekels during the 50's)
from a macroeconomic POV, unless the economy is frozen, if your house wasn't destroyed in an earthquake, you and the government would spend your money on goods and services anyway that would increase GDP as before

if your house was destroyed and the government would give you the exact amount of reparations needed to rebuild it and return you to your exact standard of living as before, then the disaster basically forced the market to buy things for you. The construction company was paid money that would have gone to other business anyway. so now the country's GDP worth is the same as the case before MINUS the worth of one destroyed house
once again, that can be good if the market's spending is too slow and unmotivated to maintain growth by itself, but this isn't 1929 and the american market doesn't need it right now

how did it work out for you in the 30s

>NK's huge money-laundering and theft operations

Care to explain more, sources?

>Comparing North Korea to Nazi Germany
They're pretty damn different situations

im sure chamerlain was saying nazi germany was different to the many other times pussy diplomacy let a dictator have their way.

>there's further evidence of this in their actual memos.
Linkie, linkie or yer a big fat stinkie, stinkie!

>>Except that it's worked before.
"worked" in so far as we now have another major nuclear power, which is something that we are explicitly avoiding.

yes, i too read the diplomat, and Sautin's argument is intellectually dishonest, as expected.

>North Korea
>Politics

Does Kim Jong-Un have any kids? Isn't it basically a monarchy now?

goyim are too stupid for this kind of stuff

If he does it's probably kept in secret like he was.

>There's little evidence that Kim is serious about pursuing reunification.

Then you have no understanding of the underlying ideology and policy of the DPRK. Survival is their primary goal, but reunification has always been a secondary objective. They will use their nuclear arsenal to intimidate, cajole & extort the ROK if US troops withdraw from the area.

>The US will have to find a way in order to dissuade states from pursing nuclear weapons, so that Kim's plan doesn't get repeated. To this, I haven't got any advice.

You don't get to shirk responsibility of a long-term repercussion of a strategy you're advocating for. If you don't have an answer to this then your "solution" falls flat on its face. The only thing that prevents other nations from breaching the NPT is the threat of force. If the DPRK can get away with it without being stopped by outside powers then who's to say the next nation won't do precisely the same thing; develop in secret and then show to the world before the US can do anything to stop them.

>It's not about rewarding them, it's about facing the reality of the situation

I don't care what you think it's about, you will be in practice rewarding the DPRK for breaching the NPT by giving it humanitarian aid afterwards. What kind of message does that send to other wanna-be nuclear powers? That it's perfectly acceptable, (and you'll be rewarded for it after!) to develop nuclear weapons, so long as you keep the wool over our eyes long enough.

You are talking about appeasement. It does not work with the North & it will never work with them. Over a decade of diplomatic experience has proven that. You are arguing for kicking the can down the road again.

>You're making it sound like I think any of this is a good thing, when I clearly don't.

If you genuinely believe that pursuing the carrot and stick policy further will work you're wrong, long-term it will make matters even worse than they are now.

Rodman says he has a daughter...

>Care to explain more, sources?
Oh they're really interesting. This guy explains it more clearly and coherently than I ever could:
freekorea.us/2017/03/27/u-n-report-shows-china-others-are-still-havens-for-north-korean-money-laundering/
and the full UN document
un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150
Basically, Chinese and Japanese companies provide safe havens and conceal trade with North Korea.

There's also been evidence that the Nork's steal funds through cyber operations
It's >bloomberg, but it's nevertheless accurate.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-22/north-korea-link-said-to-be-probed-in-n-y-fed-account-theft

38north.org/2017/08/rcarlin080817/
38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NKNF-Babson-Positive-Economic-Inducements.pdf

>38beatenwives.org

Non-whites oughtn't have nuclear weapons. That's my position and I esteem it.

What part of diplomacy with NK has ever brought about any meaningful de-escalation? Maybe de-escalation in rhetoric, but NK has continued on with their nuclear programs, tunnels, artillery, and much more, never pulling backwards on development, with only a stretching argument that could be made for them slowing development. You want to continue the status quo? Where do you think that will end?

Fuck off, liberal.

>Trump: remove Kim or I'll bomb you
gg easy

>Survival is their primary goal, but reunification has always been a secondary objective
The same can be said of South Korea-- but the actual populous and government have little to no expectations of actual re-unification, nor do they seriously strive to achieve that. There's little reason to think that the Norks believe any differently. It's bluff.

>They will use their nuclear arsenal to intimidate, cajole & extort the ROK if US troops withdraw from the area.
This is certainly true.

>You don't get to shirk responsibility of a long-term repercussion of a strategy you're advocating for. If you don't have an answer to this then your "solution" falls flat on its face.
It's a far better plan in the short term than military intervention. There are plenty of lectures of possible diplomatic plans, but I haven't gotten around to listening to them yet. I'm an enthusiast, I never claimed to be an expert.

>The only thing that prevents other nations from breaching the NPT is the threat of force. If the DPRK can get away with it without being stopped by outside powers then who's to say the next nation won't do precisely the same thing; develop in secret and then show to the world before the US can do anything to stop them.
NK is a unique case though; as the incentive of China and the destruction of Seoul have always been big enough incentives to prevent any sort of military force to be shown. If anything, it was unreasonable to think that the NPT alone would have ever stopped North Korea at all, whereas economic and cultural integration-- two things that have never been seriously pursued by the US, may have prevented this in the first place.

>You are arguing for kicking the can down the road again.
Because it's literally the only option. What are you advocating instead? Military intervention that would tank the world economy and ruin US relations with SK, Japan, China, and Russia?

what is your opinion on the U.S ICBM test last week ?

and what is your opinion on the fat saddam- uh i mean fat kim "jokes" and how it's the only thing people in the west is able to argue apart from repeating false statements from the wester media

>what is your opinion on the U.S ICBM test last week ?
Just another show of force; although IMO an unnecessary one. As if the US would actually use an ICBM on North Korea.

>and what is your opinion on the fat saddam- uh i mean fat kim "jokes" and how it's the only thing people in the west is able to argue apart from repeating false statements from the wester media
It actually just ends up feeding the NK's image. Painting the norks as madmen actually just gives them more power on the international stage, and leads to situations like we have today where the public and the government think that the opponent is unreasonable, crazy, and beyond negotiating with. Madman theory is a double edged sword.

>Germany was in deep economic trouble with large internal dissent due to the loss in WW1 and other factors.

North Korea is in deep economic trouble with internal dissent due to poor living conditions and the authoritarian regime


>To combat this, Hitler starts re-armament and unites the people against an external enemy (the Jews) to reclaim land and international prestige.

North Korea is racing ahead attempting to get as many nukes as possible to secure the regimes power, all the while uniting the people against external enemies (US, SK, Japan)


Idk they look pretty similar to me.
Last time appeasement was used in this situation, ~70 million people died. I'm all for diplomacy but giving up a single inch to NK can not happen.

>cultural integration

Bussing norks into Hongik?

Thank you Prof. Dr. Goldbergstein

its funny because in reality its the complete opposite and North Korea has asked for direct talks for years, while the U.S refuses and would rather have the "problem" disappear

you can eve go back to the Agreed Framework and see how the Clinton administration barely bothered to even negotiate because they expected the "regime to collapse". yea i wonder why negotiations failed after the U.S failed to live up to its part of the deal

today they say "20 years of negotations have failed" but they never go into detail, because if they do people will realize the real reason why it failed, and the blame cannot be put solely on North Korea as they do now.

kim names the jews hes red pilled and woke

Why can't US drop MOAB into a military parade and invade?

Well put.

Co-hosting the winter olympics would be a start. Humanitarian aid from SK would also be a good chance for exchange.

However, Germans post-WWI had relative access to the external world and grew resentful with the government because they weren't providing anything for the citizens. This is the opposite in NK, where the citizenry depends almost solely on the government for their daily needs, and are led to believe that, as bad as Kim may be, the US and the world are far worse. Should de-escalation ensue, I thoroughly expect Kim to expand infrastructure projects.

See Even if you were to kill off the top brass, there's no guarantee operators wouldn't try to fire off everything they could, seeing that they have nothing left to lose.

>tfw your significant other is Chinese and you hope that if something goes down, China will look the other way and relations won't get too sour

Fortunately, since everything is so global, developed leaders have their economies to think about before going to a full blown war

>The same can be said of South Korea-- but the actual populous and government have little to no expectations of actual re-unification, nor do they seriously strive to achieve that. There's little reason to think that the Norks believe any differently. It's bluff.

The only reason the DPRK is not currently pursuing a policy of re-unification is due to the American soldiers stationed in ROK, advocating for their removal opens Pandora's Box on that peninsula, especially if you're not only allowing the DPRK to have nuclear weapons, but also sending them aid.

>It's a far better plan in the short term than military intervention.

You're only considering it a better plan because you're not thinking about the long-term impacts. You agree with my statements about the NPT and how that would set a horrible precedent, but don't realize what that will actually MEAN for the regions involved. Israel won't sit back for a moment if it thinks Iran is working towards nuclear weapons legitimately, it'll be a repeat of Israel bombing Syria's nuclear reactor back in '07, except this time the receiving side won't sit back and take it. At best you're looking at a nuclear arms race between two incredibly hostile powers and at worst an actual war between both with the ME lighting up in ways not previously imaginable.

Back to the situation in Korea, the only way to counter the DPRK and prevent them from coercing the ROK is to give the South nuclear weapons (some experts actually advocate for this), but that would only piss off China and make them more likely to assist in the DPRKs nuclear program. You're talking about the possibility of a nuclear arms race not only on Korea, but also in the Middle East.

You freeze at the idea of deaths in a potential conflict with the DPRK today, but do you have any idea what that may mean for the future? It will mean the Korea situation spreading and developing in the same way around the globe.

Cont.

yeah im sure they could afford to cohost the olympics and suddenly build huge stadiums and infrastructure, while also being willing to suspend all their tyrannical laws so that people would actually be willing to go there.

you're retarded

>NK is a unique case though; as the incentive of China and the destruction of Seoul have always been big enough incentives to prevent any sort of military force to be shown. If anything, it was unreasonable to think that the NPT alone would have ever stopped North Korea at all, whereas economic and cultural integration-- two things that have never been seriously pursued by the US, may have prevented this in the first place.

The DRPK is not a unique case by any means, we've already established that it's primary goal is survival, and that unification is only a secondary objective. The only way the DPRK under KJU would support any sort of integration with the ROK is if they were the ones leading it, and it would inevitably lead to infiltration and attempts at a soft coup to unify the peninsula.

>Because it's literally the only option. What are you advocating instead? Military intervention that would tank the world economy and ruin US relations with SK, Japan, China, and Russia?

You have shown that your reasons for supporting your policy is that it's the least worst of two options, I want you to consider that right now diplomacy will only make matters worse in the long term in the same way it did a decade ago. The same thoughts were issued when the US considered a strike previously, that the cost of life would be massive. Today now we have a conflict on the cards of which the loss of life would potentially be triple that of what a conflict may have looked like before.

having any interesting discussion about North Korea is really difficult these days when most people just parrot whatever they hear in the news instead of thinking for themselves, which is sad because many of these people are often sceptical to what they hear in the news otherwise, but on this subject they believe the most obvious lies,

honeslty it makes me question who really are the real brainwashed people around here, especially after i visited North Korea earlier this year, i don't like communism but i've become pretty sympathic with their cause, they are pretty reasonable compared to the nonsense i hear on this side.

anyway you should watch this interview if you have time, its pretty good and challenges the mainstream propaganda you usually get

youtube.com/watch?v=kerDyBz-MbU

Can you foresee NK undertaking a surface nuke test?

How about

No troops on the ground
No regime change
No borders for through which NK may receive aid
Just bombs; bombs anew at any moment where a group of North Koreans attempt to reconsolidate, repair a bridge, or form a military hierarchy.

>Russia support him
We're supporting sanctions against them. At least that's official.

>this post
>Weimar Republic flag

KJN was a spy, that's why he was off'd. KJI never wanted to have him killed because muh feels, he became softer as he became older and senile. It was necessary for the Kim regime to take care of loose ends.

ITT: Well-informed but delusional american displays perfectly why liberals make such horrible parents.
NK is a screaming child. Bribing children with candy to stop screaming is one of the reasons this country is fucked up.
>inb4 an analogy isn't an argument
You're right, it isn't. But this attitude fucks things up long term every single time. Is beating your child senseless the way to go? No. But neither is giving them what they want to get them to shut up.

>interesting captcha.

They've already been embarking on massive infrastructure projects, the most recent being the new road and housing project in Pyongyang in April. And SK's proposal included SK covering most of the costs.

>The only reason the DPRK is not currently pursuing a policy of re-unification is due to the American soldiers stationed in ROK, advocating for their removal opens Pandora's Box on that peninsula, especially if you're not only allowing the DPRK to have nuclear weapons, but also sending them aid.
Again, I'm not advocating for total withdrawal, which is impossible, but simply a scaling down.
And even if the US were to totally pull out, which they'd never do, it still wouldn't make any sense for NK to invade. It's still suicidal.

>the rest of your posts
These are very good points, and I agree. I don't think this is ideal in any way, and this situation could have been avoided had the US done any of this in the 80s and 90s when it mattered most. I'll have to do more research before I lay out any full-fledged platform that could work for the future. The ICAS spring symposium was dedicated to fleshing one out:
youtube.com/watch?v=wlvCpUpknLY
But the total series is like 3~ hours long, and I've yet to sit down and listen through them all.

But you've yet to lay out any serious alternatives. What do you think we ought to do, other than diplomacy and continued sanctions? We both clearly want to avoid an arms race and all out war.

Shilling NK.
gj

Maybe...that's a hell of a gamble you're asking anyone within range (ROK, Japan, etc) to take.

Seoul and Japan still get bombarded by NK, China gets overwhelmed with refugees, rest of the world questions US legitimacy for brutal actions

>either that or the NYT opinion pages have become sentient.
Can't be...some form of intelligence is required for sentience.

t. Neville chamberlain

obvious shill thread
anyone calling Trump's wisdom into question is a shariablue cuck
OP doesn't get the fact that Trump is thinking way more moves ahead than anyone else in the game

>Seoul and Japan still get bombarded by NK

NK is racially capable of such a heinous thing were the top regime mobsters threatened. At some point we ought to just give up on these peoples as they are clearly ignoble.

>China gets overwhelmed with refugees, rest of the world questions US legitimacy for brutal actions

I don't care. We ought to economically disenfranchise most or all non-whites for the purposes of ethnic and ecological safety. The problem is doing this with nuclear armed China and Putin's 80 IQ Eurasian empire.

In fact, the only thing that makes North Korea a threat is their nuclear capability — made possible by the Clinton and Bush administrations.

These two administrations played key roles in helping the late Kim Jong-Il develop North Korea’s nuclear prowess from the mid 1990’s onward.

Former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld was on the board of technology giant ABB when it won a deal to supply North Korea with two nuclear power plants.

According to the 2003 report from SWI, the Swiss-based ABB told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang.

The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s east coast.

However, Rumsfeld was simply taking the baton from the Clinton administration, who, in 1994, agreed to begin replacing North Korea’s domestically built nuclear reactors with light water reactors.

Henry Sokolski, head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, noted at the time that “LWRs could be used to produce dozens of bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium in both North Korea and Iran. This is true of all LWRs — a depressing fact U.S. policymakers have managed to block out.”

“These reactors are like all reactors, they have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we’re trying to prevent it acquiring,” said Sokolski.

American taxpayers then financed the construction of these nuclear reactors — to the tune of $95 million — which were used to build weapons to threaten their very lives. Despite Korea being caught building the nukes with US taxpayer funds, Bush upped his ante in 2003 and sent even more money to the dictatorship.

Although this program was supposedly halted years later, the CIA stepped in to help North Korea continue making nukes.

In 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan — CIA asset and international arms smuggler — and the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb program, admitted sharing nuclear technology via a worldwide smuggling network that included facilities in Malaysia which manufactured key parts for centrifuges.

Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister, revealed in August 2005 that the Netherlands (where Khan started his nuclear career) was prepared to arrest him 30 years before. The authorities came close to arresting Khan twice, first in 1975 and later in 1986, but the CIA requested that they let him act freely.
Lubbers said that, while he was prime minister in 1983, Dutch authorities could have reopened the case. Once again, they did not do so because of US pressure. “The man was followed for almost ten years and obviously he was a serious problem. But again I was told that the secret services could handle it more effectively,” Lubbers said. “The Hague did not have the final say in the matter. Washington did.”