I may have bee ndriunk when I wrote this, but I'll stand by every word sober.
So you're this "astute" 24/7? Beautiful.
North Korea does this same song and dance every year. If you follow politics and global news, you'll know it. they make a demand, act pouty when it's not met, and maybe throw some bombs around. [note: Am I making light of the situation at large? Yes.]
And this is the first clue about your mental prowess. Yes... so funny when all out war could easily be initiated by one of those little bombs they're harmlessly throwing around, yeah? It really puts your entire argument in a most fitting light: arrogant foreigner
bravely laughs at the threats facing those that are not him. You got at most what, your life to lose? Koreans have their entire families and indeed their entire society at stake. You'd do well to exhibit a little tact.
Considering being one of the most heavily armed theaters in the world, the N/S Korea issue isn't that much of an issue. Breakouts between North and South are isolated, with reporting equating to maybe one story a year concerned of actual figures lost between the two. Compare that to any other troubled area of the world. Rwanda, DR Congo, or Mexico all have body counts much higher than South Korea. With the exception of the current potential subway attack, the last major story to come of the North South conflict was the SRM [MRM?] bombing of the island last November, where 6 citizens and 2 military personnel were killed. Be realistic here and not some philanthropic Christian Church caring about every life. According to my drunk estimations we're talking about 8 people. More people die here each year due to vehicular homicide; that's a figure which I feel serves as a litmus test for the severity of dangers in a first world country.
Isn't that much of an issue? Just why do you think the whole world gets fixated on the situation every time anything happens? Because it's so close to the precipice of a war that could drag in the whole region very easily. And yes, lets compare the Korean situation, that is, a 1st world key player facing down a third world despotic regime, with third world bush wars. That makes total sense, right? Because if the DR Congo fell that would wreak havoc on the global economy, right? People pay attention to things that affect them. It sucks, but we can't afford to tally every body in the mess that is Africa. It would yield no effect, too. And Yeongpyeung-do was never about the casualties, it was about the precedent that was set. That you don't get that shows how little you were paying attention. The reason it was such a big deal was that it was the first attack of its kind since the war, and the events that immediately followed it came very close to sparking war. The result of the whole situation has been nothing less than the movement of the Korean military even closer to being on a hair trigger response. They have also promised to come out hitting much harder in any retaliation against a similar attack from the North. I would bet that they follow through on that, too.
Here's what the DPRK does, for those of you not keeping score at home. They issue a vague threat. Last month at their military anniversary they told the world they'd destroy the South Korea and the United States. What has happened since? Nothing? Because it looks like nothing. So anyways, they issue this vague threat with long reaching goals. It's the equivalent of your 5 year old telling you 'I'm gonna be very important!" No time line is given, no definitive information is given, and the realization, once rationalization has taken hold is minute. They're issuing a vague threat meant to unnerve you. Unfortunately, the OP has been affected; his life has been disrupted from [MOD Edit: profanity removed] grand standing.
This also serves to highlight why you weren't paying attention to the situation in the slightest. It also tells me you couldn't possibly be a student of history because you clearly lack the ability to understand how things change. If you look at the Korean conflict of the past, you will see that these kinds of incidents happened years apart. They have been occurring with more frequency over the last decade or so. The fact that you brush off North Korea's rhetoric like it's a 5 year old also shows your lack of knowledge here. That "5 year old" has its hands on the biggest concentration of artillery in the world and has it pointed at one of the biggest, richest, most populous cities/areas in the world. The fact that they also have increasingly nothing to lose (if that makes sense) also means you shouldn't flippantly ignore them, especially when they have attacked in the past. All of the experts you can read about are saying they fully expect another small scale attack this year. That only seems like it's just more of the same to you because you don't understand how the last attack changed the game. The South will no longer respond with one hand behind its back. All political patience for that strategy was dried up in the last attack. The South will react much more aggressively, and then it will be on North Korea to escalate or shrink back. Some might think they will shrink, but I'm betting they will see no other choice but to react stronger than the South, because without the notion of military dominance they have literally nothing.
If you want to consider the threat North Korea poses, then consider the global playing field. This isn't RISK in your aunt's basement against your cousins. The players here have thoroughly considered their moves and how it affects the other players. To pretend that the DPRK would launch some sort of head on offensive against the ROK is nonsense. Would China, the strongest ally and arguably the only reason DPRK gets to sit at the adult's table, stand for a physical assault against the ROK? considering international condemnation? No. This isn't a black and white world we're dealing with. Good and Evil don't exist here and now, only shades of gray. China at this point is partners with the US in this awkward party, all standing in the corner talking about how drunk Germany is or how Spain is terrible at dancing. The long standing argument in the DPRK's favor has been China stepping in like some sort of autonomous backer in favor of the rag-tag underdog. But that's not going to happen. The world is infinitely more complex than that. What they did last year was weak. Geographically, those islands could be in either the ROK, or DPRK's territory; it's fighting over the grey area that either side could say it totally theirs or have a valid claim to.
If you look at what the actual US military believes will happen, then yes, the North
will launch an all out attack, supposing they want to. You obviously don't know what the North actually has. You can say what you will about their crappy weaponry and I'll probably agree with you all day long that it's pretty damn bad. But, as you were saying, those guys in the DR Congo manage to kill each other just fine and they're working with a WHOLE lot less. The reality is that half of the DPRK's standing military is poised in forward bases, basically on permanent alert, ready to assault the South. Half of their forces would be something like 600,000 troops. That's about the same as the South's
entire standing military. And that's just their DMZ invasion forces. They have another 200,000 special forces infiltrators that they can and will get behind the lines to disrupt things, which will greatly affect the South's ability to response. So, you can understand why, in the standing US OPORD for an all out war scenario, they write Seoul off as a given loss, accepting the loss of
all their forces in and north of Seoul. If you don't think human waves can still be effective in Korea, then you don't know much about military tactics.
So anyways, the DPRK issue a vague threat which is stage one. Stage two sometimes happens of a weak gesture of military arms. They shot some missiles at a non-target. If they meant business, they know where the people are. They chose a farming island near their borders to puff their chest out. Next comes their willingness to talk, which they demonstrated recently. From what I gather, their demands require legitimacy of their state and would essentially require the ROK to back down from it all. With a Conservative president in power they're not going to deal with that. So, DPRK gets shot down for a while. It's May now and they were just shot down this week. Based on the circle of shenanigans, we have about 6-7 months until the next hissy fit.
Shooting missiles is kind of a big deal when they will have one that can reach the continental USA with a nuclear payload in 5 years time. I don't think you really understand why they play the game they do (and you're greatly playing down the severity of the game itself). They play it because they literally have no other options. They have no political or economic clout. They have no friends, including China. So when they're starving and no one wants to give them food, what do you think they will do? And if they think a little pinprick attack won't get them the aid they want, what do you think they will do? Will they risk all out war? They risk that every time they attacked in the past. They are great at calculating things, but they can never account for mistakes being made on the Southern side, or things getting out of hand in other ways. They are more ready to go to war than the South is, that much is for sure.
TT, as I see it necessary to abbreviate your HUGE name, you just call people who are unprepared idiots. Your post indicated any person who just accepts the status quo to be ignorant of the situation at large and by the sounds of it, tools of the government. But you need to think rationally. This has been the text book example of a cold war. There's been the occasional newspaper incident skirmish to remind of something has occurred, but there hasn't been any sort of soldier to soldier incident in the past while that makes us stop and go, oh my god this is scary! We're not in Sudan or Somalia. Turn on the news. Is the fear and anxiety relate to an attack which poses an immediate threat? Or are the pontificating short skirts and drunk foreigners? It's not that the ROK's are ignorant to the North. That's where you're wrong [and I almost expect an essay response why you're right!]. They're concerned about that which will actually affect their lives in the most infantile of manners.
Yes, because my name is SO difficult to spell... well... maybe if you're drunk. And yes, I'm saying that if you think everything is as it was before, you are ignorant and unwilling to accept that things can and do change, often times in very subtle ways that you might not see at first. That's one of the things I learned about when I was getting my degree in history and it's one of the reasons I'm so confident that burying your head in the sand and saying "nothing bad will ever happen" is an incredibly foolish and possibly fatal mistake. How doing so would make anyone a "tool of the government" is beyond me. The US's relationship with South Korea is one of the few things I actually commend them for. And yes, I must just "think rationally". I knew I was forgetting something before! I love that you think there's any such thing as a "textbook cold war". That really made me giggle. The cold war was just a name. It wasn't a solid event. It was nothing like the Korean conflict, which began before the cold war. When a war breaks out in Korea, it's not going to look like many other wars in history. It's going to come out of nowhere, because all of the pieces have been in place for it for decades and the pressure has been building up since then as well. It's going to be a rather rapid spiral. The reason the South Koreans don't seem to worry might not be because they're ignorant (I know for a fact many are), it might just be that they aren't showing it, so looking to them is not the best course of action. They will be just as surprised as anyone when something like that happens because no one can really expect that kind of thing to happen. They get on their lives, as they should and as we should. The smart ones have it in the back of their mind and know what they need to do if/when it happens. That's what my whole argument has been about: not that I
know it's going to happen (even though I see it as inevitable), rather that I think it is a really good idea to know what to do if it does happen.
And the word infantile... look it up. The word you are looking for is infinitesimal.
Is the DPRK a threat? Yes. Is it the DPRK a thread which keeps you up at night? No. Is the DPRK a threat which should affect your travel plans or daily lives? No. They're somewhere between a tangible boogeyman and a fictional one. Most Koreans can tell the difference, can you?
I agree with the first three things, but the last two are just painfully wrong. A real threat is just that, real and a threat. A boogeyman is a fake threat, tangible or otherwise. And most Koreans
don't know that much about the threat. They are as blissfully unaware as most Americans.[/quote]
