North Korean troops are apparently about to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine.
I don't see how this changes much. Do they get thrown into the meat grinder, or kept back as reserves? Do they speak any Russian re: integrating into the larger forces?
If anything, it strikes me as desperate, or a stunt at best. And Kim Jong-un will expect to be paid handsomely.
"A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.
Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.
One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.
'In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,' Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out."As a liberal president rules South Korea, the current government is trying to ease tensions between the two countries to foster talks. Right-wingers (some of whom are actually defectors from North Korea) aren't having any of it, and are planning to continue sending over their Freedom Balloons. Meanwhile, South Korean border residents live in fear of a retaliatory strike from the North.
"The Pyongyang Metro is always full of 'phone zombies' staring intently at games, movies or the news. Pretty much the only person I’ve met who doesn’t have a smartphone is my 73-year-old literary theory teacher, who has stuck with her 2000s Nokia-style device.
But perhaps the most insightful experiences I’ve had have been talking with various locals.
A taxi driver, for example, told me he knew Australia was a popular tourist destination. He knew we had backed the 'US imperialists' in the Korean war, which his grandfather had fought in, but said he hoped I would be the first of many foreigners to live in his home town.
In the dormitory, I shared a room for four months with a local student majoring in English. In most ways, he wasn’t too different from a typical bloke in his early 20s. An avid football fan, he loved Neymar and Messi, whom he followed alongside the April 25 Sports Club, a local Pyongyang team. He enjoyed the odd drink (and a more regular cigarette)."Of course, a smart US foreign policy would be working to understand these internal changes and adjust accordingly.
"'When they first arrive there are so many different options, that they don’t know what to eat,' he said. 'But they always crave rice, so they pretty much eat mostly rice for the first two to three months, even if there are many other options available. And then after this phase, they start missing food they had back home.'
Kim, a waitress who asked to be identified only by her surname, only ate rice a few times a year when she was in North Korea, instead subsisting mostly on corn. When she first arrived in the South in 2017 she was 'completely awed' by the supermarkets, eating a constant stream of spicy Jin instant noodles for months before she became sick of the taste.
'No matter how much I worked in North Korea I could never afford rice,' she said. 'So now I can never throw away rice, even if I order too much.'”Older South Koreans with any memory of the Korean War and its related hardships aren't slouches either when it comes to not letting any food go to waste, so I imagine North Koreans must be at a whole other level of frugality.
"So Kim leaves Singapore having gained much of the international legitimacy the dynastic dictatorship has sought for decades. But the gifts from Trump did not end there. He also announced an end to US military exercises in the Korean peninsula – the 'war games' which he said were costly and, deploying language Pyongyang itself might have used, “very provocative”. Trump also hinted at an eventual withdrawal of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the Korean peninsula.
And what did Kim give Trump in return for this bulging bag of goodies? The key concession, the one Trump repeatedly invoked, was a promise of 'complete denuclearisation'. Trump held this aloft as if it were a North Korean commitment to dismantle its arsenal, with work beginning right away. To be sure, such a commitment would be a major prize, one that would merit all the congratulation a beaming Trump was heaping on himself. But this is where you need to look at the small print.
First, the text itself says merely: 'The DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.' Kim has promised not 'complete denuclearisation' but simply 'to work toward' that end. Negotiators the world over know is the fudging language you use when you’ve extracted something less than a real commitment. Kim has offered only an aspiration, with no deadline or timetable, not a concrete plan."It didn't take a genius to see this coming -- KJU got everything, Trump got a photo-op, and the long terms prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula are no different than they were last week. Given how Trump is effectively writing South Korea and Japan out of further negotiations (another huge win for Kim), they may be far worse.
"As a result he has every incentive to simply continue to bilaterally negotiate with Kim to achieve Moon’s and Moon’s government’s understanding of the ROK’s national interest. By impulsively deciding to grant Kim a summit based and now impulsively pulling out of that summit because of some tough talk, the President seems to think that his maximum pressure campaign got him the opportunity for the summit and can now simply be reimposed and once again achieve positive goals. The problem, of course, is there is no evidence that the President’s maximum pressure approach actually contributed to or set the conditions for Kim to pursue a bilateral US-DPRK summit, which is something Kim, his father, and his grandfather have been trying to achieve for decades. . . .
Kim has largely already gotten what he wanted. He got the President to agree to meet with him. He got two photo ops with Secretary of State Pompeo. He got the President to call him an honorable man. And he got the President to call this off, making the US look like the mercurial, erratic, and unreliable obstacle to peace. It is important to remember that there are a whole bunch of foreign reporters in the DPRK right now because they were there to observe and report on the destruction of the DPRK nuclear test facility. If we’re very lucky, Kim won’t decide that he too can play the “or else” game as well and scarf these folks up as hostages to use as bargaining chips."tl,dr: Kim Jong-un drank Trumps milkshake. Because of course he did.
Long story short: it took Donald Trump to make a third-world murderous dictator into the rational "good guy."
— Stormy Jamesiels (@wetcasements) May 25, 2018
"With a firmer grip on the regime and a strengthened nuclear strike capability, all this diplomacy moves Kim closer to his remaining goals of prioritizing the economy and elevating North Korea’s international standing as a nuclear state. The fact of hosting friendly meetings with foreign delegations and presenting them with memorabilia commemorating the recent success in 'perfecting the national nuclear forces' is a nuclear status fait accompli. And even if North Korea can’t rejoin the international community in full because of continuing human rights abuses and opaque economic practices, going on the diplomatic offensive is a smart way of discouraging the international community—and especially China—from stringently implementing an increasingly suffocating international sanctions regime. Diplomacy is a low-cost means of getting sanctions relief, which will help improve the North Korean standard of living. At the same time, an extended process of reconciliation with South Korea holds out the promise of much needed economic investment and assistance. Already there’s talk of an energy corridor running from Russia, through North Korea, down to the South. That all this encourages greater friction in the U.S.-South Korea alliance and mutes the preventive war narrative that was building last year in Washington is simply a bonus.
Kim’s playing a multi-level game. Thinking in terms of Kim having a singular or primary motivation oversimplifies the reality that diplomacy done right can do many things at once—for example, nudge the United States out of the picture while presenting North Korea to the world as a 'peaceful' nuclear state that doesn’t deserve to be under such stringent sanctions. Kim’s diplomacy encourages a public narrative of rapprochement with both the South and the United States, which in turn helps bring all of his goals closer to reality. North Korea does not necessarily need to abandon any of its nuclear weapons for all of this to happen."The fact that Trump is probably going to meet with Kim in three to four weeks is already a major win for the North Korean regime. Xi and Macron and Saudi Arabia simply put on meaningless banquets and parades and promptly got exactly what they wanted from Trump.
"Others have encouraged Kim to smuggle her family out of North Korea to join her in Seoul.
'Living here for seven years taught me what it really is like to live here as a North Korean defector,' she said. 'North Korean defectors are forever strangers in this country, classified as second class citizens. I would never want my daughter to live this life.'
'North Korean defectors are treated like cigarette ashes thrown away on the streets.'”It's complicated, to say the least. And while getting to unification is one thing, actual unification might be an even greater struggle for the people of both countries.
"Kim Chang-seop tells us that we can take photos on the left side of the bridge (river, forest) but not the right (military base), adding casually, 'The soldiers are probably watching us right now.' Growing up inside the sparsely-populated CCZ, there were only five children in his elementary school. He has fond memories of hanging out with the soldiers, who would share their hardtack provisions with him. They assured him that he wouldn’t have to join the military because the two countries would be unified by the time he was old enough to be conscripted. 'It’s been 15 years since I finished my service,' Kim Chang-seop laughs.
He’s since left the village and has a family of his own, but returns regularly to help his parents out. He’s also not particularly bothered by recent growing tensions between the North and South. 'We’re so close to the border, the missiles will just fly over us,' he says. It’s unclear if he’s joking or not, but he, like many Koreans I know, comfortably wears this shrug of indifference, an easy, pocket-sized nihilism.
Back at the restaurant, the dining room is now full with locals in layered work clothes, a middle-aged couple, and soldiers with the skull and crossbones stitched onto their uniforms. (A tour bus sometimes stops at Jeonseon Hyugaeso, offloading groups of security tourists, but none are visible.) Rumor has it that each side chooses the handsomest soldiers to serve on the front lines, as propaganda that places each nation’s best face(s) forward. The soldiers here are good-looking, and they are also so young. Everyone, locals and soldiers alike, is huddled over the steaming pots of maeuntang."Read the whole thing, and don't miss the excellent pictures.
"'China would have to fight its way into North Korea,' Mastro told me in an interview. 'For the North Koreans, enemy No. 1 is obviously the United States, but enemy No. 2 is China. They understand they’d have to potentially fight both countries.'
Things would get really complicated, and really dangerous, once Chinese troops made their way to the nuclear facilities. The Pentagon has spent years practicing how to send US special operations forces into North Korea to seize Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons if there were signs that Kim’s government was collapsing. The problem is that Chinese troops would almost certainly be sent into North Korea at the same time, and with the same goal, as the US forces.
Mastro notes that Chinese troops would only need to advance 60 miles into North Korea to take control of all of the country’s highest-priority nuclear sites and two-thirds of its highest-priority missile sites. Given that enormous geographic advantage, Beijing’s troops would almost certainly arrive before the US ones do."The notion that Kim Jong-un would passively "absorb" a US first strike is stupid and absurd. Seoul will be devastated, and within a few days you'd be looking at US and Chinese ground forces coming into direct contact.
"The flag was first used in 1991 when the two countries competed as a single team in the 41st World Table Tennis Championships in Chiba, Japan and the 8th World Youth Football Championship in Lisbon, Portugal. The two countries' teams marched together under the flag in the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia; the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea; the 2003 Summer Universiade in Daegu, South Korea; the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece; the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy; and the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar; however, the two countries competed separately in sporting events. The flag was not used in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. Not only was a unified team shelved, even Beijing Olympics Organization Committee (BOCOG)'s plan to make the two Korean teams turn up back to back during the opening ceremony was rejected due to opposition by the North Korean delegation at the last moment."By my "stable genius" math skills, this will be the eighth time it's been used officially.
"With the North’s economy increasingly strangled by international sanctions, the country has almost no tax base and an expensive nuclear weapons program, meaning it has to seek alternative, often illegal, ways of generating income. North Korean hackers were linked to the theft of $81m from Bangladesh’s central bank in March 2016, and in December the US Trump administration identified North Korea as the culprit behind the WannaCry cyber-attack, which in May caused millions in losses. North Korea has denied involvement.
North Korean hackers have been linked to leaks of credit card information and illegal ATM withdrawals in South Korea. 'There are thousands of cyber-attacks in South Korea every day and most of them never get reported on the news,' Kim said. 'Information security is the basis of economic development.'”For such a technologically advanced country, it does seem overdue for South Korea to finally take cyber-security more seriously. They probably never expected a "backwards" North Korea to pull off the type of shenanigans that they've gotten up to lately.
I'm not _entirely_ joking when I say that death from a NK nuke is preferable to three more years of Trump and a pro-pedophile GOP.#tcot#MAGA@realDonaldTrump
— Antifa James (@wetcasements) November 29, 2017
"It is a measure of how impoverished America’s contact with North Korea has become that one of the best-known conduits is Dennis Rodman, a.k.a. the Worm, the bad boy of the nineties-era Chicago Bulls. Rodman’s agent, Chris Volo, a hulking former mixed-martial-arts fighter, told me recently, 'I’ve been there four times in four years. I’m in the Korean Sea, and I’m saying to myself, "No one would believe that I’m alone right now, riding Sea-Doos with Kim Jong Un."' Rodman’s strange bond with Kim began in 2013, when Vice Media, aware of Kim’s love of the Bulls, offered to fly American basketball players to North Korea. Vice tried to contact Michael Jordan but got nowhere. Rodman, who was working the night-club autograph circuit, was happy to go. He joined three members of the Harlem Globetrotters for a game in Pyongyang. Kim made a surprise appearance, invited Rodman to dinner, and asked him to return to North Korea for a week at his private beach resort in Wonsan, which Rodman later described as 'Hawaii or Ibiza, but he’s the only one that lives there.' On his most recent trip, in June, Rodman gave Kim English and Korean editions of Trump’s 1987 best-seller, The Art of the Deal."I think the only rational response to this information is Jesus Fucking Christ.
"For North Korea, Trump's words merely provide further justification for its nuclear weapons programme. Though the regime is typically depicted as crazed (and in some respects it is), its nuclear project rests on rational foundations. For Kim, the lesson from the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi was that tyrants pay a price for relinquishing their arms. The persistent threats from the US strengthen the regime's domestic position and reinforce a siege mentality. Though North Korea must be deterred from a pre-emptive strike, it must also be offered incentives to pursue a different path."But remember, Hillary was the real threat to world peace.
