Koreas...

[Ekaros]

North seem to have done some shelling today to response to some military training done by South... Or atleast I understood that...

So, will this escalate? Any opinions where this will lead? Or will it be just an incident...

[Lanx]

my korean friends tell me north all talk no play.

[Parak]

North is very bm with the harassment play, but I think as long as south keeps up with the macro and micro, we can expect a ragequit from the north eventually.

[Twitchy]

North is very bm with the harassment play, but I think as long as south keeps up with the macro and micro, we can expect a ragequit from the north eventually.

:clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2:

[Phaedrus2129]

North is very bm with the harassment play, but I think as long as south keeps up with the macro and micro, we can expect a ragequit from the north eventually.

Let's hope they choose Fruitdealer as their field general then.

[Scarzy]

Fruit dealer? Think i'd prefer boxer.

After Lim joined the Air Force, he started putting his fame to work. After a month and a half an Air Force pro-gaming team was created. Lim found some retired pro-gamers who joined the Air Force before him, including H.O.T-Forever, CLon, ChRh, fOru, Rage, Qoo) Sunny and MuMyung. Together they formed the first military pro-gaming team. After 2 months the team was announced, ACE (Airforce Challenge E-sports) was official. ACE first played in the 2008 ShinHan Proleague, and has participated ever since.

Straight from wikipedia.

I hope it doesn't go too far to be honest, I can see NK being stupid enough to use nukes for the s*its and giggles of it, as it were. They are very friendly with China too but I doubt that China with do anything about it, same with Russia, but i'm not sure how close the two countries are these days, but most of the weaponary is outdated (we're talking cold war and ww2) and would you believe it, Russian. Although as someone on yahoo answers put it: A 50 year old arty. with a mustard gas shell can do the same as a 21st century arty with a mustard gas shell.

It has the potential to kick off, apparently the UK's new MOD leaflets are all to do with korea, leaning towards the fact that they actually believe something will eventually kick off over there. The fact they sunk the warship was a bit stupid though, there was really no need.

In reality, I think that Russia and China will have a 'word' as it were, there is no reason for them to go to war, because they will lose, and their government will be no more, losing everything they have worked for, which seems a bit pointless.

Another question is: what happens to the land if North Korea ends up being taken by force, will Korea just become again? Will china become a tiny bit bigger? Will it be a new seperate country with a new government?

As harsh as it was, the first thing I thought was of Bisu and Jaedong having to serve. That cannot happen, even if Bisu is s*it these days.

[Fwiffo]

There were actually people killed this time around so I hope this doesn't escalate further.

[Lanx]

lol we have a standing army in s.korea. we send in 1 abrams tank and they don't stand a chance. Plus the chinese will want to get at them for fun!

[Scarzy]

There were actually people killed this time around so I hope this doesn't escalate further.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8589507.stm

43 people were killed in that. It's been going on for a while now but we just don't hear about a lot of it :nerd:

[didjamatic]

I feel sorry for North Korean people and I despise their government.  I really hope there is change in that region.

The North Korean government looks foolish to the rest of the world.  You can only rattle your sabers so long before you just give everyone a headache.

[vils]

Some relevant info.
If the necrocracy north of the 38th parallel decides to launch a war TFTs and RAM will rocket in price.
And a good deaal of keyboard lovers will be hurt. Seoul is in artillery range from the North Korean boarder and those grenades can be filled with both nuclear bombs and sarin.

[danrew]

*sigh

Does North Korea remind anyone of a bratty little kid that only knows how to break sh*t and yell to get everyone else's attention?

[Fwiffo]

It's the madman theory of international politics, implemented famously by Richard Nixon, but whose roots can be traced to Machiavelli.

[danrew]

Well at least we're outraged.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/11/23/131543532/obama-said-to-be-outraged-by-north-korea-s-actions

[Lanx]

why is there even a n/s korea just old holdover's from a war 50 years past. (that we lost) we should unite them! just like we did with the berlin wall.

[quadibloc]

I saw on Google News that RIA Novosti is running a video of a South Korean official admitting that South Korea fired first.

Since this is not accepted by the mainstream press in the Western world, I assume they're running something out of context in order to make up this false claim, to try to persuade their people that the United States is some kind of aggressor.

It is regrettable that there does not seem to be a way to end the threat posed by North Korea without risk to the people of South Korea and the United States.

why is there even a n/s korea just old holdover's from a war 50 years past. (that we lost) we should unite them! just like we did with the berlin wall.

I'm like really confused here.

North Korea invaded South Korea back in the 1950s. The United States prevented that aggression from succeeding. Yes, due to the danger of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, the U.S. did not proceed further to obtain the unconditional surrender of the aggressor nation. However, the aggression was prevented from succeeding.

I'd call that a little bit of a win, and a little bit of a draw. Not a loss.

And just what did "we" do with the Berlin Wall? Russia decided to adopt the policy of glasnost, and then to release the countries of Eastern Europe from their iron grip. And then Communism collapsed once the lies and brutality it rested upon were gone. And the people of Eastern Europe got rid of Communism themselves.

While one can give Ronald Reagan some credit for keeping the pressure on Russia, for example with the Strategic Defense Initiative, tearing down the Berlin Wall isn't something the U.S. did.

[Fwiffo]

Interglobalpoltinational is hard!

[Lanx]

i figured it out, those evil koreans don't want us to have an awesome black friday!
(i'm not anti-korean btw, i thought my fiancee was korean 13 years ago, and even her sister says she looks korean, and she was stationed in s.korea for the better half of the decade)

[namelessguy]

The real problem here is that South Korea doesn't actually want the northern part of its territory and the people there, with many reasons.
Not that their military force/economic potential are not enough.
Also, in the 21th century a proxy war by actual military force isn't very fashionable either.

[quadibloc]

The real problem here is that South Korea doesn't actually want the northern part of its territory and the people there, with many reasons.

I think that they would prefer having the burden of taking care of the poorer North than having it shooting at them. And, indeed, even without the regime in the North being a clear danger to them, many Koreans are sad at their country being divided.

So I think they would prefer being in control of, and responsible for, the North to the present situation.

Unfortunately, they don't have that choice. Living under the regime in the North would, of course, be a nightmare. That is what most of them really don't want. Some are so sad at the country being split that they would even accept that as the price of unity, though.

So my understanding is that the South does want the North. It just can't have it.

i figured it out, those evil koreans don't want us to have an awesome black friday!
(i'm not anti-korean btw, i thought my fiancee was korean 13 years ago, and even her sister says she looks korean, and she was stationed in s.korea for the better half of the decade)

I certainly wasn't thinking you were anti-Korean.

If your fiancee looks Korean, but isn't, although it's impertinent of me to ask, does that mean she's Japanese? Or perhaps Japanese-American, since the U.S. has troops stationed in South Korea - but Japan apparently doesn't, as it is attempting to be neutral with respect to the tensions between the two Koreas, despite being the victim of kidnappings by the North Korean regime.

[Lanx]

If your fiancee looks Korean, but isn't, although it's impertinent of me to ask, does that mean she's Japanese?

nope chinese.

skorea will win. Well for one they have the US backing and we have a couple of thousand troops there. Plus whenever skoreans put their minds to something they seem to dominate. look at starcraft! (and i think in the global championships koreans are > all others in go)

[quadibloc]

I don't expect South Korea to lose. But are they going to get hurt?

I haven't been paying attention to how the world of go or Wei Ch'i - or, in this case, baduk - is getting on. Last I heard, both China and Korea were certainly catching up with Japan - particularly China - but Japan was still dominant. But if that's changed, I'll have to admit I wouldn't have known.

[WhiteRice]

I don't expect South Korea to lose. But are they going to get hurt?

I agree.

It's not just a matter of winning or losing, but at what cost to the nation's people and infrastructure. That's why I think the South Korean's are so hesitant to make any moves.

[spolia optima]

it probably won't escalate. They're using it as leverage, they've done things like this several times since the armistice. Kim-Jong Il is dying. He just promoted his son to a 4-star general and he's situated to take the NK throne. This attack came right after a new uranium enrichment facility was unveiled to American scientists. It's essentially a message which says "hey, we have nukes... and plenty of them. We're one of the big boys now and we want to sit at the big boy table. To prove that you should take us seriously, we'll just shell this island and you know what? You won't do a damn thing about it, 'cause we have the bomb dammit, and we have a new leader who isn't afraid to use them."

North Korea is in a position of weakness. Food shortages, a dying leader, disintegrating relations with China (their closest ally). The shelling of that island is a border dispute and a pretty standard way to show strength.

As for starting WWIII... No. NK has a technologically inferior military and, like i said, they can't even feed their own people. If the Korean war started back up NK would be clobbered. The entire world would be against them. A military alliance with China would be their only hope, and China has a symbiotic relationship with the US and Europe. If China backed NK, the US and the rest of the world would cease to trade with China and they would be absolutely screwed. All the progress they've made in the last 30 years would be for naught.

[keyboardlover]

As for starting WWIII... No. NK has a technologically inferior military and, like i said, they can't even feed their own people. If the Korean war started back up NK would be clobbered. The entire world would be against them. A military alliance with China would be their only hope, and China has a symbiotic relationship with the US and Europe. If China backed NK, the US and the rest of the world would cease to trade with China and they would be absolutely screwed. All the progress they've made in the last 30 years would be for naught.

Exactly; that's what I've been saying. You hit the nail on the head.

[Lanx]

doesn't nkorea not even have a workable currency? i thought over the summer the gov't took every bit of the regular currency and replaced it with something else that was 90% less valued a whole nation of ppl that saved became poor over night.

[PAINKILLER]

...the US and the rest of the world would cease to trade with China and they would be absolutely screwed. All the progress they've made in the last 30 years would be for naught.

Or would it? There are many things you can do with a developed industry.

[WhiteRice]

doesn't nkorea not even have a workable currency? i thought over the summer the gov't took every bit of the regular currency and replaced it with something else that was 90% less valued a whole nation of ppl that saved became poor over night.

Yea they devalued the currency, I was reading stories about people who's life saving went up in a puff of smoke. It was so sad.

[Hak Foo]

Yea they devalued the currency, I was reading stories about people who's life saving went up in a puff of smoke. It was so sad.

But the new notes are much nicer - Kim Il-Sung looks human and almost lovable!




Coming for next year, Kim with big anime-style eyes.

[PRISONER 24601]

I just hope that, if not soon, someday in our lifetime we might see a unified Korea. If this means ousting the NK leadership by any means necessary, then so be it. Diplomacy may be the only thing we have left.

We may have waited too long for any sort of serious military retaliation though. Nukes are powerful bargaining tools. The rest of the world might just have to sit back and watch the North Korean people suffer. The alternative... some kind of "coalition of the willing" actually invading the North could easily result in a mushroom cloud over Seoul. **** that noise.

[quadibloc]

We may have waited too long for any sort of serious military retaliation though. Nukes are powerful bargaining tools. The rest of the world might just have to sit back and watch the North Korean people suffer.

The world has been sitting back and watching the North Korean people suffer for quite some time now.

What worries me is that the world might have to sit back and watch the South Korean people suffer, thanks to North Korea's nukes.

(Hopefully, it is clear that I'm being serious and I haven't followed Sarah Palin...)

[Hak Foo]

The world has been sitting back and watching the North Korean people suffer for quite some time now.

What worries me is that the world might have to sit back and watch the South Korean people suffer, thanks to North Korea's nukes.

(Hopefully, it is clear that I'm being serious and I haven't followed Sarah Palin...)

The leaders of the DPRK are mad, not stupid.

An offensive nuclear strike makes everyone their enemy and motivated to fight.  You lose immediately as an aggressor.

A defensive weapon makes it too expensive to threaten them directly.  Do you feel it's worth it to lose Seoul or Tokyo to take Pyongyang?  I dobut it.

[quadibloc]

A defensive weapon makes it too expensive to threaten them directly.  Do you feel it's worth it to lose Seoul or Tokyo to take Pyongyang?  I dobut it.

The thing is, though, ICBMs are an offensive weapon. Nuclear submarines are a defensive weapon. China only managed those somewhere between Clinton and Bush.

So it's not so much a question of losing Tokyo to the DPRK as getting China very annoyed about the fallout coming from the DPRK when we make sure that we don't lose Tokyo.

Mad is not the same as stupid, but it's a kind of stupid: being crazy is another way to make mistakes. You can be evil without being mad or stupid, and there are many high-functioning kinds of crazy, but at bottom, crazy always contains at least some irrationality somewhere.

[Hak Foo]

The thing is, though, ICBMs are an offensive weapon. Nuclear submarines are a defensive weapon. China only managed those somewhere between Clinton and Bush.

So it's not so much a question of losing Tokyo to the DPRK as getting China very annoyed about the fallout coming from the DPRK when we make sure that we don't lose Tokyo.

Mad is not the same as stupid, but it's a kind of stupid: being crazy is another way to make mistakes. You can be evil without being mad or stupid, and there are many high-functioning kinds of crazy, but at bottom, crazy always contains at least some irrationality somewhere.

Not losing Tokyo TO the DPRK, merely losing it.  As a last act of desperation, launching a strike to destroy, not conquer