North Korea,  formal name is Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea,  i.e. DPRK  (which is easier to write).

So what is their beef do you reckon?  Maybe they are pissed off that for 60 years they have been constantly isolated in a state of 'suspended war'.

Maybe it goes back further.  More than 100 years ago the Japanese invaded Korea and pretty much enslaved the Koreans,  I am sure they were kindly masters, eh?

Second world war,  Japan defeated and Koreans could have expected to get their freedom but no,  the Allies decided to divide the country, half to the Yanks, half to the communists.  Governments imposed on each half and the guy the Yanks chose for the South turned out to be a real arsehole who finally died in Hawaii with his corruptly acquired millions at his side.  The Russians put a Korean in charge who had fought the Japanese in China, but we don't really know much more than that about him.

1950,  war breaks out.  Funny thing is no one knows who fired the first shot.  On the one hand the Yanks (the same people as told us about Saddam's WMDs) blamed the North but anyone who had been reading the newspapers at the time would know that Rhee (the Yank's man in the South) had been advocating taking the North by force for some time and there had been several incidents of firing across the DMZ.  We don't really know who started the Korean war but we know who finished it.  No one,  the war was never finished, just a state of truce that the South refused to sign.  They didn't even properly agree of the borderline especially the maritime borders.

Every  year the Yanks and the ROK hold military 'exercises' where they prat about giving the DPRK a big whakapohane then they squeal like stuck pigs when the North throws some of that poo back at them.

Seems the North have finally decided it is time to press for a finish to the war of 1950-53.

Good take on the situation and the history of NK.

Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad (he will eventually get it) sat back and took it, not so with Kim Jong Un....he won't hold back.

Rider....the Bush Doctrine, it's all there, it clearly states 'any country who is not with us is against us'....so there'd be quite a few to wipe out yet.

I'm waiting for the Pakistani conflict.

Ex Dame Pansi wrote on Apr 5^th, 2013 at 6:31pm:


I think it has already started, it hasn't reached Islamabad just yet.

Yea, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad and Dear Leader was watching what was happening there.  I am sure Arnold Dinnerjacket was watching too.

Ringer wrote on Apr 5^th, 2013 at 5:59pm:


Do you want to give us the full version of the history of Korea or just your truncated version?

salad in wrote on Apr 5^th, 2013 at 6:39pm:



Why would that be?  Are you at war with Indonesia?

Ringer! ~ Still being counter-intuitive I see. Backing the bad guys again. Didn't your mother tell you you'd go blind if you keep doing this?

I doubt very much that Kim Jong-un's emotional and moral age would be more than that of an 8 year old.

Just his haircut alone is fair warning that we're dealing with a lunatic here.

And seen how short his fingers are? That's a classical textbook give-away that the guy's a certifiable imbecile.

And then the final testimonial that cites him as a complete idiot is that his new buddy is America's Dennis Rodman.

And he's got his finger on the button for a nuclear war and the total destruction of North Korea.

But you still think he's a stand-up guy, don't you Ringer?

Ringer wrote on Apr 6^th, 2013 at 4:48am:


War hasn't changed, it still boils down to breaking your enemy's ability and will to fight while trying to maintain you ability and will to continue fighting. At it's most basic, conducting a war is a function of what capabilities all involved parties have to start with, how well they can maintain or expand those capabilities against their opponents, and how fast they can destroy their enemy's capability. Essentially it's still all about killing people and breaking sh*t until either the other guy says Uncle or you run out of people to kill and sh*t to break.

And we have way the hell more capability to kill people and break sh*t than the NorKs do.

Grey wrote on Apr 6^th, 2013 at 7:31am:


Problems with that argument:

1. The DPRK has enough conventional qrtillery pointed at the northern third of the RoK that any serious conflict on the peninsula automatically means South Korea will effectively be destroyed as a nation. That has been the primary threat the DPRK has posed since the armistance was first signed. We know this and so does the RoK which is why our primary counter to the DPRK has been revolved around being able to guarantee that the DPRK will not survive either.

The US isn't under any signifigant direct threat, so there isn't any actual reason for us to hold back. The RoK has operated under the assumption that they won't survive as a viable state actor is a real war breaks out, so their isn't any reason to hold back once the shooting starts for them either. It really does come down to if Kim Jong Un is really willing to lose everything. His father and grandfathef we both smart enough to realize that being dictator to a series of irradiated craters wouldn't be much fun, so we'll see if the Fat Kid has the same sense of self-preservation.

2. The US has never been very good at handling insurgencies. That said, we're frighteningly good at large scale warfare against conventional uniformed militaries.