And this is the kind of shit that happens when we stop carrying our big stick and instead try to understand where crazy ass tyrants are coming from. Our message needs to be you don't fuck with us and you don't fuck with our allies.
well, we kind of owe N. Korea one right now since BJ Clinton went over there and got his photo ops with Kim Jong last year when they released those two Al Gore employees sneaking in that country to film anti-propoganda!
If you get a chance, check out this documentary about a couple of alternative press reporters touring North Korea with actual footage. It's pretty interesting: http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3# I just started re-watching it. I love this quote from the reporter: "From the first moment I got there, I was shit scared." His first breakfast (at the 11:15 mark) is so surreal. But it gets weirder. "The Pueblo" at 16:00 is another one where you realize how much they are stuck in this distorted 1960ish world. Anyway I wonder if isolating and flexing military muscle is ever going to change anything. After watching that series it seems like the population is so ignorant of the outside world it's hard to imagine them ever doing anything different. Militarism seems to be what they want. I have no clue what the right answer is. One thing that seems abundantly clear is how desperate the regime is to maintain isolation. They seem more afraid of video cameras and anything else that might expose their population to the outside world than anything else. Media and technology is certainly a massive advantage we've never been able to figure out how to capitalize on in dealing with this nation.
The site is oddly strange to navigate. To make it easier, here's the 2nd and 3rd part: http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-2-of-3 http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-3-of-3
I wonder what would happen if you could dump 20 million hand-crank operated, satellite-connected iPhones on that country with some basic instruction about how to contact their neighbors and do an internet search. It'd be a massively expensive operation now, but maybe not so much in ten years. *sigh* I suppose they'd just fire their nukes.
Good points, Mook. It's not a rational society you can undermine in the usual ways. It's a truly brainwashed society. To me, the answer isn't to try to destroy it from within, but to contain it. I think perhaps finding their most technologically advanced vessel, disabling or sinking it may send a message. Perhaps finding one of their submarines and force it to surface might work. It has to be something that will send a message to the military that they're only around because we let them be. I think the only people they listen to are the Chinese.
That's probably the biggest key. Cuba only began to change after the USSR collapsed (and even then it's taking a long time, at least in part due to our own nonsensical foreign policy with the country). The problem the Chinese face is that they know if the regime ever falls, there's going to be a shitload of refugees and instability swarming into China, and they just don't want to deal with it. In the short-term it's cheaper and easier for them just to keep the thing propped up, no matter how dumb it is in the long-term.
Technically the war never ended. Only a cease-fire agreement was reached back in the '50s I dated a North Korean lady for a while. She grew up in Japan but had made several trips to the country. She said it is absolutely beautiful but the people are so brainwashed that it will take 3 generations for the country to accept change. I think a few months of ample food should do the trick.
