North Korea News

[Xenophon]

I guess it would leave them Han Solo.
That's about it.

Did Un spring fully formed from IL's head?

[Smitty-48]

Well, Joe Stalin died, Cold War continued for another 35 years, Ho Chi Minh died, and the People's Army of Vietnam carried on, Chairman Mao died, the PRC is a superpower now, Ayatollah Khomeini died way back in 89', but last time I checked, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is still running things, Saddam Hussein is dead, but the Baathists just morphed into ISIS, Osama Bin Laden, dead, AQ, still around, Mullah Omar, dead, Taliban, still kickin', Fidel Castro, dead, Cuba; still commies, so, you know, I don't put much stock in counterleadership operations "Rambo kills Hitler Kim and they will welcome us as liberators, yadda, yadda, yadda..."

If the Kim Dynasty is the Godhead, pretty sure they can just prop a Kim up like Lenin in his tomb and Obi Wan Kenobi that shit for quite some time after. If you go to Beijing and drive past the Forbidden City, whose picture is hanging up there as the Dear Leader forever n' ever? It's not Colonel Sanders. Cults of the personality die when the personality dies? Since when? I mean, heck, you've got Americans right here on this forum who are still worshiping Hitler, but Juche drops dead on the spot with Kim Jong Un? Yeah, OK, sure.

Suffice to say, if they have hydrogen bombs on ICBM's when you go to execute this strategy, might not want to be hanging out on the west coast right about then, wouldn't put it past the Kim Dynasty to have a Dead Hand procedure in place, that would be about their style.

Juche wouldn't execute the final command of the Godhead? I wouldn't bet the CONUS on it if I was you.

[jseymour]

I wouldn't think a SEAL team is getting anywhere near him, you send a SEAL team in there and the next time you see them it will be when they are being paraded as prisoners in front of the cameras, Pyongyang is way too deep into indian country to risk a SEAL team, and NK security is way too tight.

HALO drop off west coast parallel to Pyongyang, wingsuits. That'll get them pretty close, if not into the actual city, no?

If anyone went in it would be the South Korean SEALS so they can say the south removed him and help unify the countries. Our guys would probably just be observers.

[Smitty-48]

The South Koreans ain't gonna do shit, they don't want the regime in the North collapsing, that's the last thing they want, they just elected the Lefty Sunshine appeasement party, and 80% of South Koreans polled favour negotiation with the North.

As to the Tom Clancy-esque fantasy about JSOC going into the DPRK, that's really a reflection of how the American public just doesn't grasp how little intelligence the Pentagon is actually able to glean about North Korea, in terms of that level of detail, the detail required to execute that sort of operation, it's opaque to them.

They really have no idea what's going on up there for that level of operations, maybe they can track mobile ICBM's with overhead assets, they can locate major military installations and manuevers, but in terms of get in, get Kim, get out again? No chance, and they would never risk it being so blind to what they would be sending them into.

The most remarkable feat of this regime, is how they are able to conceal so much from the outside world and for so long despite being the focus of so much attention, even the combined intelligence agencies of the United States can't see much through the fog.

Most of what you know comes from defectors, but they're all kind of like "Curveball" from Iraq, they could be totally full of shit, you really have no idea if what they are saying is true and/or accurate, and there really isn't a reliable way to verify.

The ELINT/SIGINT/COMINT/HUMINT cone of silence in the DPRK, it's actually quite amazing in this day and age, their principle defense being that they are so low tech, they use some tech, but so little that it doesn't provide a picture.

People who've lived their whole lives inside this regime have no idea what's going on at the upper echelons of this regime, the idea that the Pentagon has any clue, is delusional.

The North Korea Desk, they deduce, they extrapolate, they track from a great height, they make educated guesses, but in terms hard data and detailed information on who, when, where, why, and how? They really don't know.

The discipline of the North Korean regime is hella impressive, they must literally do almost everything face to face with no signal traffic at all. The idea that the NK's are a bunch of clowns and JSOC could just waltz in there and bust a move? No.

The North Koreans are way too good at what they do, if they weren't, they wouldn't be able to remain so opaque for so long with so many assets trying to find out what's going on up there.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Funny that we didn't shoot down that nork missile that flew over Japan the other day... Almost as though Kim were trying to tell us that the emperor has no clothes...

[DBTrek]

Japan had a God Emperor.

They ate two atom bombs waiting for the guy to say "Ok, that's enough".
He cried uncle and Japan surrendered.

I imagine that's a closer corollary to NK than a people's revolution man like Mao.
Kim Il Sung might've been Mao, but Kim Jong Un is emperor.

[KerningChameleon]

Japan had a God Emperor.

They ate two atom bombs waiting for the guy to say "Ok, that's enough".
He cried uncle and Japan surrendered.

I imagine that's a closer corollary to NK than a people's revolution man like Mao.
Kim Il Sung might've been Mao, but Kim Jong Un is emperor.

What if Imperial Japan had a couple nukes of their own? Further, what if they had science-fiction level missile tech (which ICBMs would've been then) to deliver them?

See, that's the thing: Nuclear-tipped ICBMs changed the whole calculus of geopolitics. The ability to wipe out either your opponent's cities or their military installations (or both) AND your opponent not knowing when or which until its far too late to stop it was a huge game changer. It's both an I Win/At Least You Get a Bloody Nose too button the moment you get one, and as a bonus, YOU suddenly get to push around any of your neighbors you want as long as they don't have them (e.g, Israel). So, everybody wanted one.

The Nuclear Club managed to delay things for a while with "non-proliferation" talks and treaties, but the Iraq War and the Crimean Annexation have shown everyone what a scam that was. The message is clear now: if you don't have nuclear missiles, get them, or else sooner or later you WILL get pushed around by someone who does have them. The situation in NK now is just proving that point further.

So, Non-Proliferation is well and truly dead and the Arms Race is back on boys, only this time, it's the little and medium nations jockeying to get their hot little despot hands on em.

[Smitty-48]

Japan had a God Emperor.

They ate two atom bombs waiting for the guy to say "Ok, that's enough".
He cried uncle and Japan surrendered.

I imagine that's a closer corollary to NK than a people's revolution man like Mao.
Kim Il Sung might've been Mao, but Kim Jong Un is emperor.

Was Mao Zedong really better than Kim Jong Un? How so? Near as I can tell, I'd rather have Kim Jing Un, the North Korean economy is doing far better under his rule than China's under Mao Zedong, and he's got a long way to go before he's liquidated as many plebs as Emperor Mao, Chairman Mao killed 45 million of his own people in just four years, 1958 to 1962, worked, starved, or beaten to death, Kim Jong Un is a George frikkin' Washington compared to Mao Zedong.

You think the Norks prefer prefer Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Un? I don't think so, I betcha they'd take Un over Sung any day of the week, just on quality of life, which, for the ruling elite in North Korea, has never been better, but it's not like the peasants were better off in the 60's and 70's than they are now neither. In North Korean terms, they are in a comparitive boom time and freerer than they've ever been as well. Is it New Hampshire? Nope, but it's better than the Great Leap Forward under Chairman Mao, bet dat.

[Fife]

Japan had a God Emperor.

They ate two atom bombs waiting for the guy to say "Ok, that's enough".
He cried uncle and Japan surrendered.

I imagine that's a closer corollary to NK than a people's revolution man like Mao.
Kim Il Sung might've been Mao, but Kim Jong Un is emperor.

Was Mao Zedong really better than Kim Jong Un? How so? Near as I can tell, I'd rather have Kim Jing Un, the North Korean economy is doing far better under his rule than China's under Mao Zedong, and he's got a long way to go before he's liquidated as many plebs and Emperor Mao, Chairman Mao killed 45 million of his own people in just four years, 1958 to 1962, worked, starved, or beaten to death, Kim Jong Un is a George frikkin' Washington compared to Mao Zedong.

What would George Patton, Jr., have said about the Zedong question?

[Smitty-48]

Japan had a God Emperor.

They ate two atom bombs waiting for the guy to say "Ok, that's enough".
He cried uncle and Japan surrendered.

I imagine that's a closer corollary to NK than a people's revolution man like Mao.
Kim Il Sung might've been Mao, but Kim Jong Un is emperor.

Was Mao Zedong really better than Kim Jong Un? How so? Near as I can tell, I'd rather have Kim Jing Un, the North Korean economy is doing far better under his rule than China's under Mao Zedong, and he's got a long way to go before he's liquidated as many plebs and Emperor Mao, Chairman Mao killed 45 million of his own people in just four years, 1958 to 1962, worked, starved, or beaten to death, Kim Jong Un is a George frikkin' Washington compared to Mao Zedong.

What would George Patton, Jr., have said about the Zedong question?

America would indict George S. Patton for being a "Neo Nazi" naow, so what he says about anything, is officially moot, in the Union of Cultural Marxist Amerika.