A North Korea thread

Politics International Politics
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[quote=“finley, post:57, topic:158959, full:true”]
Psyops, surely. Pretending you’re going to assassinate someone has a much more predictable outcome than actually assassinating him, IMO. Plus, it’s not technically illegal.

Fascinating that Chinese and US interests are starting to converge on this issue. I hope Trump doesn’t fuck it up with his anti-Chinese blather.[/quote]
Well, not sure they are converging. China isn’t going to mess up all their progress they’ve achieved by going against the US. They make Iphone parts that we buy. North Korea doesn’t buy that stuff, wouldn’t be able to help maintain their economy.

Trump has stopped calling them a currency manipulator apparently in exchange for their cooperation. It seems how Trump is able to get stuff done, how he negotiates. I’m glad for that part, I hate this talk of currency manipulation.

He ragged on NATO very much. Then as members make an effort to pay 2% of their budget to defense, which is requirement, he says NATO is great, it’s negotiating strategy. This is getting closer to the Nixon Doctrine, that Europe should be able to defend themselves instead of relying on American might to defend them.

After Trump’s apparent streaks of success, I’m not sure we’ll ever get a president like this again. Enjoy it while it lasts.

That all depends on NK right now. Kim is still ready for another nuke test, and his anniversary is Saturday. China is frantically sending representatives warning them, Trump isn’t bluffing. He isn’t like Obama, this is for real; he really means it.

If NK persists, there will be fireworks.

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China is sending something to North Korea but it’s not the frantic warnings to cease-and-desist that you imagine.

[quote]When North Korea launched its Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite into space in February last year, officials heralded the event as a birthday gift for dead leader Kim Jong Il. But the day also brought an unexpected prize for the country’s adversaries: priceless intelligence in the form of rocket parts that fell into the Yellow Sea.

Entire sections of booster rocket were snagged by South Korea’s navy and then scrutinized by international weapons experts for clues about the state of North Korea’s missile program. Along with motor parts and wiring, investigators discerned a pattern. Many key components were foreign-made, acquired from businesses based in China.[/quote]

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[quote=“Winston_Smith, post:62, topic:158959, full:true”]
China is sending something to North Korea but it’s not the frantic warnings to cease-and-desist that you imagine.

[quote]When North Korea launched its Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite into space in February last year, officials heralded the event as a birthday gift for dead leader Kim Jong Il. But the day also brought an unexpected prize for the country’s adversaries: priceless intelligence in the form of rocket parts that fell into the Yellow Sea.

Entire sections of booster rocket were snagged by South Korea’s navy and then scrutinized by international weapons experts for clues about the state of North Korea’s missile program. Along with motor parts and wiring, investigators discerned a pattern. Many key components were foreign-made, acquired from businesses based in China.[/quote][/quote]

That’s in the days when Obama was a joke and no one paid him any attention, and NK thought it was their right to terrorize other nations.

That’s nothing, when Clinton was President, they found NK rocket parts that were made by American company Loral, who was connected with the Democrats, which went to China and then NK.

The new sheriff is in town now. China realizes it. NK will soon.

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The dmz is full of mines and other hidden stuff. How are they going to clean that up? The Balkans still has plenty of mines from the last war there.

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It’s all the North. It’s supposed to be demilitarized, no mines. But the North doesn’t honor anything. This issue in particular is a recent one angering the South and making them much more inclined for tougher action against the North.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/north-korea-plants-landmines-in-demilitarized-zone

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If WWIII starts, my only consolation is that I had no part in bringing it about. Trump voters, on the other hand, will be culpable. Not that it would matter. We’d all be dead. Republican dream accomplished: the extinction of life on Earth.

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Democrat and Republican globalists aren’t blocking or sabotaging his foreign policy so far, big difference.

WWIII talk is womanly and hysterical; China, Japan and South Korea are all fed up with NK. It will be a unified strangling of Kim; his days are numbered.

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Chinese suppliers don’t represent “China”. The parts that go into a missile, mostly, are innocuous and easy to obtain. Even the nuclear bits - EFI detonators, say - could probably be sourced from Chinese engineering companies without any red flags being raised, as long as they were bought as subassemblies by Chinese nationals. Standard industrial MEMS IMUs are amazingly stable and accurate these days. Aerospace-qualified SBCs are cheap. You can buy anything you like from any reputable component distributor. It’s not, you know, rocket science. No cloak-and-dagger stuff required. You just order online and the stuff turns up at your office.

It’s kinda funny though. Ordering parts from China is a clear admission that Juche is a crock of shit.

I agree. It seems that China, especially, is keen to just put and end to the whole charade, and doesn’t seem too bothered if the US want to do the dirty work. There’s going to be no WW3; hopefully, just a bunch of sad-ass NK boys in military uniforms surrendering in exchange for a proper meal.

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East and West Germany is the silliest analogy ever. East Germany in 1990 was the most prosperous and stable economy in the former Eastern bloc, leagues ahead of the likes of Hungary and Poland, till this day it’s widely regarded as the most successful communist regime in the history of communism by historians. Yes, it was poor in comprison with West Germany or Austria, but the difference on average income wasn’t even twice as large. Yet even with all these preferential conditions, the East-West devide still lives on to 2010s, and the wall is still very much alive in some people’s minds:

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North and South Korea is a completely different situation, the distance is like sun and pluto. A reunification like Germany in 1991 would not look like Germany in 1991, but Korean Horror Story. The only way for this to work is to apply the Hong Kong system, aka establishing a border on the 38N line, and maintain North Korea as a seperate entity for as long as possible.

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[quote]Foreign Minister Wang Yi said “storm clouds” were gathering, an apparent reference to North Korean preparations to conduct a new nuclear test and the United States’ deployment of a naval strike force to the waters off the peninsula. In addition, the U.S. military has been conducting large-scale military exercises with South Korean forces, drills that the North considers provocative.

“The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent,” Wang said at a news conference after a meeting with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Xinhua reported. “We urge all parties to refrain from inflammatory or threatening statements or deeds to prevent irreversible damage to the situation on the Korean Peninsula.”

If they allow war to break out on the peninsula, they must bear the historical responsibility and “pay the corresponding price,” Wang warned. In the event of war, “multiple parties will lose, and no one will win,” he said.[/quote]

What a sissy. A land war in Asia would no big deal. Over in a few weeks probably and China wouldn’t do anything because it would be too afraid of Trump.

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There are plenty of red flags being raised about advanced technology that you can’t just buy off the internet being shipped across the border into the DPRK. If the Chinese government wanted to shut it down it would have long ago. Point being though that anyone who imagines North Korea won’t be able to make good on its repeated threats to wipe Washington DC or New York off the face of the earth anytime soon has his head in the sand.

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hmmm. Still not really convinced. How do you prove somebody knew something? The point is, all they were selling was a CNC machine - a completely harmless item in harmless hands, or a dangerous item in the wrong hands. Like pretty much any other machine on the planet it would have a bunch of foreign components in it. US exports are pretty lax: when you order “controlled” items, you have to sign a declaration that says “I’m not going to use these parts for terrorism and I’m not going to sell them to rogue states”. Really, that’s it. That’s the extent of the “controls”.

If you’re (say) a machine tool manufacturer, how can you be sure that your products aren’t going to be passed through six different intermediaries to end up in NK? It’s impossible for the government to keep tabs on things like this without choking the life out of legitimate business. Chinese export procedures are onerous enough as it is.

OTOH, a CNC machine is big. You’d think border agents would have, you know, noticed it. No doubt a lot of money changed hands to make potential problems go away.

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Some aerospace components can only be made using 5-and 6-axis CNC milling and grinding machines, which aren’t your run-of-the-mill 3-axis CNC machines. Being the size of a small truck, there’s no chance they were moved across the sensitive Chinese border with North Korea without government knowledge.

[quote]B. Civilian Applications
Five axis machine tools are used for a variety of civilian applications, mainly the manufacture of
aircraft parts and components, gas and diesel engines (e.g., aircraft, helicopter, rail, auto), and
automobile parts. Other end-uses include training, research and teaching, and a wide variety of
applications in the medical, textile, oil, glass, heavy industrial equipment, tool, and
manufacturing industries. Although these high-performance machine tools were once mainly
used for industries where simultaneous control of all five axes of the machine tool is critical,
such as the aerospace and medical industries, it is clear that many other industries are
discovering the advantages of these machines.

C. Military Applications
According to DOD’s Military Critical Technologies List (MCTL), modern weapon systems
require a variety of production equipment to manufacture necessary components. For example,
turning, milling, and grinding machines are required for the fabrication of a range of items, from
large aircraft structures, submarine and ship propellers (particularly quiet propellers), and turbine
and compressor blades to small parts for gyroscopes, engine parts, and even nuclear weapons.
Five axis machine tools are an essential part of the U.S. industrial base.3

Grinding machines are used to produce parts for stealth applications, smart weapons, sensors,
night vision devices, laser mirrors, molds for radar and sonar domes, and missile applications
such as forward looking infrared (FLIR) capabilities, gyroscopes, inertial navigation, and high performance engine parts. Nearly every aircraft in service today requires precision-ground parts.[/quote] U.S. Department of Defense

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Just watching the CNN guy live in NK right now. Live pictures of sheeple and big phallic machines that might or might not be made out of cardboard and used pinball machine parts.

Seems like he has to be a bit careful what he says.

Honestly, all this trouble just because a fat guy is embarrassed about his tiny willy. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, there are games within games within games going on here. Who knows what either NK, China, or the US is playing at.

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Two fat manchildren with tiny willies. There is unpredictability, irrationality and immaturity both in the White House and in the Palaces of Glorious Leader of Best Korea.

Any conflict between the US and NK will involve China, and any conflict involving China will involve Taiwan.

“But her emails…”

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Germans seem to have a good grasp of economics and sound money, no matter what divides them; they all experienced hyperinflation in the 20s, which lesson hasn’t been lost on them. I’ve always said we would have great leadership provided for the world on monetary policies (which are woebegone today) if Germany were out of the EU and practicing good sense with the Deutschmark.

A better comparison might be Germany rebuilding itself after having been completely destroy by WWII. They had a short spate of pure free-market growth in the 50s, which brought them to their feet in a jiffy, before they began their awful beloved socialism again. If it weren’t for socialism, it’s hard to imagine the glory Germany could be.

Or Japan building itself after war.

As Andrew alluded to, South Korea is truly in the dumps right now with President Pak’s economics, so the South hasn’t much stomach for this right now. They need to change parties fast to get ready.

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[quote=“finley, post:69, topic:158959, full:true”]
It’s kinda funny though. Ordering parts from China is a clear admission that Juche is a crock of shit.[/quote]
Juche only works if you got brain-power in your country that can replicate everything the world has. Juche only applies to the people, not the government. Elites get to have the foreign goods as perks that they deny the people. Even so, China for the first time, has participated in sanctions against exporting coal to the North. Which may have other implications. If China is seriously trying to bridle the North, they will think of all necessary precautions, trade, economic, etc.

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Well, to be fair, the Kim family have been doing this for decades, while Trump is the new boy in the locker room. Trump is an asshole, but the question remains: what is the world supposed to do when a cartoon-character psychopath (or an entire family of them) runs a country into the ground, and threatens to spread his “you’re all going to hell with me” philosophy as far around the globe as possible, simply because he can?

Nasty little spoiled fatboy on CNN is now threatening to be “merciless”. Hard to tell if he’s referring to Americans or his own people.

I’m not sure if that “it’ll be over in weeks” stuff is merited, but the fact is that the NK army is half-starved and has been since forever. They’ll probably die of malnutrition long before American bombs can flatten them.

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The US could easily defeat NK (but Seoul would be destroyed), but any conflict with NK will involve China. That’s what scares the shit out of me.

I haven’t been more fearful of nuclear annihilation since the Reagan 80s.