With apologies to cranky laowai if this is in the wrong forum (there is no political forum available), I thought some of you might be interested in profiles of those at the helm of the country causing no small amount of concern among regional and Western governments.
http://www.asiaint.com/arl/arl1527.asp
Cheers,
Tomas
Thanks for the article Tomas. I am quite interested in North Korea. It holds some strange facination for me. It also scares the living shit out of me.
Seems we have a neurotic gerontocracy(sp?) at work wanting to develop Nuclear weapons, if they haven’t done so already. I often wonder if it will really collapse or go out with a big bang. I was surprised to find that so many old guys are involved in running it.
I wonder if the US will bomb the facilities or not. I would think a dual stealth bomber/cruise missile salvo(via submarines and B-1 bombers) at nuclear facilities and 3C facilities(command, control and communications). Would be a start followed up by a possible suicide mission by special forces. The only problem is the 37,000 US soldiers are dead meat. You have 2 million Korean soldiers on both sides just ready to kill each other and/or the Americans.
The current impasse is probably just the Bush administration a chance to twist the arms of China, Japan, Russia and S. Korea on the where and how to of the N. Korean Nuclear program and command structure. Because it is strange to see this current American administration act nice without some ulterior motive.
I hope it all works out as I want to live here for sometime.
CYA
Okami
Fine by me to have the thread here, especially if historical parallels with China (personality cults, etc.) and Beijing’s involvement in the situation are discussed.
While I was in China, I saw a book in English about North Korea. I do not exagerate in the slightest when I say that every single page of that very thick book had a picture of the Dear Leader (or whatever the title was for the father of the current wacko dictator), who was instructing his adoring subjects on ways to improve their grain production, traffic control, rocket science, and everything else under the sun. I would have bought the book, but I was travelling and it was too heavy, it closely resembling a large college yearbook.
It was scary.