I agree @BobbyManc . The continuing survival of the regime is evidence of its cold calculation. The best practitioners of machiavellian politics in the modern era.
North Korea
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I don't entirely disagree but executing relatives and political rivals, sometimes with flamethrowers or mortar bombardment, is fairly unhinged.
Anybody else think he is dead going off Trump's comments ?
A lot of those stories have been sensationalised, the wiki article has a good interview of why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea
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'I just wish him well'. If I had to read anything into that I'd guess that maybe he is ill but not dead?
The fact is no one knows. Seasoned North Korea watchers don't know. They say that there is nothing unusual happening in North at the moment but these same people didn't know that Kim Jong- Il had died until it was officially announced.
North Korea is such an extraordinary country that nobody apart from a few people inside the DPRK know what is actually going on.
It’s almost certainly fabricated propaganda. The press today repeated the claims that he fed his uncle to 120 dogs and that he had someone else thrown into a tank of piranhas. The government want you to view them as unhinged so people don’t consider the rationale behind why they develop nuclear weapons, and to provide a moral blank cheque for any action or sanctions deemed necessary against the country - in which case it would be the millions of civilians who suffer.
I expect propaganda by the US but there seems no doubt that he has had political rivals and family members executed even if the methods are propaganda which isn't exactly stable behavior. Although if it is reported in The Mail it is by default a lie.
That said imagine Trump if he had as much impunity to act without scrutiny.
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So far had impunity over Biden on Ucrania, the grab them by te pussy locker talk and that he said could kill someone in 5th avenue and no one would do anything.
I mean, not comparable but been US...not bad eh
The CIA and the IC, in general, are probably wondering how Trump seems to know all this. They penpals? Or they have some outside the WH phone connection?
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Obligatory. Skip to 1:15 for the good good.
It's somewhat fascinating that a country like North Korea still exists even in 2020. Their grip on the population is incredible.
It's like the book 1984, really. Thought Police and all that. They may not be able to read their minds, but one unwise word and you're in huge trouble.
Bit like the Stasi in the old East Germany, when children were encouraged to report things their parents said. The difference I suppose in NK is that a lot of people seem to actually believe all the lies. Mind you, we only ever see pictures of the elite and favoured ones who are allowed to live in Pyongyang, join the Party, get good food etc.
If you're not familiar with it, read a bit about "Songbun", the very real but never-acknowledged caste system in NK, which is largely based on what your family did in the past in respect of resisting the Japanese. Ironically, Kim Jong-Un's own mother would have been placed in the lowest or "hostile" caste, as she was actually born in Japan and her family worked for Japanese industries. Not surprisingly, nothing's said about that these days.
The relationship between the two Koreas would be a lot better without the USA interfering in their affairs.
A lot of the west is like that, aren't we? Turn up at someone's house to find a few dirty dishes, we offer to clean up and before the owner can say yes or no we empty all their bins on to the floor, take a shit and hide it under the carpet, and set fire to one of the drapes. Then we rub our hands together, say "job done" and then grumble that we didn't get a thank you as we leave with all their silver cutlery bulging in our pockets.
But it was never the point to be thanked in the first place. Everything is cold hard geopolitics under the pretense of morality. The West rarely intervenes for morality reasons, it always relates to money and power. Whether it's containing communism or protecting oil interests, there's always a 'hidden' agenda.
Not that I think you don't know this @Mr Pigeon . But these discussions are pretty much useless without acknowledging why the West really intervenes in countries.
What is wrong with communism if the people want it?
Look at Kerala state in India. It's communist. Even in West Bengal they occasionally have a communist government. What is important is that the people have a say. The so called communists countries are in reality authoritarian dictatorships. Not much difference between China and Saudi Arabia in an authoritarian government. Probably Xi could never get away with half the stuff MBS could get away with.
That's exactly why the West wanted to contain it in other parts of the world. Fear for spreading to the West.
Oh mate I agree, hence the reference to nicking the silver. The "thank you" is because a lot of time the public are told that we're doing it to "bring civilisation to the savages" or deliver democracy, or whatever other bullshit reason has been stuck up as a paper thin veneer over the real reason. It makes it easier for us to accept that we're not primarily over there to plunder resources.
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It would be even better without Russia and China interfering, given the choice I'd take living in the South any day and twice on Sunday.
That is why the West Germans built a wall to keep all the westerners from rushing into east Germany.
East Germany and all nations in the iron curtain were actually authoritarian dictatorships. It's communism in name. Just like China is. It's no more Communist than Saudi Arabia.
Of course. South Korea is more rich and better quality of life now. It's now a democracy but that came very later as for long it's was a brutal dictatorship.
Where has China interfered military recently? The quality of life in China in most big cities is better than in Seoul. Compared to the USA in interfering, Russia and China are boys vs men.
Do you think people in South Korea want communism? Or that most in the North want the Kim family?
I'm not sure your argument stands up considering 'the West' aren't lining up to invade Trivandarum or Kolkotta.
There wouldn’t be a South Korea without the US
This is exactly the point. North Korea is the way it is now not because its a Communist country. It's a very brutal authoritarian dictatorship. It also has got nothing to do with brutal authoritarian dictatorship that's why the west wants to invade. If that's so they would have invaded and taken out the most brutal one in the middle East.
I don't think anyone in south Korea wants to go and live in Saudi Arabia too. So it's got nothing to do with communism.
The South Koreans don't want to unify with the north. They don't want to bear the burden of that. All they want is peace in their region.
None of the countries identified as communist today are truly communist. They are paying lip-service to the ideology because it grants them the opportunity to govern via a dictatorship.
That said, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
That said, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Spot on. Most of them are reprehensible dictatorships.
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it's a lookalike
He could be the fertilizer. He was there pushing up the daisies.
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Sounds like bullshit.
Again, there's no photos. More BS?