North Korea vs USA soon?
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- CygnusZero40
Pretty sure the US could obliterate that country far quicker than they could the US. Already know who would win that war.
- Seoul? ever heard of it,
same bs was said before the irak and afghanistan, aren't you still thereGeorgesII - we never set out to obliterate Iraq or Afghanistan, GeorgesIImonospaced
- Seoul? ever heard of it,
- drgs0
- That was pretty bleak.WrappedInBooks
- Just ants. That's all they are.CygnusZero4
- what the hell is that chick doing in the intersection?johnny_wobble
- she was getting jiggy wit itutopian
- mg330
I read this article yesterday:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/sto…
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- A framed poster on the wall of a kindergarten classroom shows bright-eyed children brandishing rifles and bayonets as they attack a hapless American soldier, his face bandaged and blood spurting from his mouth.
"We love playing military games knocking down the American bastards," reads the slogan printed across the top. Another poster depicts an American with a noose around his neck. "Let's wipe out the U.S. imperialists," it instructs.
For North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count.
Toy pistols, rifles and tanks sit lined up in neat rows on shelves. The school principal pulls out a dummy of an American soldier with a beaked nose and straw-colored hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones - a favorite schoolyard game, she says.
For a moment, she is sheepish as she takes three journalists from The Associated Press, including an American, past the anti-U.S. posters. But Yun Song Sil is not shy about the message.
"Our children learn from an early age about the American bastards," she says, tossing off a phrase so common here that it is considered an acceptable way to refer to Americans.
North Korean students learn that their country has had two main enemies: the Japanese, who colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, and the U.S., which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War.
They are told that North Korea's defense against outside forces - particularly the U.S., which has more than 28,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea - remains the backbone of the country's foreign policy.
And they are bred to seek revenge, even as their government professes to want peace with the United States.
"They tell their people there can be no reconciliation with the United States," says American scholar Brian Myers, who dissected North Korean propaganda in his 2010 book "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters." "They make it very clear to the masses that this hate will last forever."
In recent years, state propaganda has shifted away from the virulent anti-American slogans of the past and has instead emphasized building up the economy. On the streets of Pyongyang, anti-American posters have largely given way to images of soldiers in helmets and workers in factories.
But the posters and curricula at kindergartens across North Korea remain unchanged. One glimpse inside a school, and it's clear that despite U.S.-North Korean diplomacy behind closed doors, 4-year-olds are still being taught that the "Yankee imperialists" are North Korea's worst enemy.
At the Kaeson Kindergarten in central Pyongyang, one of several schools visited by the AP, U.S. soldiers are depicted as cruel, ghoulish barbarians with big noses and fiendish eyes. Teeth bared, they brand prisoners with hot irons, set wild dogs on women and wrench out a girl's teeth with pliers. One drawing shows an American soldier crushing a girl with his boot, blood pouring from her mouth, her eyes wild with fear and pain.
"The American imperialists and Japanese militarism are the sworn enemies of the North Korean people," reads a quote from late leader Kim Jong Il affixed to the top of one wall in a large room devoted to anti-U.S. education.
"The main theme of anti-American propaganda is not `We must be ready for an attack' but `We must be ready for revenge,'" Myers says. "People are being whipped up to hate the United States on the basis of past actions."
The Americans also are portrayed with nuclear symbols on their helmets and uniforms, a reference to the North Korean insistence that the U.S. poses an atomic threat to the region. An undated poster in French is dotted with places in South Korea where missiles and fighter jets purportedly were kept.
The U.S. denies having nuclear weapons in Korea.
The North cites the presence of U.S. soldiers in South Korea, as well as the alleged nuclear threat, as key reasons behind its drive to build atomic weapons in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions designed to hobble its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
As disarmament discussions continue in fits and starts, the message in classrooms across the country remains the same: North Korea needs its rockets, bombs and missiles and is proud of its atomic arsenal.
Kaeson Kindergarten is a model school. In the mornings, the children line up for calisthenics and to sing patriotic songs, and at lunchtime they are fed rice, fish and tofu, according to the principal. They learn to sing, dance and ride unicycles, and at 4 p.m. they get a snack and soy milk.
History lessons include tales about Kim Jong Il's childhood, life under Japanese occupation and the Korean War.
"First, we start by teaching that the American imperialists started the war," said soft-spoken schoolteacher Jon Chun Yong, citing the North Korean version of how the war began.
"From that time on, the tragedy emerged by which our nation was divided in two," said Jon, who has taught at the kindergarten for 15 years. "Since then, our people had to endure the pain of living divided for a long half-century."
Outside North Korea, history books tell a different story. Western textbooks say that two years after North and South Korea declared themselves separate republics, North Korean troops marched into South Korean capital, Seoul, on the morning of June 25, 1950. U.S.-led United Nations and South Korean forces fought communist North Korean troops backed by Chinese soldiers in a three-year battle for control of the peninsula. The U.S. and North Korea finally called a truce in 1953, and Korea remains divided to this day.
At the Kaeson Kindergarten, children sit hunched over sheets of drawing paper clutching pastel crayons. One girl has drawn a school of bright blue fish; the boy next to her has covered his paper with tanks.
Another boy depicts a whole battlefield: a North Korean plane dropping bombs on dead, bloodied American soldiers, as well as grenades and tanks. In a final flourish, he adds the name of the South Korean president to the tableau, muttering the name under his breath as he labors over the letters.
The North Korean hate campaign generally does not include South Koreans, who are portrayed as puppets of the U.S. However, in recent months, it has come to encompass South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whose tough policies toward the North have enraged its leaders as well as the South's conservative media.
The best of the children's work is pinned up on a board: One kindergartner used color pencils to draw a boy in a blue cap attacking a midget American soldier with a studded club. Another drawing depicts North Korean fighter jets dropping bombs on American soldiers trapped in flames. In a third, a man wearing a helmet marked "U.S." in English is on his knees begging for mercy as he is pummeled on the head with a stick.
The children run around beating up mock American soldiers and planes, Jon said. The worst schoolyard taunt is to call someone "miguk nom" - "American bastard."
The games culminate every year on International Children's Day on June 1. Across the nation, students convene en masse, dressed in military uniforms and armed with toy rifles and bayonets. At one such celebration in Pyongyang this month, students took turns charging dummies of U.S. soldiers with their weapons.
Still, like children everywhere, the littlest North Koreans show more fascination than fear when they encounter the rare American in Pyongyang, invariably waving and calling out "Hello!" in English.
And spotted among the mourners following Kim Jong Il's death in December was a boy who clearly had no problem with a Yankee of a different kind. Perched on his head was a blue knit cap with the New York Yankees logo from a distinctly American sport: baseball.
- nadanada0
i think the thing to remember here is that, outside of pyongyang, it is near-anarchy. there is no food distribution and hardly any military or police presence, other than to crack down on dissent and make sure the black markets don't overstep their bounds. you could literally murder someone in the middle of the street in broad daylight and as long as you had some rice or a few packs of cigarettes, no one would care.
also - the military is literally starving. there are reports of waves of migrants traveling over the border with china - nothing new - but it's a lot easier now, as every government agent can be bribed with any sort of food item. the UN / US / ROK aid that arrives in the DPRK gets filtered through the ruling class in pyongyang, then the military's top brass - who, in turn, steal it on government trucks and sell it at double the market rate to small black-market entrepreneurs - who then sell it back to the very few people who can afford it.
there are hardly any forests or trees left in the populated areas of the DPRK because they've been chopped down for heat. there are no more pets - they've all been eaten. bark is a common food item.
...there's no way the DPRK's army could fight it's way through anything - and their missile tech is so badly outdated it would make it tens of miles before being destroyed by US / JSDF antimissile cannons.
the ROK could absorb the costs of reunification and any sort of conflict within ONE WEEK of daily international trade - and DPRK knows this. that's why this is all blustery positioning.
there are two ways this whole situation could go, in my mind. (and i am obsessed with learning everything about the DPRK - blame my mild asperger's)
1. the military junta of the DPRK realizes that the ruling days of the Kims are falling apart, and that the entire nation exists to benefit and enrich three people - Kim Jong Un, and his aunt and uncle (Kim Jong Il's sister and brother-in-law). they seize power, turn the cult of personality towards themselves (or gradually dismantle it) and turn the country into a military dictatorship much like burma / myanmar - while toning down the anti-everyone rhetoric to try and regain some exterior trade and industrial investment.
2. the common people of the DPRK, as they gradually learn about the outside world through increased border porosity with china, break out in small regionally-isolated revolts until the ruling class decides to broker a deal with ROK / china / US / russia / japan - they retreat into exile with no punishments whatsoever, and they leave the mess for the UN and everyone else to clean up. essentially, it would be an iraq apres-war situation - lawlessness, hungry / long-suffering people and a government to completely assemble from scratch.
obviously, #2 is near-impossible and waaaaay out there. but #1 is no far from possibility.
read 'the impossible state' by victor cha - totally enthralling, or boring depending on your interests.
- I'm obsessed too. Have you read this? http://www.amazon.co…mg33
- Gut-wrenching book. Will make you appreciate your life in a completely new way.mg33
- This too!
http://www.amazon.co…NonEntity
- ETM0
NK would crumble in a real war. Infrastructure is a joke. Sanctions starve a good portion of the population already, war would only increase the burden to feed the troops.Their army is large, but relatively primitive. China may be an ally, but push come to shove China needs the western consumer world and they sure don't need NK.
Does that mean they are not a threat, no, of course not, but I don;t have a true sense of WWIII. Even with China on board, and maybe Russia too, they is massive military might, but at home, still a lot of political and economic instability in those countries, much more so than the US and other western allies.
- dbloc0
like father like son
- boobs0
North Korea? Who gives a shit. They just stir up trouble when they want food to feed their starving people. Nothing will come of it. Starving armies don't fight well.
- They would still get crushed pretty quickly even if they ate.CygnusZero4
- inteliboy0
Get your shit together North Korea. What an embarrassing mark on planet earth this country is.
- _niko0
if South Korea wasn't so close and vulnerable to attack, we would have gone in there ages ago and destroyed that hell hole.
- CALLES0
North Korea vows end to nonaggression pacts after U.N. vote
By Jethro Mullen, CNN
updated 12:23 PM EST, Fri March 8, 2013
- JackRyan0
Ain't no party like a Pyongyang party, 'cuz a Pyongyang party dont stop.
- JackRyan0
Wait...wait...I forgot Rodman has this shit covered.
- what fucking assclowncashface
- guess what..autoflavour
- guess what.. dont hate meautoflavour
- sine0
why is most of this thread 3 years old? fuck off.
- because it is... ?monospaced
- ..2013??GeorgesII
- i started it :D
i was stupid, geezbenfal99 - Fair point.Mr_Mxyzptlk
- _niko0
they might launch something and hit an unpopulated area in Alaska, to show they mean business, but more than likely the missile would malfunction and land on one of their own cities.
- Mr_Mxyzptlk0
Why is N. Korea 65 years old? fuck off.
