A fascinating way to deal with N. Korea?

[DTEJD1997]

Hey all:

 

The N. Korea situation is finally starting to heat up & get some attention.  Unfortunately, it looks like it could go the WRONG way and a lot of people get hurt...

 

Any way that you look at it, it is a difficult situation.  I am shocked that N. Korea is not already at the maximum level of sanctions...If the N. Korean regime was willing to let MILLIONS of their citizens starve in the 90's, I doubt they will be phased by anything short of a total blockade.  The Chinese would probably cheat on that anyway...

 

I heard an interesting way to deal with them...one that I had not heard anywhere else...and am thinking that maybe it might just actually work...

 

Instead of military strikes OR embargoes & sanctions....be totally open with N. Korea.  Allow their citizens to have a welcome in other countries....Flood N. Korea with balloons carrying dollar bills, USB sticks, pamphlets, small luxury items, food, etc.  Put in small sections from newspapers showing prices of food, electronics, cars, etc.  Kind of like a Sunday advertisement supplement in newspapers.

 

I have seen videos on the YouTube showing that various S. Korean civilian & religious organizations are doing this...but they don't really have adequate resources.  What if the various groups got government backing and ramped up their efforts 100x?

 

Show them that one of the problem in USA is that people are eating TOO MUCH.  That the average home in USA, Canada, England, Germany, Korea, etc. has 42" lcd tv, has 100+ channels, can have pizza delivered in 30 MINUTES OR LESS!

 

Put the scientists to work to develop internet capable satellite phones.  Drop 500 of those a day, every day in N. Korea.  Phones that can also dial out to numbers in S. Korea, numbers in the west, can call anywhere...can watch S. Korean soap operas, can watch movies, and so on.

 

Show them the "West" has no beef with individual N. Koreans, ask them to join us...

 

Kind of like what this guy is advocating:

 

https://capitalistexploits.at/2017/08/common-sense-way-get-rid-kim-jong-un/

 

 

Just think, in bulk, every balloon care package might cost $500?  100 of them a day is $50k, that is LESS than the price of one "smart" bomb...Run that campaign for a 1,000 days and that is just $50mm!  That would be LESS than the price of one or two days of war...

 

Might be something to consider.  Very cheap option, and at least we made a serious effort to avoid death & destruction.

[nwoodman]

Excellent ideas!

 

cheers

nwoodman

[Guest Cameron]

 

VICE has great documentaries, this is about the balloons you speak of.

[DTEJD1997]

 

VICE has great documentaries, this is about the balloons you speak of.

 

I had not seen that...but it is similar to what I had seen a year or so ago.

 

What is N. Korea going to do?  Complain that we are sending money, rice, snacks, electronics for free to their country?

 

You could REALLY saturate N. Korea by having boats launch balloons off their coasts.

 

I would be a PERFECT sabotage campaign.  Have the government of USA & S. Korea "strongly denounce" the balloon launches, but what can we do?  We are not a police state!

 

OR, in the alternative, have the Western government openly support it.  Who but the N. Koreans could oppose it?

 

 

[LC]

Response: "Anyone caught with western items will be shot on sight"

[Jurgis]

Shouldn't that be the way to deal with all countries USA goes to war with?  ::)

 

 

 

Sorry to say, this is yet another simple Internetz solution that does not work. (Yeah, Internetz is famouz for simple solutions that don't work).

 

 

 

Big issues with these kind of approaches are:

1. The target country will try to shoot down any planes sending the balloons. If you respond by hitting their defense systems, you have war anyway.

2. The target country will send military/police to get your propaganda donations.

3. The target country's populace is unlikely to revolt even if military/police gets your propaganda donations.

4. Even if populace will revolt, the likely answer is that the target country will hit its populace with its military. Or they will nuke their neighbors. Or they will nuke US.

 

There are no simple solutions. One possibility is to get China realize that supersanctions and regime change under their supervision is better for them than having nuclear neighbor with a dictator. Not an easy task and does not guarantee 100% success anyway.

 

For Internetz simple-solution-solvers: bonus problem: apply this solution to Russia.  8)

 

This message may self destruct in ...

[DTEJD1997]

Response: "Anyone caught with western items will be shot on sight"

 

It appears that pornography, usb sticks, DVD's, and US currency is very popular in N. Korea.  Popular even in the military according to the Vice documentary. 

 

Maybe this propaganda campaign works, maybe it does not...but it is certainly much cheaper than going to war.  If it does NOT work, we can always go to war at a future date?

 

Why not try everything possible first short of going to war?

[nwoodman]

Shouldn't that be the way to deal with all countries USA goes to war with?  ::)

 

 

 

Sorry to say, this is yet another simple Internetz solution that does not work. (Yeah, Internetz is famouz for simple solutions that don't work).

 

 

 

Big issues with these kind of approaches are:

1. The target country will try to shoot down any planes sending the balloons. If you respond by hitting their defense systems, you have war anyway.

2. The target country will send military/police to get your propaganda donations.

3. The target country's populace is unlikely to revolt even if military/police gets your propaganda donations.

4. Even if populace will revolt, the likely answer is that the target country will hit its populace with its military. Or they will nuke their neighbors. Or they will nuke US.

 

There are no simple solutions. One possibility is to get China realize that supersanctions and regime change under their supervision is better for them than having nuclear neighbor with a dictator. Not an easy task and does not guarantee 100% success anyway.

 

For Internetz simple-solution-solvers: bonus problem: apply this solution to Russia.  8)

 

This message may self destruct in ...

 

All good points but at this stage any alternative to the current game of chicken between two sociopaths is worthy of consideration.  Surely Trump's rhetoric is trying to position China into applying more influence, if not, then it is quite terrifying 

 

cheers

 

nwoodman

 

 

[Viking]

My (limited) read is China is the key. North Korea exists because it is in China's national interest that is exist (as a buffer to the West).

 

At the start of the Trump administration there was much talk about how terrible China was, how unfair the trade deals were and how China would shortly be labelled a currency manipulator. Then North Korea started ramping up their nuclear program. I know the timing was just a fluke.

 

All the negative talk we heard from Trump regarding China has largely stopped. My guess is China has told the US that if it wants help from China to deal with North Korea then the US had better stop the insults, bashing and threat to label China a currency manipulator.

 

Not sure where it all goes from here. I will be watching China.

 

PS: I think Trump's Russian friends are also a player in this game. Trump plays checkers and both China and Russia play chess.... This conflict has been around for 70 years and is all shades of grey and Trump seems to want to paint in black and white.

 

 

[rb]

I'm sorry, I really like some of DTEJDs posts, but this is very naive.

 

Firstly, "be totally open with N. Korea.  Allow their citizens to have a welcome in other countries". Here you're talking about refugees. Lots and lots of them. That's pretty rich from an American, especially a pro Trump American. Last time I checked you guys were very much against that sort of thing. There's even legislation pending to reduce numbers of them. So let me think of a polite way to say this.... it's a no go. Who's gonna take them? They're not threatening to nuke Germany. Also from the other side, there's absolutely no way DPRK will let them leave... so it's a cold dead non starter.

 

Secondly, the happy balloons won't work either. The NK has enough artillery to shoot down all balloons coming in if they get pissed off (I guess for now they like the porn). If they get really pissed off they may shoot more than balloons. I'm talking mainly border villages skirmish type stuff. But one thing to keep in mind with all this NK stuff is that Seoul, a metro area of 25 million is in conventional artillery range of North Korea. That's one of the main complications of this situation. Any military conflict with NK results in massive death (millions) in Seoul.

 

Thirdly, the bright side. China doesn't seem overly concerned about this shit. Pyongyang is about 800 km form Beijing (500 mi for our imperial friends). That's just a bit more than the distance between Boston and DC. Now, Obama has made good on his promise of ringing China and NE Asia with missile defense due to NK. There's a lot of missile defense out there. So if NK launches a missile there's what a 10% ( maybe 20 or 30?) chance that it makes its target? But the missiles that the US shoots back in retaliation I'm pretty sure would hit their target.

 

Now let's get back to geography. If there was a good to fair chance that Boston would get nuked, I think that the people in DC would be freaking out and for good reason. Beijing, roughly the same distance as Boston and DC is not freaking out. Maybe we should take cues from them and relax. Oh, and one more thing, there is a twice yearly military exercise happening right now between US, SK and JP. Every time this military exercise happens Nk threatens to blow up half the world. So maybe we should all take a chill pill and step back from the fire and fury shit for a bit.

[rolling]

There is no way it would work: the most important thing to a dictator is his own power. They would rather start a nuclear war and lose their power "with honor" than let their power be undermined by some panflets.

[DooDiligence]

I would think that a large portion of N. Korean refugees would present a highly motivated work force (once they were deprogrammed & that would probably consist of a handful of decent meals & a few hours of watching “Boys over Flowers” or this

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSogXlkOAbk

 

(give it at least 45 seconds to really get going...)

[rkbabang]

Episode 18 of the Unregistered podcast is really worth listening to if you are interested in what is going on in N. Korea.  Thaddeus Russell interviews Hannah Song who is an American of North Korean descent (her grandmother escaped in the 1950s).  She runs an organization which helps N. Koreans escape to freedom, it runs a 3K mile long underground railroad through China because China will send refugees back if they are caught.  She talks about the influence USB sticks smuggled in from S. Korea have on the young people in the North and how this and other S. Korean products proliferate on the black markets.  It is a fascinating interview.

 

http://www.thaddeusrussell.com/podcast/2017/7/31/episode-hannah-song

 

[rkbabang]

How Foreign Media Changed My Life – Joo Yang, North Korean  9 min

While growing up in North Korea, Joo Yang listened to foreign broadcasts on an illegal radio with her family for 10 years, preparing to defect despite the danger of being caught and sent to a prison camp. In this clip, Joo Yang describes how the dreams and fantasies she saw in banned media have become her reality.

 

http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/videos/how-foreign-media-changed-my-life-joo-yang-north-korean/

 

[John Hjorth]

Great stuff, thank you for sharing, rkbabang.

[Cardboard]

Where was Obama and his minions for 8 years who kept on telling us that North Korea was years if not decades away to have a miniaturized nuke device and an ICBM capable to reach the U.S.? Was it an intelligence failure or a hide the fact success? Now less than a year after the punk has left office and we have them ready to go...

 

Now of course we have RB and a few others bashing Trump for his words... At the very least, some attention is now being paid to this urgent issue.

 

Leaving politics aside as I know that these guys will always adore the left and despise the right, the only way to solve the problem is to cut the head of the snake.

 

The regime is already fighting DTEJD1997`s idea as people over there are not stupid. Intelligence does not start and stop at the demilitarized zone with South Korea. It must be obvious to the regular folks that food is hard to get by, opportunities are scarce and that the elite has a much better life. That is without any information on life elsewhere from the West or even China that has opened up significantly. And when something is illegal, you can bet that some have obtained devices to "connect" themselves to the outside world as demonstrated by Rkbabang.

 

So it either implodes or explodes but, at some point the majority revolts and power will slip away from the few at the top. Unfortunately this takes a lot of time and a lot of suffering from the average people.

 

The solution in my view to dramatically accelerate the overturn of the regime is for China to essentially invade North Korea with U.S. blessing. It is likely not the best outcome for the U.S. as a unified Korea under a democratic system would be the preference. Although, this opportunity was lost during the Korean war.

 

However, for China to "manage" the Northern side would be much better than the current situation. While some think of war to get there, if done properly, this could happen relatively peacefully. Take out the few elites and China would roll in with little fighting.

 

Unfortunately the odds of such operation are very low to inexistent unless the U.S. can convince the Chinese and also themselves.

 

Cardboard

[matts]

I think your idea is really interesting Cardboard. I don't think I have ever heard a proposal for China to annex NK, although I'm sure it's not entirely new. My view is that over the next decade or two, China will become a global power comparable to the old Soviet union. They will consider most of Asia under their purview. It's likely that 20 years from now, China controls NK anyway. So they might as well start acting like it now and prevent a potential nuclear incident.

[sleepydragon]

Imo:

China and north korea are on the same side. They may be encouraging NK acting this way.

North korea is china's dog. You dont beat the dog. You talk to the master.

I think likely china helped north korea with nuclear tech.

China uses north korea as a bargain power.

 

The strategy should be give more pressure to china. How about this:. If north korea fire another missile, freeze all the US assets of chinese senior officers or/and their relative. Or, alternatively, threaten to send Xi a list of all such assets. Lol

 

[Guest Cameron]

Where was Obama and his minions for 8 years who kept on telling us that North Korea was years if not decades away to have a miniaturized nuke device and an ICBM capable to reach the U.S.? Was it an intelligence failure or a hide the fact success? Now less than a year after the punk has left office and we have them ready to go...

 

Now of course we have RB and a few others bashing Trump for his words... At the very least, some attention is now being paid to this urgent issue.

 

Leaving politics aside as I know that these guys will always adore the left and despise the right, the only way to solve the problem is to cut the head of the snake.

 

The regime is already fighting DTEJD1997`s idea as people over there are not stupid. Intelligence does not start and stop at the demilitarized zone with South Korea. It must be obvious to the regular folks that food is hard to get by, opportunities are scarce and that the elite has a much better life. That is without any information on life elsewhere from the West or even China that has opened up significantly. And when something is illegal, you can bet that some have obtained devices to "connect" themselves to the outside world as demonstrated by Rkbabang.

 

So it either implodes or explodes but, at some point the majority revolts and power will slip away from the few at the top. Unfortunately this takes a lot of time and a lot of suffering from the average people.

 

The solution in my view to dramatically accelerate the overturn of the regime is for China to essentially invade North Korea with U.S. blessing. It is likely not the best outcome for the U.S. as a unified Korea under a democratic system would be the preference. Although, this opportunity was lost during the Korean war.

 

However, for China to "manage" the Northern side would be much better than the current situation. While some think of war to get there, if done properly, this could happen relatively peacefully. Take out the few elites and China would roll in with little fighting.

 

Unfortunately the odds of such operation are very low to in-existent unless the U.S. can convince the Chinese and also themselves.

 

Cardboard

 

China would never invade NK they have said they want it as a buffer between between US allies, plus the Chinese don't want the North Koreans that's why they have so much military on their border there just in case something happens and a rush of people try to cross.

[DTEJD1997]

I'm sorry, I really like some of DTEJDs posts, but this is very naive.

 

Firstly, "be totally open with N. Korea.  Allow their citizens to have a welcome in other countries". Here you're talking about refugees. Lots and lots of them. That's pretty rich from an American, especially a pro Trump American. Last time I checked you guys were very much against that sort of thing. There's even legislation pending to reduce numbers of them. So let me think of a polite way to say this.... it's a no go. Who's gonna take them? They're not threatening to nuke Germany. Also from the other side, there's absolutely no way DPRK will let them leave... so it's a cold dead non starter.

 

Secondly, the happy balloons won't work either. The NK has enough artillery to shoot down all balloons coming in if they get pissed off (I guess for now they like the porn). If they get really pissed off they may shoot more than balloons. I'm talking mainly border villages skirmish type stuff. But one thing to keep in mind with all this NK stuff is that Seoul, a metro area of 25 million is in conventional artillery range of North Korea. That's one of the main complications of this situation. Any military conflict with NK results in massive death (millions) in Seoul.

 

Thirdly, the bright side. China doesn't seem overly concerned about this shit. Pyongyang is about 800 km form Beijing (500 mi for our imperial friends). That's just a bit more than the distance between Boston and DC. Now, Obama has made good on his promise of ringing China and NE Asia with missile defense due to NK. There's a lot of missile defense out there. So if NK launches a missile there's what a 10% ( maybe 20 or 30?) chance that it makes its target? But the missiles that the US shoots back in retaliation I'm pretty sure would hit their target.

 

Now let's get back to geography. If there was a good to fair chance that Boston would get nuked, I think that the people in DC would be freaking out and for good reason. Beijing, roughly the same distance as Boston and DC is not freaking out. Maybe we should take cues from them and relax. Oh, and one more thing, there is a twice yearly military exercise happening right now between US, SK and JP. Every time this military exercise happens Nk threatens to blow up half the world. So maybe we should all take a chill pill and step back from the fire and fury shit for a bit.

 

RB:

 

My posting is naive?  May I suggest that your suggestion we take a "chill pill" is what is naive.  The situation in N. Korea is now entering a new phase.  Something needs to be done and quickly.

 

There are several problems with N. Korea that I almost never hear being discussed...

 

A). N. Korea doesn't need a huge arsenal of nukes to do a tremendous amount of damage.  They only need a few.  An attack could be incredibly effective if they simply send one of the continental USA and start with an EMP burst.  This would damage the electrical grid immensely.  Absolute ruin. 

 

B). There have been reports that N. Korea is hosting Iranian nuclear scientists & technicians.  This is a win-win for BOTH countries.  N. Korea gets desperately needed foreign currency (wonder how Iran got all that?) and Iran can continue to work on their nuclear program under the radar.  There have also been rumors that other countries are also involved...but there is no doubt Iran is working with N. Korea.  As time progresses, I am absolutely sure N. Korea is going to spread the technology.

 

C). N. Korea was willing to let MILLIONS of their own citizens starve to death.  Millions more of their citizens are in prison camps.  Almost everybody in that country is in abject poverty.  If they are willing to kill/let die their own citizens, what would they do USA/Japan/S. Korea/others?  Heck, Kin Jon Un had his own half brother killed.

 

D). They've got almost nothing left to lose.

 

E). They keep telling the world how they'll attack USA, turn Washington DC to ashes, and on & on.  At some point, you've got to take them at their word. 

 

F). At some point, there is likely to be another nuclear arms race with Japan, S. Korea and others (Iran gets bomb, so does Saudi Arabia & others)? 

 

Heck, bring China in on the action.  Put the pressure on them...big time pressure.  Of course, China is propping up the N. Koreans, probably even prodding them along.

 

As to who to blame, Obama gets some of the blame, so does Bush, and of course the Clintons.  At this point it does not matter who did what in the past, N. Korea needs to be dealt with.

 

 

 

[DooDiligence]

Kim's been trolling the world & the Donald has finally met his match

 

https://twitter.com/KimJongUnh

[John Hjorth]

You are being fooled here, DooDiligence.

 

The Twitter account is not confirmed.

[DooDiligence]

You are being fooled here, DooDiligence.

 

The Twitter account is not confirmed.

 

Can't fool a fool...

[John Hjorth]

As always, I take your posts too seriously, Sailor!

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Edit 1, & off topic:

 

I really hate your investment style, being invested in NVO and a PBM at the same time is to me bordering to racketeering.

[rkbabang]

His Facebook page is worth following as well.