North Korea

The story I posted was also published on the 28th.  And if you think I am pointing out a major omission in the RT piece (last edited this afternoon) you are right.

No coverage from the three-day conference. Not even an attempt to contact a representative from the association chair - Vietham - or any diplomats from the nations in question.

When you consider that that the information coming out from the conference is starkly different from the spin in the RT piece  it is a significant difference.

Here is where they were at two days ago:

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/ASEAN-co...

And there is already some background from past meetings on where member states stand on the conflict: http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2017/04/27/asean-to-address-usnort...

Unfortunately they bring in points which are not quite so one-sided.

Ah, I meant secretary general. Thanks k. In any case, Le Luong Minh of Vietnam is the spokesperson for the association. And in fact one of those pieces mentions U.S. pressure on the Phillipines, and its role in the North Korean conflict. Thing is, it also mentions North Korea's failure to comply with UN resolutions, ASEAN's past condemnation of NK nuclear tests, and their call for them to return to disarmament negotiations.

It isn;t surprising that media from major powers ignore local governments and associations. U.S. media does it all the time. But it is very odd to have an article about one of those associations have virtually no information on what they have actually done or said.

Or, in fact, their de facto response to that letter from North Korea.

Though my point is that considering the slant of that article, it isn't really that odd or surprising that central information was left out.

6079 you post slanted articles all the time. The CBC is continually writing slanted articles, you know like major pieces premissed on the fake news that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. As for the NY Times and Washington Post if you can't tell they are at least as slanted as any media from a non-NATO country thats your problem not mine.

In this day and age the quesstion is not whether most journalism is slanted but whether or not one gets sucked in by the dominant propaganda machine in our midst.

FWIW, while I was never convinced that Obama had Pyongyang in his sights, The Donald's jingo is a bit worrisome.  He seems to have found a bone he likes.

On the flip side, though, I also find it telling that any military exercises by SK or the US are characterized as "war games" and assumed to be irresponsible provocation rather than standard military training.  But any military exercises by DPRK -- including nuclear detonations and missile launches -- are assumed to be standard military training rather than irresponsible provocation.

From Mr. Magoo:

On the flip side, though, I also find it telling that any military exercises by SK or the US are characterized as "war games" and assumed to be irresponsible provocation rather than standard military training.  But any military exercises by DPRK -- including nuclear detonations and missile launches -- are assumed to be standard military training rather than irresponsible provocation.

​There is one major difference between the USA and North Korea. That is, it is the USA 'exercising' on the Korean peninsula, not the North Koreans 'exercising on the Baja peninsula. I suspect the USA view of North Korea engaging in war games on Baja peninsula would not be viewed with favour, or even equanimity.

It's a shame that the two Koreas have just that one little peninsula to share.  But is there some meaningful difference between this, and when both sides were more actively at war and China and the USSR chose to be "good neighbours" to North Korea and help them out with actual troops and planes and pilots and guns and suchlike?  Can't imagine that South Korea liked that any more in 1952 than DPRK likes seeing training exercises in 2017.

My point was only that both sides seem to conduct regular training exercises, but somehow when one side does it it's training exercises and when the other does it it's, as you say "games".

Here's my thinking:  DPRK needs to tweak the bully's nose in order to appear "tough" and "take charge" and retain domestic control.  If they focused all of their resources on, say, feeding the people and building productivity and so on then pretty soon people would be demanding free elections and getting Twitter accounts instead of practicing air raid drills and singing songs about their saviour-heros. 

And how does that promote Juche?  What would become of the Kim dynasty in better times??

This Is The Tank North Korea Fears It Might Someday Have to Fight

And here it is again.

This tank, the K2, and its K1 predecessor, is in fact one of the “real” reasons NK wants, well no, really needs nukes... I know allot of you guys here don’t want to hear about this again, but NK’s ability to seriously threaten South Korea with a conventional force invasion and win it is over.

That is want is driving allot of this now. They need a better hand...

Aside from its massive (and bad assed) Special Forces “army” and it’s dug in heavy artillery the truth is most of NK’s military branches are now lacking in 21st century modernization and as a result of this are now out classed by its South Korean counter parts.

I’m going to be honest with you guys; I hate the media coverage of this event... I find it fear mongering and technically inaccurate as to NK’s real military abilities. It’s all bullshit and it’s leading us to war.

The bottom line is this: South Korea can now out wait North Korea in a conventional war standoff. This tank is one of the reasons why... not that I ve been trying to say that this whole time.

Magoo wrote:

It's a shame that the two Koreas have just that one little peninsula to share.  But is there some meaningful difference between this, and when both sides were more actively at war and China and the USSR chose to be "good neighbours" to North Korea and help them out with actual troops and planes and pilots and guns and suchlike?  Can't imagine that South Korea liked that any more in 1952 than DPRK likes seeing training exercises in 2017.

Well, Russia and even moreso China do actually border on North Korea, so arguably they had a direct regional interest in assisting the North. Though, from what is now known, Kim Il Sung had to beg and plead with a very reluctant Stalin to get Soviet support for attacking the South(even if one subscribes to the Cumings thesis, it remains the case that the North was also planning for its own attack).

http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Korean_War.html

Personally, I think he learned from the Syrian thing that it is a good distraction.

But bec, they have enough artillery within range of Seoul to reduce it to rubble.

And I don't see the alleged shield having any relation to China. It will only allegedly protect that region, and I don't see how China would have any designs on the rest of the penninsula. They want stability there.

US Provocation and North Korea: Pretext For War With China

http://www.unz.com/jpetras/us-provocation-and-north-korea-pretext-for-wa...

"Ultimately, Washington intends to target China. It installed its (misnamed) Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) in South Korea. An offensive surveillance and attack system designed to target China's major cities and complement the US maritime encirclement of China and Russia.

Using North Korea as a pretext, THAAD was installed in South Korea with the capacity to reach the Chinese heartland in minutes. Its range covers 3,000 kilometers of China's land mass. THAAD directed missiles are specifically designed to identify and destroy China's defensive missile capacity.

With the THAAD installation in South Korea, Russia's Far East is now encircled by the US offensive missiles to complement the build-up in the West..."

Canada Planning For War With North Korea

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/29/cank-a29.html

"The Liberals' Korea policy underscores once again the essential continuity between the Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals in ruthlessly asserting Canadian imperialism's global geopolitical interests."

Which are primarily the support of Washington's...

No To US Missile Defense In Korea!

http://stopthaad.org

Quote:

No To US Missile Defense In Korea!

Suggesting that missile defense (by SK and its ally the U.S.) is in fact OFFENSE, and that the development and testing of OFFENSIVE missile capabilities by DPRK is in fact defense is absurdly backward.

voice of the damned wrote:

So, if your assessement of the DPRK's military prowess is correct, would you agree with the idea that the main purpose of THAAD is to counter China, not North Korea?

I'd say both with NK getting about 70% the credit and giving the USA the ultimate excuse to deploy it in SK... China should have the ass at NK.

Andrei Lankov, a Russian-born academic who lived and studied in the DPRK during the Soviet years(though is not currently well-diposed to the regime), has a recent piece analyzing the regime's motivations...

http://tinyurl.com/zo8zqmr

Basically argues that the desired nukes are to ward off a possible American attack.

And, yes, they probably can't count on China to defend them with nukes, since the whole point of propping up the DPRK is to prevent the emergence of a unified Korea allied to the US with American troops on China's border. If China  fires a nuclear weapon at the USA, they're giving themselves a thousand times the "difficulties" they were trying to prevent by supporting North Korea in the first place.

Lankov also says that the North Koreans are making Deng-style market reforms to their economy.

America's New Nuclear Missile Endangers The World  -  by Conn Hallinan

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/28/americas-new-nuclear-missile-enda...

"At a time of growing tensions between nuclear powers - Russia and NATO in Europe, and the US, North Korea and China in Asia - Washington has quietly upgraded its nuclear weapons arsenal to create, according to three leading American scientists, 'exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike..."

"A Lot of What You Know About N Korea is Racist Bullshit'

https://www.newcoldwar.org/danger-u-s-nuclear-attack-korea/

"If North Korea is 'crazy' for its militarism, then the US is downright certifiable. And any claims of a direct North Korean threat to the United States is ludicrous bullshit. It's not the North Koreans who have betrayed past agreements, but the United States.

'Less than three months into President Donald Trump's reign, we can already say that there is a non-trivial chance that the US will soon be engaged in a nuclear war..."

..good info in this real news interview

U.S. Incoherence, THAAD Missile System Disrupt the Korean Peninsula

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says the Trump administration's mixed messages on North Korea and the new THAAD missile system are sowing confusion in the Korean Peninsula ahead of a crucial South Korean vote

This Is What’s Really Behind North Korea’s Nuclear Provocations

quote:

As I wrote for this magazine in January 2016, the North Koreans must be astonished to discover that US leaders never seem to grasp the import of their history-related provocations. Even more infuriating is Washington’s implacable refusal ever to investigate our 72-year history of conflict with the North; all of our media appear to live in an eternal present, with each new crisis treated as sui generis. Visiting Seoul in March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asserted that North Korea has a history of violating one agreement after another; in fact, President Bill Clinton got it to freeze its plutonium production for eight years (1994–2002) and, in October 2000, had indirectly worked out a deal to buy all of its medium- and long-range missiles. Clinton also signed an agreement with Gen. Jo Myong-rok stating that henceforth, neither country would bear “hostile intent” toward the other.

The Bush administration promptly ignored both agreements and set out to destroy the 1994 freeze. Bush’s invasion of Iraq is rightly seen as a world-historical catastrophe, but next in line would be placing North Korea in his “axis of evil” and, in September 2002, announcing his “preemptive” doctrine directed at Iraq and North Korea, among others. The simple fact is that Pyongyang would have no nuclear weapons if Clinton’s agreements had been sustained.

Now comes Donald Trump, blasting into a Beltway milieu where, in recent months, a bipartisan consensus has emerged based on the false assumption that all previous attempts to rein in the North’s nuclear program have failed, so it may be time to use force—to destroy its missiles or topple the regime. Last September, the centrist Council on Foreign Relations issued a report stating that “more assertive military and political actions” should be considered, “including those that directly threaten the existence of the [North Korean] regime.” Tillerson warned of preemptive action on his recent East Asia trip, and a former Obama-administration official, Antony Blinken, wrote in The New York Times that a “priority” for the Trump administration should be working with China and South Korea to “secure the North’s nuclear arsenal” in the event of “regime change.” But North Korea reportedly has some 15,000 underground facilities of a national-security nature. It is insane to imagine the Marines traipsing around the country in such a “search and secure” operation, and yet the Bush and Obama administrations had plans to do just that. Obama also ran a highly secret cyber-war against the North for years, seeking to infect and disrupt its missile program. If North Korea did that to us, it might well be considered an act of war.

South Korea’s Likely Next President Warns US Not to Meddle in Nation’s Democracy

Polling shows Democratic Party Korea candidate Moon Jae-in as an overwhelming front-runner in the upcoming presidential vote, with more than double the support of any other candidate. He is, however, seen as far from idea from the US perspective, favoring diplomacy with North Korea as he does.

The split between Moon and Trump is so dramatic, in fact, that Moon has felt the need to publicly warn the US against “meddling” in the nation’s politics, not just directly in the election itself, but also with policy decisions made in the lead-up to the election.

Indeed, Moon and his allies warn that the biggest problem is the US rushing through measures in the lame-duck government ahead of the election, noting that agreements on things like the THAAD anti-missile system, and then hastily putting the system in place before any public hearings or environmental assessments were allowed to take place....

Isolationism is always a double-edged sword. From Antiwar's current article charmingly entitled "Why Defend South Korean Ingrates?"...

 If the leaders of South Korea are worried about preserving their sovereignty, then why won’t they defend it – and shell out the necessary cash? If Moon Jae-in is so opposed to THAAD, then why must we impose it on him? It’s high time we cut these ingrates loose.

Unlike the colonial empires of the past, which extracted wealth in the form of raw materials from their satraps, the American imperium is a Bizarro World version of this arrangement: in exchange for allowing us to occupy their territory, and dictating their foreign policy, we give Seoul relatively free access to our markets while they impose tariffs on our products.

One wonders what Moon Jae-in and other South Korean progressives, who opposed the KORUS FTA on the grounds that it undermined their country's sovereignty, would make of antiwar.com's portrayal of South Korea as having the economic whip-hand over the US.

http://tinyurl.com/mwwgzat

..in my recent explorations of the korean conflict i have learned that it was the us that unilaterally created the 38th parallel divide.

..i learned it was the us installed murderous rhee who crossed that divide and attacked the north and this was the beginning of the war. rhee did not represent south korea as he lost the election and instead a landslide went to those who wanted peace and negotiations with the north.

..i learned the un got involved on the word of rhee and the us.

..now there is the us behaviour in installing thaad against the wishes of the people. under a lame duck administration tossed out for massive corruption.

..and now i wonder and hope to discover as i search out how the korus fta agreement came about. and what is in it. i suspect it was much like the other stuff where the us has been involved with in korea. i suspect nothing good.   

..i repeat it's the us that needs to be reined in.

epaulo13 wrote:

..for starters. the free trade deal came in under park geun-hye,

You might want to check your sources on that. Negotiations for the deal began under Roh Moo hyun, the centre-left president from the now defunct Uri Party, in 2006, and were completed in 2007, also under Roh. The deal was signed in 2008(still Roh), and implemented in 2011, under Lee Myung-bak, who was indeed from the Saenuri Party(though during his term, it was called the Grand National Party).  But this was all long before Park Geun-hye came to power.

Lee Myung-bak was(rightly) blamed for lifting the import-ban on US beef(originally imposed out of concern over mad-cow disease), but that was done before the FTA itself had been implemented.

http://tinyurl.com/zylv5ut

North Korea Under Siege

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/06/nkor-m06.html

"The Trump administration's reckless brinksmanship has created a tinder-box on the Korean peninsula..."

epaulo13 wrote:

..i stand corrected vod. txs. my mistake was in assuming that park geun-hye was president at the time of implementation. she was though in office in 2011.

..i am not denying that sk is a neoliberal state. even the incoming democratic party is center left. their policies don't change the nature of the state. it would be the same with canada if a federal ndp came to power. canada would remain a neoliberal state unless specific things were changed. such as the current processes for achieving a free trade deal.

..it's the democratic party positions on nk that really contrast. and i believe plays a real and important part in why it is incoming.

I accept that you've stood corrected, but just for the record, Park Geun hye wasn't in office in 2011. She was elected in 2013. (And I myself had to look that up; I think I get thrown off because Korean elections aren't consistently held in even-numbered years.)

As for why the Democratic Party is probably incoming, my own best speculation is that "Choi Soon-sil gate" did most of the damage to Saenuri/Liberty Korea, and Trump's bluster has probably cemented the deal.

..according to this link

In office
3 April 1998 – 29 May 2012

..and was reelected 2012