Quote: Original post by slayemin
Life in North Korea's Gulag By SHIN DONG-HYOK

In Gulag were not only politial prisoners(dissidents).In many cases people just didn't understand why they became a prisoners.Huge projects like a building of water channels without special machines simply need a lot of people...

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Another analogy (with "1984" etc) is "The inhabitant island"(the novel was wroten in 1960's), where was described a life in former empire after nuclear war with colonies.The power belongs to "Unknown Fathers",the whole country is covered by a net of special towers,an people "holy" believe that it's a part of anti-missile defence.In reality towers produce a kind of emission which decreases "criticism" in the reason of this people to zero level,and they believe in everything.And so on.

Why North Korea is ratcheting up its sharp rhetoric

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The real question is how soon North Korea will be able to test another warhead – and how long the North is prepared to wait to see if the United States shows serious signs of yielding to direct dialogue outside the format of six-party talks.
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The timing of North Korea's next test appears to rest on two major considerations – the North's own succession crisis and evolving US policy.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, "is not in the greatest of health and the succession issue is unresolved," observes Dean Ouellette, a research fellow at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. "With the missile-firing," he believes, North Korea is actually "trying to slow the process down," keeping the world on edge while working through problems at home.
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Amid the backstage maneuvering for succession, North Korea also is clearly weighing the possible US response to the drama of rhetoric and testing. North Korea has made clear it's not interested in continuing six-party talks, last held in December, while the US State Department routinely calls for returning to the table.
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The resolution appeared ineffective as long as the sanctions were not enforced, but China, Russia, and others now appear ready to observe them more faithfully than before. Moreover, says Mr. Choi, "No international bank will make transactions" with North Korea while the sanctions are enforced.

"The US wants to pressure North Korea," Choi believes. "They are playing a game of bluffing each other."
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The US special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is due here for talks next week to discuss a common strategy. He is expected to sound out the South Koreans on their view of dialogue between the US and North Korea. The North has long sought direct talks with the US, a move viewed here as an attempt to sideline and isolate the South.
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At the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, Kim Tae-woo, the vice president, believes North Korea is looking for any pretext to conduct another nuclear test and will do so possibly sooner than later.
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North Korea wants to negotiate directly with the United States. It likely thinks that such attention would increase it's status in the world. I think that's only for NK domestic consumption. Cutting out South Korea would allow NK's leaders to propagandize their people with claims to being the true Korea (more than they already do). It would allow them to pretend they've split the "alliance" arrayed against them. As this article notes, the stalling provides them time to work out their pending transition of power. Inherited leadership suggests monarchy rather than communism. NK appears to be a kingdom masked as communist dictatorship. (Perhaps that divergence can be exploited?) The stalling indicates that NK is not taking the negotiations seriously. The notion that they're playing a bluff supports that. NK threatens war quite a lot. It's the only card they've got. They can't sustain a war without Chinese support. Thus their pursuit of nuclear weapons and their desire to cut China out of the negotiations (on the assumption that the Chinese would side with them). The NK regime is fragile. Let it crumble under the weight of it's internal contradictions.

So the regime could be easily taken down but then what. Would letting North Korea turn into Somalia really be that productive? Given the state of the country preventing that would probably make Iraq look easy in comparison.

I don't think SK or China would let NK turn into Somalia. NK is not Iraq. The situation would be more like Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The tricky problem with NK would be how to deal with members of it's disbanded military.

NK might crumble when their idiotic leader dies, but not sooner. Even then, it could as well not crumble and stay like this, with son of Kim as successor (notably, those kids whom did visit disneyland or some rock concert consequently fell out of favour; this is presumably the best dictator out of all his children). Until their people are almost all dead from starvation, that's it. If you want to draw analogies to Soviet Union, those make as little sense as analogies to czar's Russia of 1916, because, in comparison to North Korea, Soviet Union was a progressive well developed democracy.
North Korea is a de-facto monarchist dictatorship, with corrupt important figures in government being a sort of aristocracy; with people as form of serfs. Their people are living at technological level of early 20th century or worse, entirely unaware of the world outside; their aristocracy has all the benefits of 21th century to control people.
There is not much oil in North Korea, so it is hard to rationally justify invasion.

Quote: Original post by Dmytry
If you want to draw analogies to Soviet Union, those make as little sense as analogies to czar's Russia of 1916, because, in comparison to North Korea, Soviet Union was a progressive well developed democracy.

!!!? [smile]
The socialist democracy differs from capitalist democracy slightly. The key point of understanding this thing is the citate ( i don't remember who has said it,ssems me - K.Marx): "The freedom is understanding the necessity of something". [smile]

According to this Nepali, Basic Questions for Inner-Party Discussions, it was Engels.

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As the revisionists and opportunists had pursed the policy of sticking to the world of necessity, Mao further refined and expanded the quotation of Engels, viz. ‘freedom is the understanding of necessity,’ and said, “Freedom is the understanding of necessity and the transformation of necessity.”
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According to this, The Meaning of Hegel's Logic, it was Hegel.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

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As the revisionists and opportunists had pursed the policy of sticking to the world of necessity, Mao further refined and expanded the quotation of Engels, viz. ‘freedom is the understanding of necessity,’ and said, “Freedom is the understanding of necessity and the transformation of necessity.”
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Wow,thanks.I see that my translation was almost right,but now I think different.In russian word "necessity" literally sounds like "something on your way what you can't go round", "inevitability" -like " something what you can't avoid".The second word seems me more in place in case of "socialist democracy".

Personal Firearm related deaths
Road Deaths
Western Military operation collateral damage (accidently blowing up civilians)
House Hold accidents
Heart Disease
Famine

All the above will dwarf any wee firecracker the North Koreans actually manage to produce, in terms of human lifes lost. And all are alot more pressing in terms of their need to be solved.

Kim will die soon enough; there will probably be a minor power struggle, which I think internal realists will win, and then the whole thing will be a none issue. And a new distraction will need to be found :).

North Korea would unlikely be able to hit anything further away than South Korea, and even then they'd probably still miss, and it will probably not even work. Sure their last test was described as 'fizzle' or something, basically a dud.

P.S. The NK's are not the only ones to use Propoganda to control their populations
Its like that flu, it is just flu after all, wrap it up in some sensational bullcrap and keep everyone occupied.

Quote: Original post by Guthur
Personal Firearm related deaths
Road Deaths
Western Military operation collateral damage (accidently blowing up civilians)
House Hold accidents
Heart Disease
Famine

All the above will dwarf any wee firecracker the North Koreans actually manage to produce, in terms of human lifes lost. And all are alot more pressing in terms of their need to be solved.

Kim will die soon enough; there will probably be a minor power struggle, which I think internal realists will win, and then the whole thing will be a none issue. And a new distraction will need to be found :).

North Korea would unlikely be able to hit anything further away than South Korea, and even then they'd probably still miss, and it will probably not even work. Sure their last test was described as 'fizzle' or something, basically a dud.

P.S. The NK's are not the only ones to use Propoganda to control their populations
Its like that flu, it is just flu after all, wrap it up in some sensational bullcrap and keep everyone occupied.

Reasoning by your logic, hundreds of thousands of people die from heart disease and cancer every year. Compared to the number of people who died on 9/11, as the reasoning goes, 9/11 should be a tiny blip on the radar instead of the world changing event which it was. The flaw in that reasoning is that the utilitarian approach to human life doesn't actually value individual human lives as something worth preserving. Every preventable loss of human life should be prevented to the best of our ability.

Changing gears slightly, the point isn't about a compared measurement of life lost. It's about preventing unnecessary loss of life and promoting a higher quality of life across the world. Some governing policies can have really bad effects on the everyday lives of people causing them to live quite miserably. What's the point of life if its of pure misery and suffering? A lot of people in North Korea are living without any personal liberty (a western concept which we think everyone is entitled to). If that's not bad enough, fellow human beings are being held in concentration camps and doing forced labor until they die. Anyone with empathy for others would feel outraged by what the north korean government puts people through. These are human beings we're talking about.

The problem of the north korean nuclear ambitions is a fly compared to the blatant human rights abuses being committed. I'd be so bold as to say that if North Korea was the worlds champion for promoting human rights and liberty all over the world, I couldn't care less if they were developing a nuclear weapons program (though, that would be contradictory to their nature as a champion/model for human rights & liberty). It's frustrating that there's little we can do to change that.