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North Korea (Superthread)
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Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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So the soldiers are being told to piss into the rivers? 
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North Korea throwing tantrums over the Seth Rogen comedy film, "The Interview", directed against their leader? ;D
USA Today
Any quick google search and one can find pics of the film shooting scenes depicting North Korea which were shot in downtown Vancouver near the law courts/Vancouver art gallery.
USA Today
Any quick google search and one can find pics of the film shooting scenes depicting North Korea which were shot in downtown Vancouver near the law courts/Vancouver art gallery.
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More DPRK copies of Russian equipment... :
Defense News
North Korea Hails Test of 'Breakthrough' Guided Missile
Jun. 26, 2014 - 08:14PM | By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Defense News
North Korea Hails Test of 'Breakthrough' Guided Missile
Jun. 26, 2014 - 08:14PM | By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times, explains that Supreme Leader Xi Jinping's visit to Seoul (without a stop, first, in Pyongyang) reflect a shift in China's strategy in its own "near abroad:"
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9b18cc1a-01c9-11e4-bb71-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz35z6EG16b
It is important to remember two things:
1. China's "support," especially in the UNSC, for the DPRK needs to be seen as an extension of China's long stnading policy of resisting "outside interference in the internal affairs" of any country (especially China); and
2. South Korea is one of the most important investors in China's rise; North Korea is a recipient of Chinese food aid. (The GDP per capita ratio between the two Koreas approaches 20:1!)
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9b18cc1a-01c9-11e4-bb71-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz35z6EG16b
Xi’s Seoul visit leaves Pyongyang in the cold
By Simon Mundy in Seoul
July 2, 2014
China may count North Korea as its only treaty ally, but President Xi Jinping will on Thursday become the first Chinese leader to visit Seoul before Pyongyang – reflecting the transformation of Beijing’s stance towards the Korean peninsula.
Mr Xi’s state visit follows one to China last year by South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, and will mark the fifth meeting between the two leaders since both took power.
In contrast, there is no record of any meeting between the Chinese president and North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un.
The visit has been interpreted by analysts as a reflection of China’s increasingly important economic relationship with South Korea – and of Beijing’s unhappiness at North Korea’s nuclear development while failing to emulate China’s economic reforms.
Pyongyang’s nuclear programme will be an “important topic” of conversation between the two presidents, Chinese vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin said on Tuesday. South Korea’s intelligence agency believes that Pyongyang has made preparations for a fourth nuclear test, and North Korea fired rockets into the ocean on Sunday and Wednesday in what some analysts saw as a signal of displeasure at Mr Xi’s visit.
While China has endorsed a series of UN sanctions aimed at North Korea’s weapons programme, it has fought to limit their scope. Nonetheless, it showed signs of a sterner stance following Pyongyang’s third nuclear test in February 2013: Chinese banks restricted their business with North Korean clients, and Beijing last September published a 236-page list of items banned from export to the country.
Moon Chung-in, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University and former presidential adviser, said that Mr Xi and Ms Park were likely to discuss the topic of new talks with North Korea. Pyongyang has called for the resumption of the stalled Six Party Talks, chaired by China, which it said should be without preconditions. But South Korea and the US said that North Korea must commit to denuclearisation before the talks – which included Russia and Japan – can resume.
“Xi Jinping will be urging Park Geun-hye to implement her Korean trust-building process,” Mr Moon said, referring to Ms Park’s policy of lowering tensions on the peninsula.
The two presidents will hope to find ways to accelerate negotiations on a trade agreement, expected to be signed this year or next. The two countries have one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships, with trade between them reaching $274bn last year.
Mr Xi and Ms Park are also expected to discuss their shared concerns about Japan. Tokyo’s relations with both countries have been fraying amid anger at its supposed lack of remorse for its early-20th century colonial past, as well as territorial disputes.
On Tuesday, Japan’s cabinet agreed to “reinterpret” its pacifist constitution, in a move that could enable it to come to the aid of an ally under attack.
“Whenever the leaders of both countries have talks with each other, they naturally mention the militaristic history of Japan, in particular, given the fact that some rightwing forces in Japan are trying to reverse history,” Mr Liu said on Tuesday.
Yet while Beijing responded to the Japanese cabinet announcement by condemning Tokyo’s “fabrication of the so-called China threat so as to serve its domestic political purposes”, Seoul’s response was milder.
Kim Han-kwon, an analyst at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, said that this reflected a disparity between the two countries’ strategic priorities. “For South Korea, the North Korean nuclear threat is the most important issue, whereas for China it’s the rearmament of Japan,” he said.
“South Korea has always emphasised the alliance with the US, and the US has clearly announced its support for the Japanese position. So South Korea’s position against Japanese rearmament will be limited.”
It is important to remember two things:
1. China's "support," especially in the UNSC, for the DPRK needs to be seen as an extension of China's long stnading policy of resisting "outside interference in the internal affairs" of any country (especially China); and
2. South Korea is one of the most important investors in China's rise; North Korea is a recipient of Chinese food aid. (The GDP per capita ratio between the two Koreas approaches 20:1!)
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To think there are people out there crazy enough to want to tour North Korea... :facepalm:
From Reuters via Yahoo News
From Reuters via Yahoo News
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Surprise, surprise. Hamas is in bed with North Korea...
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The PLAAF military attache in Pyongyang must be face-palming that the DPRK's fighter wings still use these: :facepalm:
Yonhap News
Yonhap News
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Are any of North Korea's antiquated tanks (such as the Soviet copy T-62 they use called the Chonma-ho) even capable of taking on more modern Chinese MBTs like the Type 96 or Type 98/99? :facepalm:
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I can't wait until the Seth Rogen movie "Interview" comes out in October to mock this crazy regime. To think that Rogen actually had it shot here in Vancouver.
Reuters
Reuters
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This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the (Australian) (multi-lingual) SBS, squares with what I have read/heard from sources I consider reliable:
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/09/18/comment-absurdities-faced-north-korean-refugees-china
As far as I know only a very few North Korean migrants are ever sent back by the Chinese but they do join the tens (hundreds?) of millions of undocumented/migrant workers in China who appear, to me, to do much of the dirty, low skill, hard, menial work for far less than the prevailing provincial minimum wage.
(Yes, China does have minimum wages ... but only documented residents of a province can claim them, undocumented/migrant workers are at the mercy of employers, including city governments; I have been told (again by a reliable source) that the thousands and thousands of street sweepers who keep Shanghai's streets cleaner, by far, than Ottawa's, are paid, by the city administration, about half the legal minimum wage.)
A Shanghai street sweeper
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/09/18/comment-absurdities-faced-north-korean-refugees-china
Comment: The absurdities faced by North Korean refugees in China
We hear dramatic stories of refugee escapes from North Korea, yet it’s one of the least fearsome natural borders one can imagine.
By Elle Hardy
18 SEP 2014
Dandong, China – It’s the middle of the day, and a local woman, Mei, swings open the rusty gate at the bank of the Yalu River and sits at the edge of the water washing her basket of clothes. The barbed wire fence that runs through the gate shudders a little, while nearby, two soldiers lean on their automatic rifles, continuing their conversation under the shade of a pergola. On the opposite river bank, only four metres away, innocuous shrubbery conceals another small barbed wire fence. That is North Korea.
The Chinese military guards are only on duty from 9am to 5pm: outside of this, in the shadow of the ancient fortress of the Great Wall of China, the only confrontation a defector is likely to face is a tourist worker seeking to clip their entry ticket.
We hear dramatic stories of refugee escapes from North Korea, yet it’s one of the least fearsome natural borders one can imagine. Foot patrols of North Korean guards go past every few hours, but it’s got nothing on the fortification of the infamous ‘demilitarised zone’ border with South Korea. As Mei’s suds gently drift away and around a bend, one can see how at the right tide, even the stunted North Koreans are able to wade across. She tells us that in winter, the Yalu often freezes completely, meaning it can be crossed by foot.
On the opposite river bank, only four metres away, innocuous shrubbery conceals another small barbed wire fence. That is North Korea. (Image: Elle Hardy)
Books such as George W. Bush’s favourite Aquariums of Pyongyang detail cinematic stories of escape. But while these stories sell hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, their extraordinary tales cannot be verified. The reality of defection to China is, more often, far more tragic than romantic. North Korean refugees in China are in many – or most – cases trapped in a network of human slavery, usually as dishwashers, drug runners, or prostitutes. Dandong locals, most of whom will not speak about the North Korean political or refugee situation for fear of being suspected of being involved in people smuggling by the Chinese police, laugh at the myth that their town is crawling with North Korean refugees. “They don’t have permits,” one local tells me, “they may come in here, but it’s too dangerous to stay. They leave straight away.”
That crossing the border is so easy in the physical sense helps to illustrate life inside the North. The most difficult part of escape is leaving their own town, for civilians are not even allowed to travel inside North Korea without permission. But the biggest barrier defectors face is psychological: there is fear, of course, but in the most total of all totalitarian states - where devotion to the motherland and its ruling Kims is indoctrinated from birth the reason d’etre of its citizens - the dominant is psychology is more Oedipal Complex than Stockholm Syndrome.
American Professor B.R. Myers’ 2010 book on the ideology of the North Korean state The Cleanest Race runs contrary to the usual narrative of the country, showing how the ideology of the regime is a xenophobic race theory, not Juche communism. “Even today, with a rival state thriving next door, the regime is able to maintain public stability without a ubiquitous police presence or fortified northern border... half of these economic migrants – for that is what most of them are – voluntarily return to their homeland.”
A Western North Korea expert and frequent visitor to the country, who cannot be named, says: “you only hear defectors talk about leaving for ‘freedom’ and ‘freedom of speech’ after they have been through the South Korean repatriation program. People defect to get money or food.”
While the Chinese government craves the stability of the Kim regime for fear of a refugee crisis on its border – and equally, the American military conducting nation building so close to its border – Dandong has become a hub for curious Chinese tourists.
Li, an urbane young man from Chongqing, shows little empathy. “It’s crazy, but not as crazy as what we went through 50 years ago. I don't understand why it’s not developing.” His only interaction with North Koreans will be eating Pyongyang cold noodles at one of the many restaurants staffed by pretty North Korean waitresses employed with the assent of both governments.
Just as Dandong highlights the absurdity of the North Korean crisis, it also highlights the possible. American journalist Barbara Demick, who has documented the stories of defectors in her book Nothing to Envy, believes that globalisation will help bring about the downfall of the regime. Trade with China continues to liberalise, and technology such as laptops, USB sticks, and DVD players are slowly bringing in glimpses of the outside world.
At night, the neon lights sparkle along the Dandong promenade, almost as though they’re taunting the citizens of Sinuiju, whose side of the Yalu sits in absolute darkness. In the daylight, as the noise traffic and construction compete for primacy, across the bridge a solitary ferris wheel looks like a morose, lonely animal in a third-world zoo. As Li notes, the Chinese model of moving from a planned economy to a market economy, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, is begging to be followed. But an air of inevitability does not alter the present, and thousands of refugees continue to risk their lives each year for one that may not be any better.
Back on the bank of the Yalu River, escaping the heat with the Chinese guards, they tell of how their North Korean counterparts have picked up a little Chinese.
A North Korea woman soldier patrols the bank of the Yalu River which separates the North Korean town of Sinuiju from the Chinese border town of Dandong
“Sometimes they ask us to send them over Cokes,” one says, showing how he lobs the cans underarm to the guards on the opposite bank.
Wrangling with dichotomies of despair and hope, sometimes you have to laugh.
Elle Hardy is a freelance writer.
As far as I know only a very few North Korean migrants are ever sent back by the Chinese but they do join the tens (hundreds?) of millions of undocumented/migrant workers in China who appear, to me, to do much of the dirty, low skill, hard, menial work for far less than the prevailing provincial minimum wage.
(Yes, China does have minimum wages ... but only documented residents of a province can claim them, undocumented/migrant workers are at the mercy of employers, including city governments; I have been told (again by a reliable source) that the thousands and thousands of street sweepers who keep Shanghai's streets cleaner, by far, than Ottawa's, are paid, by the city administration, about half the legal minimum wage.)
A Shanghai street sweeper
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At least they don't live in constant terror, have substance to eat, cloths on their back, and pay.
At least they don't live in constant terror, have substance to eat, cloths on their back, and pay.
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