Winds of change in North Korea?

[Count Bobulescu]

Why NK gets away with it.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...te-Lind-041312

North Korea escapes such punishment thanks to a powerful deterrent. The first leg of Pyongyang’s strategic triad is its “madman” image: the idea that the country might react to retaliation by plunging the peninsula into general war. North Korean officials are not irrational, as so often depicted in the media. Rather, they are following in the tradition of U.S. President Richard Nixon, who spoke of feigning irrationality in order to intimidate his adversaries.

Through its wild rhetoric and behavior at home and abroad, Pyongyang has told the world that in the international game of chicken, it will not swerve -- that it is so ready to fight that it will starve its people and devote a quarter of its economy to defense, hack up enemy soldiers with an axe, and even try to assassinate presidents. This reputation has helped convince CFC’s leaders that they cannot rely upon the normal rules of deterrence, that with such an opponent, tit-for-tat retaliation is too risky and too likely to lead to all-out war.

[Count Bobulescu]

North Korea backs out of U.S. nuclear deal

Top story: On Tuesday, North Korea declared that it was no longer bound by a deal with the United States in February to suspend uranium enrichment, nuclear tests, and long-range missile tests in exchange for food aid, which Washington halted after Pyongyang's failed rocket launch last week. An agreement to allow nuclear inspectors into the country has also fallen apart.
"We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which came shortly after the U.N. Security Council condemned North Korea for its rocket launch and ordered additional sanctions against the country.
North Korea didn't specify what form that retaliation would take, but some fear that Pyongyang is planning a third nuclear test. "Many analysts expect that with its third test, North Korea will for the first time try a nuclear device using highly enriched uranium," Reuters notes.

Pentagon chief: 'We're within an inch of war almost every day’
By Jeremy Herb
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offered a blunt assessment of the threats facing the United States on Wednesday, saying the potential for another war breaking out remains high in places like North Korea.

[Kev Bar]

Change?
Plus ca change.

Just looking at facebook posting from my friend Nate who got the now famous Pol Pot interview in the mid 90s and now has an interest in North Korea:

" They didn't seem in a negotiating again mood today holding a mass rally vowing to ‘wipe out’ South KoreaTroops and civilians packed Pyongyang’s Kim Il-Sung Square, live television pictures showed and "vowed to wipe out the Lee Myung-Bak group, sworn enemy, to the last man on this land and under this sky." Crowds expresssed "resentment and hatred for the group of rat-like Lee Myung Bak-which hurt again the dignity of the supreme leadership" and demanded an apology or face a "sacred war" Soldiers were shown screaming "Tear the group of rats to death!’" A soldier told the rally that troops "are determined to punish the rats mercilessly with guns and rifles. Let’s completely wipe out the presidential Blue House and the origin of provocations. We have the strongest military means to strike them." A giant caricature showed the South Korean leader with his throat cut.

[Count Bobulescu]

Change?
Plus ca chage.

Just looking at facebook posting from my friend Nate who got the now famous Pol Pot interview in the mid 90s and now has an interest in North Korea:

" They didn't seem in a negotiating again mood today holding a mass rally vowing to ‘wipe out’ South KoreaTroops and civilians packed Pyongyang’s Kim Il-Sung Square, live television pictures showed and "vowed to wipe out the Lee Myung-Bak group, sworn enemy, to the last man on this land and under this sky." Crowds expresssed "resentment and hatred for the group of rat-like Lee Myung Bak-which hurt again the dignity of the supreme leadership" and demanded an apology or face a "sacred war" Soldiers were shown screaming "Tear the group of rats to death!’" A soldier told the rally that troops "are determined to punish the rats mercilessly with guns and rifles. Let’s completely wipe out the presidential Blue House and the origin of provocations. We have the strongest military means to strike them." A giant caricature showed the South Korean leader with his throat cut.

It’s antics like those that in part causes the US to treat and respond to very differently the failed launching of a missile last week by NK and the successful launch this week of a much more powerful and dangerous one by India. The contrast was very noticeable.

[Kev Bar]

Indeed.
The Indian one escaped my attention.

[Ah Well]

American Web Designer's Theme purchased for $15 and used for Homepage of Official North Korean Site



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...=feeds-newsxml

It does look Flashy tho

http://www.korea-dpr.com/index.html

[Dr. FIVE]

erm..

[Statement as released by the North Korean military through the country's state-run KCNA news agency]

In view of the situation getting graver as the days go by, the KPA Supreme Command special operation action group issues the following notice upon authorization:

The special actions of our revolutionary armed forces will start soon to meet the reckless challenge of the group of traitors.

Those actions are an eruption of the public anger and resentment and a sacred war of all service personnel and people to protect the dignity of our supreme leadership.

Their targets are the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors, the arch criminals, and the group of rat-like elements including conservative media destroying the mainstay of the fair public opinion.

Once the above-said special actions kick off, they will reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style.

Our revolutionary armed forces do not make an empty talk.

[fluffybiscuits]

American Web Designer's Theme purchased for $15 and used for Homepage of Official North Korean Site



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...=feeds-newsxml

It does look Flashy tho

http://www.korea-dpr.com/index.html

http://www.cafepress.com/kfashop

See their shop! Im getting myself a Kim Jung mug

[Ah Well]

http://www.cafepress.com/kfashop

See their shop! Im getting myself a Kim Jung mug

I thought you were taking the piss there but no ... direct link from the motherland

http://www.korea-dpr.com/

That side tab is woeful ... propaganda 1 - 13

[Count Bobulescu]

North Korea hijacks three Chinese fishing boats. Talk about biting the hand........


http://www.npr.org/2012/06/12/154774...rth-korea-ties

New strains are emerging between China and its old ally, North Korea, six months after the death of reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The recent North Korean hijacking of Chinese fishing boats has shaken those ties considerably, leading to public pressure on China to stand up to North Korea.
Fishing boats returning to their home port in China don't normally make the news. But they did last month, because three boats — and 28 fishermen — had been detained for almost two weeks in North Korea.
"We were in Chinese waters, two nautical miles from the sea border, so we thought they couldn't arrest us," ship captain Han Qiang said in an interview with local TV.
The fishermen thought wrong.

[Count Bobulescu]

MOSCOW — Russian media report that the country has written off most of North Korea’s $11 billion debt.The Russian finance ministry on Tuesday confirmed that it has signed a debt deal with North Korea, but refused to provide immediate details.
Interfax quoted deputy finance minister Sergei Storchak as saying that Russia has written off 90 ercent of the Soviet-era debt

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...y.html?hpid=z5

[Jolly Green Giant]

Much needed farm reforms in the North, the price of rice in the markets has more than doubled in the last three months. All that Chinese pressure for them to reform seems to be causing some much needed reforms at last .

North Korean farmers may be allowed to keep more of their crops to sell or barter, according to several sources, in a move that could raise living standards and mark an important shift in economic policies.

The north's collective farms have long struggled to feed the country's 24 million people. Around a third of the north's children are chronically malnourished, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...?newsfeed=true

[Count Bobulescu]

Kim Jong-un named sexiest man alive.

Original: We're not here to debate whether or not North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, is the sexiest man alive. No, we're here to snicker that The Onion fooled China's communist paper into thinking it so. The actual article from the People's Daily Online, the official newspaper of China's communist party, isn't much more than taking a few quotes from the Onion article and smacking them onto a 55-PAGE SLIDESHOW GALLERY of Kim looking all majestic and whatnot.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/enter...n-alive/59339/