Which empire? The Soviet Union? At least a million people are dead now thanks to North Korea's regime. People die if we do nothing, and people die if we do something.
It didn't prove anything, except that they could have turned off both South Korea and Japan, and they did not. DPRK has had the ability to torch Seoul (with simple artillery) since the Korean War, and yet they have not. From our point of view we (the U.S.) are left with trusting our military leaders to make good decisions, and they have a time honored tradition of doing exactly that. I don't worry about DT much, because the general holds the cannon, and I'm sure when he walks he talks to his troops, and they give him nearly the same respect as they would a family member. There's something warm and comforting in that even through Korea's bitter cold winters.
They would not give up nukes in return for the end of sanctions. Nukes are a guarantee against invasion. And it's silly to think Kim Jong-un would replace himself. They also don't need aid in the sense you are thinking, if they ended their political isolation, material goods wouldn't be a problem.
In the middle of the nineteenth century Korea, the Hermit Kingdom, was isolated from the rest of the world and unknown. Today the same title is sometimes used to refer to North Korea, similarly reclusive. The Choson or Yi dynasty, based at its capital in Seoul, had ruled Korea since 1392, despite a devastating invasion by the Japanese (1592-98) and another by the Manchus (1627-36) which resulted in the country remaining closely associated with China, culturally and politically, into the late-nineteenth century. The relationship with China confirmed the dominance of a Confucian ideology, and contacts with foreigners, and foreign travel, were strictly forbidden. ...................... also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseon
more precisely Thanx National geographic from @ 1919(?). Wherein I first read about the "Hermit Kingdom". (web searches/links are normally just a shortcut for copy and paste of extant knowledge)
please excuse my earlier post as I had just returned from the dentist... Fiction: "I had a dream, and in that dream I saw the President of the United States walk the walk towards the demilitarization zone checkpoint with two chairs and a collapsible card table. Once he is at the exact border he places the table and the chairs and precedes to sit down and wait...indicating that he will wait for as long as necessary for an opportunity to start discussions with his North Korean counterpart. There are no security staff, no body guards, no special service agents visible. The world media are lined up some distance away also waiting and the NK media is just standing there astonished and bewildered, not knowing how to propagandra-tize what they are witnessing... Eventually after some days have passed with the world in a state of suspense the NK president joins the USA President for preliminary discussions on the border whilst sitting at a collapsible card table." well as I said it was just a dream....
More accurately, it proves that sanctions only work if the world actually, you know, follows them. In this case, China has been less than helpful, allowing considerable materials into North Korea that have helped them overcome the limitations of the sanctions (both through actual trade, and through smuggling across the border)
QQ nice dream replace trump with moon while Trump plays golf with Modi , Xi, and Putin .......................... is 朝鮮 accurate?
Discussion... seriously? We know what North Korea wants, we have decades of analysis to go over: as long as a richer more prosperous South Korea exists the North MUST sabre rattle and demand attention for how mighty they are. A peace treaty will allow them to gloat for awhile and then they will return to threatening the South and the USA again because they can't exist peacefully, peace means unification, unification means they will fold to the much richer and truly more powerful south, the elite of North Korea are never going to agree to be put up against the wall. Most fundamentally if we want a world with less nukes, then we must disprove the belief that nukes insure no invasion or at least no military strikes, if we strike North Korea, at least degrade their weapons production for a few years, it will make other countries like Iran, like the Saudis, question that belief. If on the other hand we want to test MAD then we are just going to have to let North Korea have nukes, and then South Korea, and japan, and Iran, and the Saudis, etc.
The problem is, MAD only works when everyone involved is actually worried about being destroyed... You get some crazy asshole with a nuke who doesn't care if they live or die (or doesn't believe they CAN be killed), then they'd have no problem letting one off the chain...
Well we are just going to have to hope they don't lob a nuke on South Korea, japan or the USA, or the THAAD will stop them. Good chances THAAD can stop a handful of ICBMs launched, but not volley the likes of which China or Russia would put out or that North Korea could put out if given enough time to build up a nuclear arsenal. If we attack now there is a good chance they don't even have nukes weaponized to an extent that they can launch them outside North Korea. Ideally we should have attacked years ago, but ever day we wait just increases the final death toll of a war with North Korea, or a hypothetical nuclear war between one of the many nuclearized nations of a nuclear free market world that an un- ssaulted North Korea will create. If we do a strike with conventional curies missiles and bombs dropped by stealth bombers, and make it clear we have no intention to invade unless North Korea attacks us or our alleys outside their borders, blow up a few factories, nuclear plants, missile ranges, etc, Then a North Korea counter attacking would force us to invade, the rational thing for North Korea then would be to take an ass kicking, stay low and then make a reprisal attack of some kind to save face that would not trigger an invasion, North Korea knows we will trample them in an invasion, all their sabre rattling is to make sure we know they will make it cost a lot of lives, if we don't invade then North Korea can't do anything. Yep, so we invade then?
Do you want war with China? Because this is how you get war with China... and a flattened Seoul, for that matter...
Why all this "we" crap? "We" ain't Koreans Moon, who is Korean wants to handle this. Let him do so without our initiating anything. .................. Moon also does not want to pay for THAAD. SO What gives us the right to dictate to the Koreans? Maybe we should leave before we get thrown out?
Yeah pretty sure china is not going to war for North Korea this time, I've talked with Chinese nationals and most of the Chinese public simply don't give a fuck about North Korea, Chinese elites simply don't want the refugees flooding over and the US at their boarder. And they are not going to start nuclear war over that, they may demand concessions to look the other way though. Look do you want North Korea to have a full nuclear arsenal, and spread their weapons production to other buying states? Do you not see we are sort of fucked either way here? "we" as in US. I'm guess sculptor your of the "let the world have nukes, not my problem" persuasion? Also we can put THAAD in Alaska or in the Korean-Japanese Sea on ships, South Korea is not the best place to put it unless it is to stop short range missiles, so I'm fine with moving THAAD.
