What's the evidence that North Korea is a threat?

I’m surprised that the North Koreans have managed to launch anything.. thought that the Americans would have sabotaged everything with a stuxnet type virus.. I imagine that’s what caused the failed tests so far

That would rely on them running an opperating system, internet, even having USB ports that the US could exploit.

Id hypothesise that the reason they’ve got as far as they have, bearing in mind Iran didn’t get anywhere near, is that the closed nature the country means there isnt a network of CIA agents dropping USB sticks arround Pyongyang. And its backwards-ness means it doesnt have computer networks to exploit. Bearing in mind nuclear weponary is actually 1940’s tech, you dont need a PC.

Not really. The US only had a deployed anti ICBM missile for (IIRC) less than a year of the cold war, and even then it just protected a missile field (as per the anti ballistic missile treaty provisions). The USSR chose to put up a slightly more credible anti ICBM set up around moscow (which is why we developed the chevaline warhead system – given the UKs limited number of missiles we had to guarantee being able to destroy moscow to have a credible deterrent). The system is basically firing a missile to let another nuke off at 100,000ft in front of the nuke you’re trying to destroy – it’s not subtle (it’s also still deployed).

I stand corrected.. You are right. The reason they wanted bigger bombs like the tsar was because they didn’t think their bombers would get through.. I appreciate not the same thing at all.

thought that the Americans would have sabotaged everything with a stuxnet type virus. I imagine that’s what caused the failed tests so far

There’s the placement of the tools and then there’s the operation of the tools to initiate disruption. The former obviously isn’t publicised and the latter has to be attributable as an ‘enemy action’ although it’s pretty obvious who’d have the motive for attacking NK. It’s extremely likely that the Americans have something in place – the closed nature of NK presents additional difficulties but there are very creative ways of gaining control of industrial systems.

Remember Stuxnet is nearly 10 years old so there will have been significant development in cyber weapons since.

See
https://www.wired.com/story/russian-hackers-attack-ukraine/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/17/world/middleeast/us-had-cyberattack-planned-if-iran-nuclear-negotiations-failed.html

EDIT: Failed tests equally attributable to lobbing missiles a long way being fundamentally difficult and requiring a lot of trial and error in the absence of cutting edge computer modelling.

I can’t remember where I read or heard it but apparently even the best missile defence systems can only cope with 4 out of 5 incoming missiles. So NK only need to launch 10 missiles to land one in all probability.

Previously in their history North Korea were almost wiped off the map because of extensive bombing. The americans even bombed their dams (which is a war crime) because they had run out of targets to bomb.

Clearly North Korea are no threat to anyone outside their border (it is laughable to suggest that they are in my opinion) and American intelligence confirms that their reason for arming themselves is purely defensive.

If you look at the negotiations North Korea havent been unreasonable (compared to the other side) but they have pretty few options if the Americans issue threats.
Tell us how to come and visit you in the parallel universe that you inhabit, it’s the NK government who continually issue threats to all and sundry, but unfortunately now that The Donald is in power, the threats are ramping up on both sides.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-looming-catastrophe-of-trump-and-north-korea-w491055

It’s bad enough when one country is led by a leader who’s often appeared to be on the edge of mental illness – earlier this year, Sen. John McCain called Kim Jong-un a “crazy fat kid,” though Psychology Today deemed Kim “power-addled” but “rational.” In the case of the U.S-North Korea standoff, not only North Korea but the United States too is led by a man who exhibits a “dangerous mental illness,” according to a panel of psychiatrists at a Yale University conference, who called him “paranoid and delusional.”

But if Trump is angling for a military showdown with North Korea, the most likely result would be catastrophic. In addition to its nuclear arms, North Korea reportedly has 8,000 pieces of artillery and rocket launchers trained on South Korea and Japan, capable of firing a staggering 300,000 rounds in the first hour of war. Estimates of the number of people killed in South Korea, including Americans, suggest as many as 300,000 dead in just days. And if North Korea’s Kim suspects that even a limited, preemptive American military strike is ultimately aimed at decapitating the regime and toppling his government, he’s likely to unleash not only his nukes but an array of chemical and biological weapons, too, resulting in casualties in the millions.

Just to add to the evidence that NK don’t have an ICBM launch capability:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/north-korea-missile-tests-170706081545433.html

Noam Chomsky has spoken extensively about this, the rhetoric (about them being a threat) mainly spouted by the media isnt even agreed upon by the American public (in polls).

Bwahahahahahahaha!
Your assessment of the political nous of the American public is truly touching, it really is!
Much of the American public can’t identify their own state on a map of the US, in fact many Americans have never even traveled outside their own state, their news is incredibly insular, has virtually no coverage of anything that happens outside the US; I’ve read through the LA Times, it’s an enormous publication consists of a great many supplements, and the only international news I could find was on a couple of pages buried somewhere in the middle, in fact that was also about all the news they published about anything happening in the rest of America!
America is the greatest country on earth, they don’t give a shit about what anyone else is doing, it doesn’t affect them, that’s the mindset of Mr/Ms Average American.

So, i’ve been youtubing loads of interviews with NK defectors, quite interesting, I’d encourage people to do the same.

One common theme though, is that essentially the current rhetoric of trump is pretty much what KJU wants, ie legitimisation that they are a nuclear power, so that it’ll lead to a road of appeasement.

So while it is technically true they are a nuclear power, i still don’t see them as much of an external threat due to KJU’s desire for appeasement and continuation of the regime. So, unless trump keeps up the current war of words and they stumble into war, I think that is really a bit of a side question, direct confrontation is a silly route..

But more importantly, the second common theme that’s noticeable. Is that inside north korea there isn’t actually a communist system any longer, it collapsed years ago, in it’s place there’s a nascent (black/grey) market system that the people essentially rely on to survive, and external information/knowledge of the outside does reach the average North Korean via usb drives, and the likes of mobiles and cheap dvd players that can read them. If anything is ever going to solve the problem of north korea, it is through this system that it’ll happen, via flooding the country with information and goods.

Essentially, embargo’s and sanctions are a stupid idea. The route to solving the problem will come from within, so there should be a campaign to encourage this and give the people the means to develop a resistance, something that is more difficult for dirt poor isolated people to achieve.

Isolation is completely counter productive, The opposite should be happening.

Open up NK allow the outside world in and the Kim dynasty will not survive it, lift the embargo’s and encourage the black market trade into NK as much as possible.

Not saying that it won’t be messy, but an internal uprising will see the dynasty crumble quickly imo, particularly if the people are armed with goods and the knowledge to enable them to be successful.

Clearly i make that sound simple and it’s far more complex than that, but ye get the drift I’m sure.

Open up NK allow the outside world in

Sure but by far the greater part of that problem comes from the DPRK itself; it’s the regieme that is closed, it’s not a closed system because of sanctions though this doesn’t help of course.

I know someone who spent a lot of time there in the past as a contractor building fibre optic plants (this was quite a while ago now; I’m not sure if the work he did would even be possible now). He used to tell us about the degree to which his presence in the country was extremely tightly controlled and managed, what he could and couldn’t say, where he could and couldn’t go etc. He described it as close to being Orwell’s vision in ‘1984’ as you could find in the real world.

Aye but there’s clearly a market system in place at the moment, not saying it’ll be easy, but it where attention should be focused, there are routes in and out of NK.

Apparently under Obama they had £3million allocated to getting info into NK, and absolute pittance. This has ended under trump.

It’s should be £3billion not £3million put into this kinda thing and it might start to make a dent.

Interesting bit of history on North Korea..

“What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,” “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”

How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?

How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”?

Twenty. Percent. For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population. According to LeMay, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.”

Every. Town. More than 3 million civilians are believed to have been killed in the fighting, the vast majority of them in the north.

https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/

have we done this angle?

tin foil hat on….

WORLD BANKS

EDIT: and didn’t Obama start up negotiations with cuba? – I kinda lost track what happened there?

Time to dust off the love bombs.

km79 – Member
Time to dust off the love bombs.

Better than real bombs.

Or we could just carpet bomb them as per footflaps post, and after we’re ran out of targets, we can start bombing the dams and flooding the valleys, again…

Apparently under Obama they had £3million allocated to getting info into NK,

The CIA spent more trying to influence the 1948 italian election!!

anagallis_arvensis – Member
Apparently under Obama they had £3million allocated to getting info into NK,
The CIA spent more trying to influence the 1948 italian election!!

Yip, idea is right, implementation is pitiful.

I dont think it is the current NK sabre rattling that is going to be the motivator for China to “do something”.

The NK leadership and military may be fist pumping because they can lob a couple of missiles and expect them to hit the intended target. However, what will “encourage” China is if other currently non nuclear states show movement to developing credible interceptors, delivery systems and weapons.

Let’s be honest, most of the region has the GDP & technical no-how to whip NKs efforts.

That would right bollocks up Chinese economic and territorial ambitions and they probably know that if proliferation begins, it will be impossible to stop.

It seems to me that it’s China that has backed itself into a corner.

NK hasn’t really changed from the day the war paused and the Chinese know they have the most to loose (if, and hoping) no shooting war takes place.

If the north walked into the south would anyone actually go to war though? Potentially very messy. Maybe lots of shouting would be all that happened. The commie threat that was a worry in the 50’s doesn’t exist anymore so no one will see an invasion as that so much as a bit of aggressive land grabbing. Of course we know what happened when that was ignored I the 30’s but the cost will be seen to be higher now and our attitudes to war have changed. Hmmm

Aye but there’s clearly a market system in place at the moment, not saying it’ll be easy, but it where attention should be focused, there are routes in and out of NK

It’s an interesting idea. Black Markets always tend to appear though where conventional market economies are not functioning; they aren’t really ‘markets’ as such, just a way for people to avoid starving. They are extremely localised and tend to work off the back of networks and paticularlistic connections. These are important because it is how the exchanges stay out of view of the authorities.

a bit of aggressive land grabbing

Oh well in that case then for sure no one will care. Apart from maybe everyone living in South Korea of course. For them it might be a bit, you know, shit having a totalitarian ultra Stalinist dictatorship take them over.

If the north walked into the south would anyone actually go to war though?

I hope we would. Turning a blind eye to that sort of thing never ends well. It didn’t in 1939 when we turned a blind eye over Czechoslovakia, nor any other time in history when ‘land grabbing’ happened and everyone turned a blind eye. Land grabbing is usually followed by some form of ‘cleansing’ wether it be ethnic, cultural, religions or just to wipe out those you’ve just invaded.

I suspect NK doesn’t want to invade SK – I think it’s more about NK wanting to be taken seriously as a world player. They’ve observed how the possession of nukes suddenly makes people sit up and listen so they’ve followed that path. Having said that I don’t think he and the regime is harmless. They’ve been cut off from the rest of the world for so long who know’s what their mental state is, and we (the rest of the world) should do everything possible to prevent them from getting nukes.

The stories of people who have escaped that regime are truly horrific and yet again the world is standing idly sacrificing people until we deem them to be a direct threat to our lives then we’ll go in when there is little chance of resolving the issue peacefully and the only option is conflict and we’ll make a hash of it as we always do. It’s the same old script playing out in front of our eyes yet again, like watching a slow motion car crash.

wobbliscott – Member
and we (the rest of the world) should do everything possible to prevent them from getting nukes.

they’ve already got some nukes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_North_Korea

Saddam Hussein kept boasting that he had weapons of mass destruction.

That worked out well.

BigJohn – Member
Saddam Hussein kept boasting that he had weapons of mass destruction.

That worked out well.

Hence NK’s desire for nukes, and particularly nuclear armed ICBMs.

Anyhow, as I’ve said, the nukes are inconsequential, imo, to what should be getting done to solve the problem. An invasion isn’t going to happen, so rather than sabre rattling, they should be looking into practical ways of enacting regime change internally.

they should be looking into practical ways of enacting regime change internally.

Bottled water supplies to the main government offices laced with polonium?
Or LSD, drive them nuts.
Perhaps a bit extreme for some…

They tried all that against Castro. Didnae work.

The Chinese will never depose NK leadership, it would be seen as doing the Septics bidding which would be seen as a HUGE loss of face. They were quite happy for the Yanks and DPRK to have a slanging match but as Trump is pursing the Nixon Madman principle the Chinese have backed themselves into a corner.

Any missile launch towards Guam the US have said they will intercept, it won’t be the Alaskan interceptors as they won’t have the range. It will be the Aegis Cruiser SM-3 missiles with THAAD at Guam (SK THAAD will be out of physical range but the radars could provide telemetry). Finally it’ll be last ditch patriot battery “Hail Mary” defence.

Should a missile hit Guam, all bets are off, the war plan will be enacted, if they are intercepted then it’ll be Presidents decision according to SECDEF.

NK have huge reserves of Sarin, VX and other lovelies as well as crude Nukes. Seoul would be devastated by conventional artillery and rocket attack. Unfortunately for SK they are now a cork bobbing in the political maelstrom and rapidly being swirled to the atomic falls. If I was NK I wouldn’t bother trying to hit Japan or SK with them but I’d plant them at strategic points, bridges/cities and let the invading forces overrun them before detonating, either by suicide squad and/or timer.

Incidentally it would appear that the latest boosts to the NK ICBM’s come from a Ukrainian rocket factory in Ukrainian held territory as they are desperate for cash to fight off Uncle Vladimir. Either that or Uncle Vladimir has played a blinder and made it look like it came from there. The US are royally peed off with the Ukraine for this so I can see US support being watered down.

nk will attack no one.

Saddam Hussein kept boasting that he had weapons of mass destruction.

Correction, he did have them. Ask the Kurds. Didn’t the same weapons turn up in Syria recently?

He had them and he boasted he did. Same as Kim Jong Un. Same outcome maybe?

geetee1972 – Member
Saddam Hussein kept boasting that he had weapons of mass destruction.
Correction, he did have them. Ask the Kurds

That was in 1988, the iraq invasion was in 2003.

I’d be willing to bet that, as with the Argentinian conscript army in the Falklands, the malnourished ragtag NK soldiers would throw down their guns and run like hell at the first sign of a real SK or US soldier heading their way.

There was a documentary on the other day about life in NK but it was different to previous ones I’d seen, much like seosamh77 saw on YouTube this was an eye-opener that many NK people are starting to push back on the tight control of the state.

What surprised me the most was people arguing with and even pushing around the NK military police trying to enforce some of the rules (like you can’t own a business and women couldn’t wear trousers until the law was changed recently).

However whist there may be cracks appearing I can’t see a regime changing happening any time soon, a lot of people’s fear there is based on neighbours etc. informing on them, there’s so much mistrust of each other that forming dissident groups would be a huge risk.

Also, even if the Kim regime fell surely they’d only be replaced by a military dictatorship which would probably be even more unstable. Democracy is such an alien concept to the NK people I can’t see it happening any time soon, it would take a couple of generations to get past all the brain-washing and fear.

It’ll be an alien concept, but another thing was that of the 30,000 defectors there is in south korea, they reckon a lot of them were motivated to defect due to exposure to foreign media. Aspiration to better yourself is a natural human inclination, particularly when you know there is something better.

as for taking a long time, dunno, the fall of the soviet union probably looked highly unlikely just a few years before it happened.

Another thing that was noticeable was, of the ones I watched, they all seemed fairly intelligent and well educated, obviously not in the wider world, but they certainly weren’t stupid. so I think external ideas would take like wildfire if there was more exposure, not that they would agree with everything about the external world, their views on capitalist korean culture are also quite interesting.

what was the doc you watched, btw?

I can’t remember, I think something like “Inside North Korea”, either on PBS or Discovery, I thought it was one I’d watched before (that just covers the generic everything’s grim and tightly controlled side) so missed the start.

Edit: Just to add I do think it’s a good idea to spend more (time and money) trying to open up NK via the backdoor (poor phrasing…) but at a certain level I’m sure the regime would have a big crackdown (well before the £3 billion) and at £3 million level I think Kim will have enough ICBM-mountable nukes to be a real danger. From Kim’s perspective if the West was overtly destabilising your regime and you knew you probably couldn’t even flee to China you may as well press the button as a last straw to see what happened…

Maybe the USA and her allies could mount a carefully coordinated air attack on every single North Korean installation and hit them with flour bombs? That would send out a bit of a warning to the idiot in charge.

I’m not totally sure that an unknown white powder dropping on every military unit in NK would be the best way to engender quiet reflection in them.

It would highlight all the ones they don’t know about though

The US are royally peed off with the Ukraine for this so I can see US support being watered down.

Perhaps Trump’s former campaign manager could have a word.

N Korea is not planning to bomb anyone. They’ve seen what happens to other dictatorships when the US wants shot of them, so the young leader is trying to say don’t mess with my regime, as I have the capacity to nuke Japan or S Korea (unlike say Saddam or Gaddafi) if you plan to invade and get rid of me.
So I don’t think anyone is going to nuke anyone else for the moment.
However, the long-term consequences are pretty awful, as Trump will respond by commissioning a new nuclear programme (soon to be followed by Russia, China, Israel, probably the UK) which will lead to classic escalation. Putin admitted by mistake on Russian TV that they are developing a frankly terrifying nuclear weapon which could wipe out the entire Eastern side of the US. Meanwhile the US (thanks to the dominance of the military industrial complex) has been developing submarine-based nukes which can attack any city in the world, with terrifying force.
Throw Iran into the mix and it’s just another excuse for everyone to escalate.

And this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends.

N Korea is not planning to bomb anyone. They’ve seen what happens to other dictatorships when the US wants shot of them, so the young leader is trying to say don’t mess with my regime,

The problem with that is that when the rest of the world refuses to just bow down, there’s a risk of being backed into a corner by his own rhetoric.

It is mostly sabre rattling and a size comparison contest, but NK can never be sure how the the world and Trump will react and they’ve just pissed off their biggest supporter. Carrying on as we are isn’t really an option.