OT: Lil' Kim and North Korea Question for the group

[HornsRuleU]

Honoring & respect is a HUGE part of Korean culture. They always use 2 hands to shake hands with an elder or cultural superior, or to hand something to you. Shoes are dirty and they're left at the door out of respect. You don't want a photo of the leaders to ever be on the floor.

If you're seen to disrespect any of these dudes in any way, it's to a gulag with you, and if investigations reveal anything, it could mean the purging of your entire family:

• the Great Leader (founder Kim IL-Sung)
• the Dear Leader (son Kim Jong-IL)
• or grandson Kim Jong-Un (honorific title still TBD)

They basically live in fear of doing anything outside of protocol, even in their own homes, since family members rat on each other. Satellite photos show over two dozen gulags, some for political prisoners but most for "re-education." A careless departure from protocol would result in re-education, whereas someone who genuinely opposed the regime, or was suspected of it, would end up in one of the handful of political prisoner camps, quite likely along with family members.

So, visitors to the country are "detained" if their DPRK minders notice them doing anything suspicious, like trying to interact privately with a regular Jo. (All visitors to the DPRK have government minders to guide / watch them, and are limited to visiting certain areas.) The foreign visitors are led to fake grocery stores, fake pharmacies, and other fake & real stuff that is just designed to give a good impression. We're talking about stores filled with wax fruit, empty boxes of cereal and whatnot, and zero customers. No one can buy anything there, since there IS nothing there. It's just for show.

For about a decade or two, there were shared business ventures with South Korea. Basically, a South Korean conglomerate would have a manufacturing factory in NK, using North Korean labor. It was one way for NK to get hard cash. The workers themselves got very little of their salaries, yet enough to be MUCH better off than their neighbors. Most of the money went to the state, to the ruling elite. The SK managers would give NK workers marshmallow creme pies as a treat / pick-me-up. South Koreans have loved these originally-American treats for decades, and now the NKs are gaining a fondness for them. Some workers would eat them, but they'd also be saved, and traded on the black market. There's a thriving BM in NK, and U.S. or Chinese currency tends to be used, reportedly. Some of the U.S. notes are forged by the DPRK, though.

This is all from reports I've been reading over the years. I've never been to NK, unless you count my walking around the negotiating table at Panmunjeom (the meeting place along the DMZ / 38th parallel). The table straddles the 38th parallel; it's in both NK and SK. So walk around the table, and technically you've been in both countries. South Koreans see Korea as one country, though, just temporarily divided. Maybe NKs do, too?

 

[Belldozer1]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4792046/Doctor-claims-steroids-Kim-s-aggression.html

 

[clob94]

Honoring & respect is a HUGE part of Korean culture. They always use 2 hands to shake hands with an elder or cultural superior, or to hand something to you. Shoes are dirty and they're left at the door out of respect. You don't want a photo of the leaders to ever be on the floor.

If you're seen to disrespect any of these dudes in any way, it's to a gulag with you, and if investigations reveal anything, it could mean the purging of your entire family:

• the Great Leader (founder Kim IL-Sung)
• the Dear Leader (son Kim Jong-IL)
• or grandson Kim Jong-Un (honorific title still TBD)

They basically live in fear of doing anything outside of protocol, even in their own homes, since family members rat on each other. Satellite photos show over two dozen gulags, some for political prisoners but most for "re-education." A careless departure from protocol would result in re-education, whereas someone who genuinely opposed the regime, or was suspected of it, would end up in one of the handful of political prisoner camps, quite likely along with family members.

So, visitors to the country are detained if their DPRK minders notice them doing anything suspicious. (All visitors to the DPRK have government minders to guide / watch them, and are limited to visiting certain areas.) The foreign visitors are led to fake grocery stores, fake pharmacies, and other fake & real stuff that is just designed to give a good impression. We're talking about stores filled with wax fruit, empty boxes of cereal and whatnot, and zero customers. No one can buy anything there, since there IS nothing there. It's just for show.

For about a decade or two, there were shared business ventures with South Korea. Basically, a South Korean conglomerate would have a manufacturing factory in NK, using North Korean labor. It was one way for NK to get hard cash. The workers themselves got very little of their salaries, yet enough to be MUCH better off than their neighbors. Most of the money went to the state, to the ruling elite. The managers would give workers marshmallow creme pies as a treat / pick-me-up. South Koreans have loved these originally-American treats for decades, and now the NKs are gaining a fondness for them. Some workers would eat them, but they'd also be saved, and traded on the black market. There's a thriving BM in NK, and U.S. or Chinese currency tends to be used, reportedly. Some of the U.S. notes are forged by the DPRK, though.

This is all from reports I've been reading over the years. I've never been to NK, unless you count my walking around the negotiating table at Panmunjeom (the meeting place along the DMZ / 38th parallel). The table is in both NK and SK.

@HornsRuleU seriously dude. BOOOOOOOOOOOOM! That blows my mind.

 

[HornsRuleU]

This is why if you use a nuke on NK you are pretty much condemning SK/Seoul to the fallout.

Hats off to HRU for knowing China's fear of NK refugees being the main reason they haven't 'removed' the Kim family when most think it is about maintaining the buffer zone. That China is involved in the last UN sanctions is a huge change.

And vice-versa if NK were to nuke Seoul. It'd be safer for NK to nuke Busan than to nuke Seoul. It's the 2nd biggest city in SK, and it's at the SE tip near Japan.

It would go against their Juche philosophy and rhetoric, though, to nuke SK. Koreans are very nationalistic, and like Iran recalling Persia's glory days, they think of themselves as one Korea. I don't think NK would ever nuke SK, except in defense. In fact, the NK's believe themselves to be ethically superior to the USA due to Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Given what they've said about that, things would have to cross some serious thresholds before NK would ever use their nukes. Such as:

• If their nuclear deterrent were attacked
• If nuked or heavily attacked
• As a last gasp, "to hell with it, we're done for, anyway" thing, perhaps even if somehow the NK people were to revolt, which would be like rabbits picking a fight with foxes

But trying to guess what the North Koreans would do is an exercise in madness. You can go by past history, but who really knows what those nuts would do? So, there's that.

 

[Belldozer1]

No, no, no, no.......not an RPG. The most drastic execution was committed on one of his generals by taking him out to an old runway at an old base. They then pulled a soviet made ZSU 23-4 armored anti aircraft vehicle in front of the dude. It has 4 23mm anti aircraft guns mounted to it.

Boom. Duck soup.

Yes that is unacceptable for him to do to one of his generals. Strangely enough, I could sympathize with and admire his style if it would have been one of his in-laws.