[Crantag]

Crantag, actually, the UN led by the US won the Korean War. The war was mostly fought for 2 reasons. Both of which were achieved, neither of which was to occupy all of NK.
1] To show the aggressor nations [here the USSR and China mostly] that the western Allies were willing to fight wars to contain them. That is do what they should have done vi sa vi Hitler in 1936 or 37; show him we mean to fight if necessary.
2] Keep the huge tungstun mine in S. Korea in Western hands. It produced about 90% of the free world's tungstun each year, so we needed to keep it.

Firstly, I know that it was a UN mission, but it was basically the US. Just like people call Vietnam an American War.

And no, the US lost the war. That is a product of American propaganda, the notion that they did not. They say the US didn't lose Vietnam, either.

My grandfather was a journalist for the Army Times. He penned an article at the time of the US withdrawal from Korea, characterizing it as America's first military defeat. I defer to my grandfather, who was a WW2 veteran (as an electrician in the Army), career Army Times journalist, and who was there analyzing the events at the time.

[Steve_American]

Crantag, Korea and Vietnam were not the same. In Korea there was a UN resolution and the UN went all in [unlike Bush II's war in Iraq, where the UN made a resolution but didn't get involved much]. In Vietnam it was a civil war and the UN didn't get involved at all.

Historians often disagree with the thoughts of the people at the time. They are more swayed by passions and historians can be more dispassionate.
Winning and losing wars is often determined by who attained their goals, goals either set at the start or escolated as the war went on. [De-escolated goals are not usually allowed, though.]

At the time the tungsten mine was never mentioned. But, you are correct, it was seen as a loss. But, that was mostly because of the recent events in WWII. However, the unconditional surrender goal of WWII was very unusual in historical terms. Historians are allowed to reevaluate the conclusions drawn at the time and I think most now see the Korean War as a win for the UN and the US. Vietnam is seem as a loss, now.

I claim that The Army Times is not a dispassionate newspaper. So, it's conclusions should not be heavily weighted when compared to current historians' thoughts.

[Crantag]

Crantag, Korea and Vietnam were not the same. In Korea there was a UN resolution and the UN went all in [unlike Bush II's war in Iraq, where the UN made a resolution but didn't get involved much]. In Vietnam it was a civil war and the UN didn't get involved at all.

Historians often disagree with the thoughts of the people at the time. They are more swayed by passions and historians can be more dispassionate.
Winning and losing wars is often determined by who attained their goals, goals either set at the start or escolated as the war went on. [De-escolated goals are not usually allowed, though.]

At the time the tungsten mine was never mentioned. But, you are correct, it was seen as a loss. But, that was mostly because of the recent events in WWII. However, the unconditional surrender goal of WWII was very unusual in historical terms. Historians are allowed to reevaluate the conclusions drawn at the time and I think most now see the Korean War as a win for the UN and the US. Vietnam is seem as a loss, now.

I claim that The Army Times is not a dispassionate newspaper. So, it's conclusions should not be heavily weighted when compared to current historians' thoughts.

The matter of definition of 'winning the war' is not even really significant to my overarching original statements. Also, my former judo coach was an artillery officer in the Korean War, and if I would have suggested the US lost the war to him, I never would have heard the end of it. This isn't new to me. Okay, the US won the war by threatening to nuke China. That slight change in phraseology doesn't change the implications. The implications are that the terms by which the Korean War ended were anomalous, and this anomaly was because of the nuclear trump card held by the US, which was on its heels due to military defeats.

I see it is an American war, just as Gulf 1 was. South Korea emerged from the war as a US satellite, as was North Korea to the Soviet Union. North Korea was the bigger economy until the 1970s, when South Korea surpassed North Korea, and this was fueled by American military Keynesian. Yes, the Nato alliance and the Warsaw pact and all of that makes discussion of the politics of Cold War proxy wars more complicated than merely discussing of the US and the USSR, but for practical purposes it can largely be distilled to the relations between the two, except that by the laws of geography China was a decisive third party (or fourth/fifth, actually). (This was true in Vietnam, too.) Or such, is the habit of my thought I suppose.

[Steve_American]

Crantag, the Korean War had reached a stalemate and "ended" with a truce.
So, yes the end was not a clear thing.
The US Army didn't want to admit that it lost any wars. It prided itself on its "We never lost a war" thing. There was a lot of talk in the 50s and 60s about, did we lose in Korea?
After we clearly lost in Vietnam, it became more clear that we won in Korea.
At least that is my thinking.

Now, can we get back to --
just how dumb it is to now start a war in Korea?
If Trump starts a war there, history will not give him any benefit of the doubt. I predict that history will "hate" him for it.

But then, we live in "interesting times". Which means things are a total mess and I predict will get a lot worse no matter what anyone does. [Well, unless *almost all* of the most important and influential people in the world suddenly see the light and act as one-unified-*wise*-group before the shit hits the fan. The odds of this happening are about 1 billion to one against, though.]

[Crantag]

Crantag, the Korean War had reached a stalemate and "ended" with a truce.
So, yes the end was not a clear thing.
The US Army didn't want to admit that it lost any wars. It prided itself on its "We never lost a war" thing. There was a lot of talk in the 50s and 60s about, did we lose in Korea?
After we clearly lost in Vietnam, it became more clear that we won in Korea.
At least that is my thinking.

Now, can we get back to --
just how dumb it is to now start a war in Korea?
If Trump starts a war there, history will not give him any benefit of the doubt. I predict that history will "hate" him for it.

But then, we live in "interesting times". Which means things are a total mess and I predict will get a lot worse no matter what anyone does. [Well, unless *almost all* of the most important and influential people in the world suddenly see the light and act as one-unified-*wise*-group before the shit hits the fan. The odds of this happening are about 1 billion to one against, though.]

Firstly, I do have a contrarian view on some of these matters, and I have formed some opinions individually, because I have had a long-time fascination with the issue (to the extent that virtually any time I hear North Korea-related topics mentioned anywhere in the media, I have to immediately change the station because of how ill-informed the commentary is).

In addition to being fluent in Japanese and conversational in Chinese, I also spent years studying Korean, some of it formally (and some of that in Seoul), and have been to South Korea several times, including--for whatever it is worth--to the DMZ.

I know ethnic-Koreans from Yanbian in China on the boarder with North Korea, who are equally bilingual in Korean and Chinese (and the education there is also bilingual).

I also lived in Japan for 7 years.

The Korean Peninsula is not very large. When you are in East Asia, North Korea is not some obscure, far-off place. If you are in Japan, it's just across the straight. Hence, North Korean fisherman sometimes get stranded by the currents in Japan.

North Korea is a real place, with real people, a real culture, and real history. North Korean history is Korean history. North Korea is not some hermetic isolate. It isn't now, and it never has been.

The premise of your question defeats the very premise for an answer.

In a nuclear war, all bets are off.

There is no military solution to the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

The only viable solution is for the interested players in the matter to bide their time, while seeking to undermine and minimize the far-fringe and barbarous belligerent impulses of the gargantuan real-world devil the United States foreign policy establishment.

[blackjack21]

Likely, a million or more dead in Asia right off.

That's probably not that likely, but there would be millions displaced for a time. That much is certain.

At least 1 Atomic bomb set off in or near a US city.

It's too far. The US would shoot it down before it reached the US. Setting a nuke off over Seoul or a Japanese city is the bigger fear.

Maybe an EMP attack that smashes all the electric things over a multi-state area.

This is North Korea we're talking about. They aren't quite that sophisticated.

The US was the only nation with A-bombs, now NK has them.

Atomic bombs are strategically pointless now. They were developed for an era where industry was centralized in cities and for the purpose of crippling war industries. That would fail today. It would just kill a lot of liberal city dwellers.

The NK Army was a lot less powerful then and we had troops in Japan to sent quickly.

We have troops in South Korea now. South Korea's military is much more advanced than North Korea's military. The US has first class next-generation F-35 fighters on scene as well as F-22s. There are B-2s in Guam. There are B-52s and B-1s nearby.

A day later the A-bomb explodes which creates a vast tsunami [tidal wave] maybe 150 ft high.

You need to calculate how much water weighs to realize that's kind of a dumb idea. Dumping a nuke at the bottom of the sea wouldn't even cause the surface to boil.

A ton is 2000 lbs. 250 gallons of water is 2000 lbs, or one ton. So a 25 kiloton weapon has the power to displace about 6.2M gallons of water. That may sound like a lot, but it's not. The fog going through the Golden Gate Bridge is about 1M gallons of water as a mist. Condense it, and it's a tiny amount of water compared to the ocean and the bay. It's about 400 swimming pools worth. Moving that amount from the under the ocean will give you some kind of perturbation, but it's not going to cause a tsunami.

War just makes NK have nothing to lose, thus increasing the chances of an A-bomb attack on the US.

An A-bomb attack is pointless from the standpoint of stopping war industries.

NK doesn't need nuclear-armed missiles to do an awful lot of damage. Millions of South Koreans in and around Seoul could be killed within a very short time of any outbreak of hostility because they are in easy reach of NK artillery.

That's the big fear: civilian casualties in SK, and collateral damage. The US has smart bombs a plenty these days, so F-35s and F-22s would take control of the skies almost immediately. However, NK would be able to get off some damaging rounds before counter artillery can stop them.

The lessons from Saddam's and Qaddafi's fall are clear.

Yes, but they seem to be missing the lesson from the fall of the Soviet Union. If you are broke, your society will collapse from within.

And no, the US lost the war. That is a product of American propaganda, the notion that they did not.

The Democratic party lost the war. It's a product of Democratic party propaganda that they weren't the reason for the fall of Saigon.

[Crantag]

Another interesting note is that relations between Russia and China are at an historically high ebb right now.

It would be interesting to know the contents of the high-level talks between Russia and China regarding the present situation regarding the Korean Peninsula.

[Steve_American]

Blackjack21, did you look at any of the links I provided?

Too many points to reply to them all.
I'm no expert, but the link said a tsunami is a real threat. An A-bomb would vaporize a lot of water. This would create a huge bubble. This bubble would displace a lot of water. This might cause a tsunami. The link said it would. How deep under the surface for it to work is too deep? I don't know.

NK is not intending to damage war production with an A-bomb attack on the US. It is intending to damage the US economy in retaliation for the US attack on it. It knows it can't win a war against the US, but it can deter one. Or, get its revenge if deterrence fails.

The thought is that NK sends the US an A-bomb in a shipping container not on a missile [not yet at least]. It might already have such an A-bomb in a shipping container somewhere outside of NK already, now. Who knows?

Did you read the above replies? One guy said that the US anti-missile system will not be operational for many years. But, he doesn't seem knowledgeable to me. But, does the US have the ability to intercept missiles way out over the Pacific right now? What about one using the great circle route over the N. Pole?

[Godstud]

War with N Korea? A great many people would die needless deaths so an egotistical madman(Trump) could feel better about himself, and a nation of fearful people(USA), can feel safe.

[Igor Antunov]

War with N Korea? A great many people would die needless deaths so an egotistical madman(Trump) could feel better about himself, and a nation of fearful people(USA), can feel safe.

Are you literally blaming Trump for something that hasn't happened / may never happen; and using that to prop up your misguided characterization of his mental state?

[Atlantis]

Yes, but they seem to be missing the lesson from the fall of the Soviet Union. If you are broke, your society will collapse from within.

Yes, but you are forgetting the lesson from Tiananmen. The Soviet Union would still exist if Gorbachev had been prepared to do in Berlin what the Chinese did on Tiananmen Square. As long as a regime is willing to use repression, it is safe. The people can always be made to tighten the belt a bit further with the specter of the external enemy threatening the nation.

Anyways, NK is only a sideshow in the long game between the US and China/Russia. NK is useful as a bargaining chip in the trade talks between Trump and Xi. The escalation of tension is useful for making US allies spend more on rearmament. And Russia and China can use NK as a thorn in the flesh of the West. If we didn't have NK, we would have to invent it.

[Crantag]

Yes, but you are forgetting the lesson from Tiananmen. The Soviet Union would still exist if Gorbachev had been prepared to do in Berlin what the Chinese did on Tiananmen Square. As long as a regime is willing to use repression, it is safe. The people can always be made to tighten the belt a bit further with the specter of the external enemy threatening the nation.

Anyways, NK is only a sideshow in the long game between the US and China/Russia. NK is useful as a bargaining chip in the trade talks between Trump and Xi. The escalation of tension is useful for making US allies spend more on rearmament. And Russia and China can use NK as a thorn in the flesh of the West. If we didn't have NK, we would have to invent it.

I don't entirely agree with this.

One Chinese view is that China may have gone the way of the USSR if not for the way that the Chinese military responded at Tiananmen.

I don't know that this is a realistic interpretation, actually. By that I mean I literally don't know, but I would say it is certainly debatable (though I think it is largely off limits for Chinese analysts).

However, the contemporary events of the USSR and Berlin provide important context to understanding the unfolding of events at Tiananmen.

My gut feeling is that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations did not threaten to topple the Chinese regime, but that the complex international events of the time--which had direct reverberations in China well beyond at the superficial level, among other realities--forms part of the underlying basis for the (over-)reaction.

I little doubt that the events of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations represent a painful recollection for many Chinese people, but the framing of the demonstrations as threatening the state (which they might have, but to me this is uncertain) provides at least a legitimacy to the events that occurred.

There was plenty of dissenting going on in the Chinese government at the time, as well.

I could have this wrong and you might have a better sense than me on it. But I recognize the view that I have described, as I've heard it expressed before.

[Atlantis]

My gut feeling is that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations did not threaten to topple the Chinese regime, but that the complex international events of the time--which had direct reverberations in China well beyond at the superficial level, among other realities--forms part of the underlying basis for the (over-)reaction.
[...]
There was plenty of dissenting going on in the Chinese government at the time, as well.

Domestic events can very well be triggered by "international events." The uprising in Tunisia triggered the Arab Spring in other countries. In the same way, the demonstrators on Tiananmen hoped to trigger a revolution by using Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost when he was on an official visit to Beijing. In the 1930s, fascism spread from one country to another, even if it took slightly different forms in each country. Today, right-wing authoritarianism spreads from one country to another, even if it takes different shapes in each country. Following the French revolution, feudal regimes in neighboring countries tried to prevent the revolution from spreading.

If the uprising in Tiananmen had not been suppressed, China would be a different country today. Obviously, it is equally possible that the uprising could have been suppressed at a later stage, which would probably have been even more bloody. Dynastic changes in China have often been triggered by uprisings. That's why the authorities are constantly on the lookout for dissension. Even a Bible-reading group, or movements like Falun Gong, could lead to an uprising and threaten the regime. That's why the Chinese will suppress dissension as soon as it is detected.

And why do you think the West kept on courting the Dalai Lama? It wasn't just about a bunch of hippies worshiping the spiritual leader. Western leaders deliberately elevated the importance of the Dalai Lama by officially meeting him in the hope that an uprising in Tibet could challenge Beijing's control. The Chinese understand this very well. They have more than 3,000 years of history to learn from. The regime change game is as old as humanity.

Obviously, there are always different factions in the Communist parties advocating different policies. It is perfectly possible that one faction opposed the repression at that stage, not necessarily because it was against suppression, but because it suited its own agenda. Power struggles in the party are primarily concerned with the power balance of the respective factions. Issues such as the degree and timing of repression, 'fight against corruption', policy debate, etc., are primarily tools used by one faction to get the upper-hand over the other faction. The Dazibao were a key trigger for the cultural revolution, which was then instrumentalist by Mao to get the upper hand over other party leaders.

[skinster]

Photo-Report: The North Korea Neither Trump Nor Western Media Wants The World To See

[Crantag]

The North Korean famine occurred in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is a lie perpetuated in the media (mainstream media coverage of North Korea is all explicit propaganda) that the people in North Korea are starving, the people who say this are merely referencing the early-1990s famine.

Most info on the goings on in North Korea are speculative. It's easy to imagine how there could be supply problems and inefficient allocations, etc., which may be lead to hardships. That said, North Korea is small so doesn't likely suffer from inefficiencies in the same way as China or the USSR historically have, I would speculate.

The Korean people have weathered bitter winters since time immemorial. The preservation of foods which are rich in nutrients is ingrained in Korean culture and Korean cooking. This is most obvious when it comes to kimchi (which people typically make at home traditionally--including possibly even a majority of people families in Seoul still today--possibly). However, it extends to a lot of other food stuffs, as well.

Of course, although household economics was the original economics--including the economics of Ancient Greeks like Aristotle--contemporary economics doesn't consider household economics to be economic activity. The reason is because anything which does not include measurable assessed transactions are not counted.

The bottom line is that no one among commentators in the public space genuinely knows the condition of the North Korean economy with respect to matters like food assurance.

An ethnic-Korean friend of mine from Yanbian visited North Korea on a Chinese tour a few years ago. I was in Beijing studying Chinese at the time, and wished--at the time--that I would have joined.

She didn't say anything unique really with respect to her experiences. Just that the guided tours were a good experience, basically. The one thing she did say was her Korean ability (native-level proficiency) allowed her to converse easily, like with shop keepers at the hotel, and that this was interesting. Essentially, she seemed to just said they offered her deals and stuff like that.

[Atlantis]

The Korean people have weathered bitter winters since time immemorial. The preservation of foods which are rich in nutrients is ingrained in Korean culture and Korean cooking. This is most obvious when it comes to kimchi (which people typically make at home traditionally--including possibly even a majority of people families in Seoul still today--possibly). However, it extends to a lot of other food stuffs, as well.

Of course, although household economics was the original economics--including the economics of Ancient Greeks like Aristotle--contemporary economics doesn't consider household economics to be economic activity. The reason is because anything which does not include measurable assessed transactions are not counted.

An entire people can live by subsistence farming, but subsistence farming cannot produce the surplus necessary for running a modern state. Even NK has the need to produce a surplus for financing its administration and military in addition to the nuclear and missile programs. How many sacks of potatoes do you have to sell to earn the surplus for building an intercontinental missile?

And the elite has developed expensive tastes. Kim attended a Swiss boarding school under a false identity. Among his teachers he was known as a likable and easygoing kid. What made him stand out from the other students where his expensive designer cloths.

Being virtually excluded from international trade, buying all those things they cannot feasibly produce themselves (Kim likes his Smartphone) is very expensive, and to obtaining foreign currency is even harder.

[Crantag]

An entire people can live by subsistence farming, but subsistence farming cannot produce the surplus necessary for running a modern state. Even NK has the need to produce a surplus for financing its administration and military in addition to the nuclear and missile programs. How many sacks of potatoes do you have to sell to earn the surplus for building an intercontinental missile?

And the elite has developed expensive tastes. Kim attended a Swiss boarding school under a false identity. Among his teachers he was known as a likable and easygoing kid. What made him stand out from the other students where his expensive designer cloths.

Being virtually excluded from international trade, buying all those things they cannot feasibly produce themselves (Kim likes his Smartphone) is very expensive, and to obtaining foreign currency is even harder.

I was specifically talking about the false-narrative that North Korea is typified by a state of mass starvation.

I am well aware Kim Jung Un was educated in Switzerland, and I find it pretty insignificant, except in the formative international cultural education and language education, which do consequently make up a part of Un's profile.

I don't buy the notion that Kim Jung Il's Hennessy budget or Kim Jung Un's smartphone budget are significant to the conversation of North Korean international exchange.

On the grade-school level ignorance front, we learned recently from CNN that North Korea is exchanging fish for ducats to be used in nuclear arms production!!!

North Korea is dodging sanctions with fish and front firms in Mozambique

There source? 'US officials'.

Quite a scoop from a British CNN correspondent!

North Korea hawks don't live in the real world.

[annatar1914]

I was specifically talking about the false-narrative that North Korea is typified by a state of mass starvation.

I am well aware Kim Jung Un was educated in Switzerland, and I find it pretty insignificant, except in the formative international cultural education and language education, which do consequently make up a part of Un's profile.

I don't buy the notion that Kim Jung Il's Hennessy budget or Kim Jung Un's smartphone budget are significant to the conversation of North Korean international exchange.

On the grade-school level ignorance front, we learned recently from CNN that North Korea is exchanging fish for ducats to be used in nuclear arms production!!!

North Korea is dodging sanctions with fish and front firms in Mozambique

There source? 'US officials'.

Quite a scoop from a British CNN correspondent!

North Korea hawks don't live in the real world.

They live in a real world where the Plutocratic interests they shill for know that North Korea is sitting unhelpfully on about 15 trillion USD worth of mineral and other resources which haven't been exploited plundered to keep Global Capitalism afloat. They are running out of options and out of time, Capital hasn't entirely recovered from near collapse in 2008, and so war is needed desperately to keep the books balanced in the black.

[Atlantis]

@Crantag, I grew up near the iron curtain during the cold war. The propaganda machines of the two sides painted the picture of two parallel universes even when they were reporting on the same events. That made me immune to propaganda and left a deep impression of the relative veracity of all narratives. I have seen the barbed wires that enclosed whole nations in an open air prison and the dead bodies of those shot between the fences and the watch towers. Still today, a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we can witness the tortured souls of the nations that had to endure the repression of totalitarian police states, the people of which now turn to racist hatred, fascism and historical revisionism.

Since I have started the study of Oriental cultures nearly half a century ago, I have seen one generation of students after the other blindly fall for the lies of totalitarian regimes while being fiercely critical of their own liberal traditions. Europe’s intellectual elite, left-wing students, marched through the streets of the continent waving Mao’s little red book at a time they could have known about the terrible price the Chinese had to pay for the cultural revolution and Mao’s failed economic policies.

Nor are these deluded kids a new phenomenon. Already Voltaire, one of the greatest minds of European emancipation, fell for the narrative of the “enlightened Chinese regime” as role model for Europe, while the full knowledge of the terror of Chinese regimes would have made the blood curdle even in the worst of Europe’s tyrants. To his defence it has to be said that he relied on the thin trickle of information the Jesuits communicated back home in their lettres curieux about the céleste empire. The Internet generation has no such excuses.

While I hate the lies of the Yankee imperialists, I also know that the deepest hell is reserved for those who repeat the lies of totalitarian regimes that deprive their people not only of economic prosperity but of every means for personal self-fulfilment, even though they themselves grew up with all the privileges of freedom and prosperity.

NK is a basket case by any standard. By comparison, the former communist dictatorship of the GDR was an enlightened regime and paradise on Earth.

[Crantag]

@Atlantis, thank you for that strawman attack (which it was nothing other than).

But I don't got time, I'm on my way to China in two-days time (moving there, that is). Things to do.

My approach is merely practical. And is informed with deep experience living in East Asia, knowing East Asians, and achieving the ability to speak, read and write East Asian languages.

But it can be fun indeed to reminisce about old times.

My stances expressed in here are primarily informed by my opposition to the impulses from some in the US, as well as West Europe, etc., to want to commit nuclear genocide on the Korean Peninsula.

Take your strawman and go home because I am not just some geek off the street, partner.