China's decision is the fulcrum in this situation. They can threaten to stop propping up the regime and exert a certain amount of control over it. But both Kim Jong Il and China know that Kim is the kind of guy to fire off a nuke if there is little chance of him living the rest of his life in opulent splendour.
If they keep on propping up it's regime undoubtedly Kim will try to maintain his leverage.
I think China should use what influence it has to integrate North Korea and China and to encourage Kim to open up his economy. China will do all the work preventing foreigners from disgruntling his military whilst Kim can make a little money on the side. The reasonning being, sure he has nukes, but he wants the same thing as everyone else. So why not show him the benefits of making his populace more valuable.
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Anonymous2006-10-10 23:21
Rofl, China doesn't have anything to gain from helping N.K. they could nuke Korea to oblivion if it ever tried anything, and more likely N.K. would attack S.K. or Japan, it doesn't stand a snowball against China militarily.
But yeah, China holds the cards on this, whether Kim Jong Il decides to do something gloriously stupid is going to be determined by how China reacts to his nuclear ambitions.
Kim Jong Il is getting kinda old though, he might try to die in a blaze of glory...
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Anonymous2006-10-11 0:38
This is why Japan hates koreans. they're a bunch of stupid assholes.
Koreans have a reason to be stupid asshole. I love Japan, like a good closet weeaboo should, but to be fair Japan did start the entire modern east-asian conflict.
>>6 Who cares who started it, what matters is who resolves the damn issue.
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Anonymous2006-10-11 20:11
>>7
Punishing those who started it to serve as a warning to others.
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Anonymous2006-10-12 12:06
>>2
He said it. There really is very little incentive for China to change the status quo on the peninsula. In fact, the ONLY incentive is that the situation puts some amount of U.S. and international pressure onto China.
In other words, a true resolution of this situation pretty much means regime change, and therefore, regime change in a neighboring state needs to look better to China than letting NK remain nuclear. That's what the international community somehow has to impress on China's government. A tall order, certainly, since it would mean taking on a whole assload of refugees.
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Anonymous2006-10-12 13:45
>>9
The world would help China do that. They might even be able to corrupt out a profit.
I think it has been established why there had not been a thread on this subject before this one.
I'M CHARGIN' MY GREAT LEADER!
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Anonymous2006-10-15 15:15
>>1
No one cares about North Korea, or intends to volunteer to fight there. Air raids and bombing campains are of limited utility without boots on the ground.
The shit here is that three countries: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all have the required amount of plutonium and technology build a nuclear arsenal too within one year and if one of them decides to do so after deciding that North Korea has gone too far, you all know what is gonna happen. There's gonna be a big ass nuke race in Eastern Asia that will only lead to more and more firepower and tensions between the countries. North Korea's leaders gotta realize that they aren't going anywhere except their own doom with their people dying of starvation and whole country falling apart.
Also, you can't blame China. What's gonna happen if North Korea falls or the people give up? Ok, there's gonna be 15 million new North Koreans rushing over the border to China! And they ain't got no food for their families so they will be like Vikings roaming over the towns in Northern China, not much for the police to do either when theres millions of Koreans running around.
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Anonymous2006-10-18 23:34
>>25
Yes, the US needs to start whooping some asses. We know how crazy AZNs can get.
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Anonymous2006-10-19 1:44
You just need to kill 1% of North Koreans that made the other 99% of North Koreans crazy and insane altogether. That 1% is the North Korean version of high-class figures like cadre of the KWP, military officers, and industrial experts.
It's hard to believe that the DoD didn't see this coming when they decided to up the US's commitment in the middle-east back in 2002, while NK was boasting about nukes. Afganistan maybe the States could have handled, and still had enough of a presence in East Asia to prevent the leadership in NK from thinking that they could push their luck without worrying about a ground or air reprisal.
Until this week, it was still an option for the Nations of Free East Asia to invade NK or launch an air strike and reheat the stalemate that was the Korean War.
It would probably have left most of South Korea in devastation, not to mention destroy most of the economic progress that SK has made in the past 30 years. No wonder the South Koreans strongly opposed any sort of invasion of North Korea during these last 5 years. It would be a difficult pill for me to swallow as well, since I have so many friends in Seoul. But I would have put my own life on the line for the defence of South Korea and Japan and Taiwan, and may yet still end up doing so.
I could never say the same for the middle east, because there was never a free nation to save there to begin with. One of the greatest (and there are so sooo many) failings of the present United States leadership was their decision to try to expand the frontiers of freedom and democracy, while not giving due attention to the lands that already have it, and need the US's help to keep it.
North Korea can't yet shoot their nukes to anywhere, they can just drop them off planes but dropping a nuke from a plane hasn't been a viable option since 1970's.
Also North Korea's nukes currently suck ass. One of their crazy 2 kiloton nukes would destroy 5% of a city sized Seoul. Maybe even less. INVADE NK NOW NOT AFTER THEY CAN SHOOT BIG NUKES OVERSEAS.
>>31
Not sure how you expect to get China to invade it.
This time around, their party olligarchy has managed to select much more intelligent leaders than our republican democracy.
They aren't stupid enough to put ground troops into a country that primarily is a threat to it's 3 greatest regional economic rivals (Japan, South Korea, and the USA). It's not their problem as much as it is the problem of these three countries. We have a snowball's chance of getting China to invade NK. China's place at the bargaining table will only be an extention of NK's pattern escalation of crisis in exchange for meeting demands.
If we rely on China to get us out of this, they'll probably cheat all of us into signing some sort of "Taiwan is Territory of the Peoples Republic of China" resolution.
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Anonymous2006-10-27 20:35
Seriously, fuck Taiwan, it's small potatoes to SK and Japan.
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Anonymous2006-10-28 17:16
It's the number 3 stable democracy in East Asia, a landmass that's kind of short on them. Besides, how the hell are the U.S., Europe, Japan, and S.K. supposed to compete with a united China? It's bad enough they got Hong Kong back, and that they have all the mineral resources of Tibet to plunder. Keeping Taiwan free is one of the few bulwarks we have against an all-powerful China in East Asia.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I halfway want to say that China has been in cahoots with North Korea from the begining of all this, because together they can get concessions from the freeworld. It just looks so much more convincing if China "persuades" N.K. to stand down, than if N.K. itself standsdown from it's own drummed up crisis.
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Anti-Chan.2006-10-28 17:58
LOL. Why would China invade their own puppet state? Everyone knows who runs the show in North Korea. Have any of you picked up a history book lately? Do you even remember what the Korean war was about? Come on. China can't just "Put NK in check". China is North Korea.
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Anonymous2006-10-29 7:46
Glad to see that Anti-chan finally agrees with something Anonymous says, instead of being an annoying, combatitive tripfag as normal.
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Anonymous2006-11-01 14:42
LOL CHINA, THE ONLY "SOLDIERS" THEY HAVE ARE WOW AND FFXI GOLD FARMERS!! WHAT ARE THEY GONNA DO, STICK A VIRITUAL SWORD IN NK'S THROAT?! OH MY, CRITICAL HIT FIREBALL, YAY!