This just in: North Korea to End armistice!

[Edan]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
If Carter wasn't appointed/authorised by the US administration, why would Kim bothered to talk with him

... like Castro...

[DinoDoc]

How typical of UR to ignore the cites he asked for.

[Ramo]

Kim is definitely not sane. We're caving into every demand of a lunatic and militarily attacking without good reason a rational leader. Gotta love US foreign policy.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
How typical of UR to ignore the cites he asked for.

Igonre what cites?

[Q Classic]

Korean War didn't fix a damn thing. DPRK was still communist. RoK was still a dictator proppe up by the US military machine. Exactly the way it had been before the war.

it didn't really fix anything, but at least it ameliorated an already fvcked up situation.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
it didn't really fix anything, but at least it ameliorated an already fvcked up situation.

How? Not that the RoK became democratic or something.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Frogger
What are you on about, sweetheart?

NK has fully functional uranium-separation facilities and breeder reactors.

The IAEA has been inside them. As soon as NK puts its mind to it, nuclear weapons become very easy to obtain. Just from this knowledge it's impossible to tell you whether or not they've actually built a nuke, but for the CIA to tell people that they have is a lot more credible than for them to tell people that Saddam, for instance has built one.

I would think that given NK's past it wouldn't shrink from actually carrying through and building a nuke.

Forgive me, I was actually being sarcastic in both posts.

[Robert]

korea isn't an island.

I know it's a semi-island, or whatever it's named in english.

the threat of america was what protected skorea, not the americans themselves.

the americans have physically been fighting against the communists.

without america, the entire region of ne asia wouldn't be fvcked up

It's not the USA that made a mess of the regio,
it's Japan and the 2nd world war who did that.
It's actually the USA who liberated much people from the empire of the sun. Together with the english, the chinese and the russians.

Of course the mess couldn't be fixed easily, for sure since the solution must be agreed upon by both capitalists and communists.

Pherhaps with the knowledge of current time we can conclude that better solutions could be made,
but during that period the world was just liberated from the germans and the japanese.


The world was a mess, and you can't blame the liberators that they didn't fix it at once.
Of course they made mistakes, but you can hardly blame them for that in that situation.

another dumb american fvck decides it's a good idea to pull out of korea: and, lo and behold, here come the bastard commies with that godawful war

What do you expect?
That the americans should have protected about the entire world in those days?
You can't blame the americans for this. It's logical that at one point in time they get their soldiers back.
NK is to blame for invading SK immediately.

a stalemate is formed, and the negotiations for the armistice is spread between four parties: the ussr, red china, nkorea, and the us. skorea isn't at the table at all

As far as I can see SK was very happy with the stalemate in those days. I can understand that they grow weary of it current time, since they long for peace.

But again, in those days the stalemate was the most that could be reached. Don't blame the americans again for the communistic agression.

It's not the USA who were expansionistic, NK was (is) expansionistic.
All the americans did was protecting SK.
Pherhaps mistakes have been made, I can't deny that.

But it's so easy to judge on actions of those days with the knowledge of today.

Urban Ranger

You're no serious party to debate with.
I actually start to wonder if you're not just one big fat troll.
I seriously regret all the time I have spent debating with you in the past. The more I you open your mouth, the less symphaty and respect I have for you.

It's a pitty, things have been different in the past.
I wish the days would come back in which you were a respected person to disagree with.

What happened to you?

[Q Classic]

ur:

How? Not that the RoK became democratic or something.

it did turn democratic. just over 40 years later. what i mean is that if america hadn't decided to share korea with the soviets and just taken it all by itself, the korean war would've never happened. we wouldn't be dealing with the "dear leader". america going in to fight the war was at least helping to fix a situation they fubared in.

cybershy:

I know it's a semi-island, or whatever it's named in english.

peninsula.
japan = islands.
korea = peninsula.

the americans have physically been fighting against the communists.

as were the skoreans; but for the past 50 years or so, there have only been roughly 37k americans, and no "hot" war has been fought in korea since. 37k americans don't protect 44million koreans, esp. when skorea has 600k soldiers on the border as well, on and around the tripwire.
the threat of america is what stopped the nkoreans: if american blood is spilled, usually america comes in and wipes the floor with whoever spilled it. the 37k americans were a psychological defense and investment; 37k amis v. 1million nkoreans would not result in victory for the amis.

It's not the USA that made a mess of the regio,
it's Japan and the 2nd world war who did that.
It's actually the USA who liberated much people from the empire of the sun. Together with the english, the chinese and the russians.
Of course the mess couldn't be fixed easily, for sure since the solution must be agreed upon by both capitalists and communists.
Pherhaps with the knowledge of current time we can conclude that better solutions could be made,
but during that period the world was just liberated from the germans and the japanese.
The world was a mess, and you can't blame the liberators that they didn't fix it at once.
Of course they made mistakes, but you can hardly blame them for that in that situation.

the us did make a mess of the region. korea would have never been annexed in such a fasion if roosevelt hadn't such a ondescending view of it:

Throughout the war President Theodore Roosevelt remained solidly behind Japan’s sphere of influence over all of Korea.  To him, Korea was absolutely Japan’s.  “T.R.” felt this way because he believed that Korea was helpless as a nation and its people could not adequately govern themselves.  He also felt that Japan could not afford to see Korea in the hands of a strong foreign power, and Russia was still regarded as being such a power.  In January 1905, Roosevelt told his ailing Secretary of State John Hay that the “United States could not strike one blow in their own defense.”  For this and other reasons, he saw the United States with no practical options in 1905 but to accede to agreements made between Japan and Korea in February and August 1905, that gave Japan a modified protectorate over Korea with the right to appoint financial and diplomatic advisors for the Korean government and its king.  Before that year had ended, Japan had taken over all of Korea’s foreign relations and in 1910 had annexed her as a part of Japan, even more than just a colony.

President Theodore Roosevelt’s White House Years (1901?1909): When Sweet Relations Between The United States And Japan Turned Sour
japan screwed up korea before ww2, cyber- ever since 1905, when the annexation resulted in what amounted to a nation-wide concentration and labor camp for the extermin- i mean, "assimilation"- of the korean people into the greater japanese empire.
the chinese did little to defeat the empire other than act as an asian russia--bog down much of the enemy army, and die in great droves.
as for liberation, what motive could america have for splitting korea? none. the soviet union came in at the request of the americans at one of the last conferences held with the big three. the soviets did nothing in asia against japan; they were no liberators.
all i'm saying is that one can hold the us responsible for destroying korea twice over. once through japan, and once through the korean war. and only the latter korean war is the one i can thank the us for.

What do you expect?
That the americans should have protected about the entire world in those days?
You can't blame the americans for this. It's logical that at one point in time they get their soldiers back.
NK is to blame for invading SK immediately.

not what i'm saying. what i mean is that the us pulled out of skorea, fully knowing that the skorean army couldn't fight back a drunken tiger.

As far as I can see SK was very happy with the stalemate in those days. I can understand that they grow weary of it current time, since they long for peace.

as far as you can see? from what? every single source one reads about the korean war is that the koreans were frustrated by the division; neither side wanted a stalemate. both wanted victory, and total unification. armistice was brought to the table not by the koreas, but by the soviets and the americans. and at least the soviets had the common courtesy of inviting the nkoreans to the discussion table to help hammer out their future. the us didn't so much as offer an observer's seat to skorea.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Urban Ranger

You're no serious party to debate with.
I actually start to wonder if you're not just one big fat troll.
I seriously regret all the time I have spent debating with you in the past. The more I you open your mouth, the less symphaty and respect I have for you.

Com'on, go ahead and pick apart my argument if you will. Granted, this region is massively complicated - not even the locals have a good understanding of its history and various interactions, and we started studying this stuff when we were kids. It's little wonder that foreigners have a hard time to tell what's going on, that's not hard to realise. But please, don't come in with guns ablazing while your eyes are blindfolded.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
it did turn democratic. just over 40 years later.

Oh fine, be that way

Originally posted by Q Cubed
what i mean is that if america hadn't decided to share korea with the soviets and just taken it all by itself, the korean war would've never happened. we wouldn't be dealing with the "dear leader". america going in to fight the war was at least helping to fix a situation they fubared in.

It wasn't possible. The Soviets came in full force chasing the IJA out of Manchuria. During the war, old Kim was part of the CCP forces in the region. After Japan surrendered, he left for Korea to start his own revolution.

In fact, I am not sure if the Korean War did any good at all. Who knows if it's not better to let the communists took over?

Originally posted by Q Cubed
none. the soviet union came in at the request of the americans at one of the last conferences held with the big three. the soviets did nothing in asia against japan; they were no liberators.

Not true, they drove the IJA out of Manchuria as I pointed out, and made it impossible for the Japanese to mount a resistance from Korea in the eventuality that Japan falls to the Allies.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
CyberShy:
you're correct about Kim Jong Il being a lunatic.
but:


•korea isn't an island.
•the threat of america was what protected skorea, not the americans themselves.
•without america, the entire region of ne asia wouldn't be fvcked up:
-perry helps forces open japan causing it to modernize, and some other dude does it to korea
-a modernized japan gets a "gentleman's agreement" from dear old teddy roosevelt, which results in the annexation of korea
-some dumb american foreign policy fvck decides it's a good idea to split korea with the soviets when japan falls
-another dumb american fvck decides it's a good idea to pull out of korea: and, lo and behold, here come the bastard commies with that godawful war
-macarthur manages to beat them back, for a while, then the damned chinese come in
-a stalemate is formed, and the negotiations for the armistice is spread between four parties: the ussr, red china, nkorea, and the us. skorea isn't at the table at all
-the war stops
-and the rest is history

Q Cubed, Here is a bit from the Enclyopedia Britannica on what happened in '45.

"Throughout the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, U.S. military leaders insisted on encouraging Soviet entry into the war against Japan. [In retrospect, a gigantic mistake.] The Soviet military leaders asked their U.S. counterparts about invading Korea, and the Americans replied that such an expedition would not be practicable until after a successful landing had taken place on the Japanese mainland. The ensuing Potsdam Declaration included the statement that “the terms of the Cairo Declaration,” which promised Korea its independence, “shall be carried out.” In the terms of its entry into the war against Japan on August 8, the U.S.S.R. pledged to support the independence of Korea. On the following day Soviet troops went into action in Manchuria and landed on the northern tip of Korea.

The General Order No. 1, drafted on August 11 by the United States for Japanese surrender terms in Korea, provided for Japanese forces north of latitude 38° N (the 38th parallel ) to surrender to the Soviets and those south of that line to the Americans. Stalin did not object to the contents of the order, and on September 8 American troops landed in southern Korea, almost a month after the first Soviet entry. On the following day the United States received the Japanese surrender in Seoul. There were now two zones—northern and southern—for the Soviets had already begun to seal off the 38th parallel.

The historic decision to divide the peninsula has aroused speculation on several counts. Some historians attribute the division of Korea to military expediency in receiving the Japanese surrender, while others believe that the decision was a measure to prevent the Soviet forces from occupying the whole of Korea. Since U.S. policy toward Korea during World War II had aimed to prevent any single power's domination of Korea, it may be reasonably concluded that the principal reason for the division was to stop the Soviet advance south of the 38th parallel."

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
In fact, I am not sure if the Korean War did any good at all. Who knows if it's not better to let the communists took over?

/me looks at the DPRK

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Demerzel
Maybe if the EU was there, then we wouldn't have had Bush shouting his mouth off about North Korea being part of an axis of evil and thus the thawing of relations between North and South Korea could have kept happening.

Ned's bizarre aside aside, the real villains in this drama are not the Bush administration who knew before the election (as did anyone with decent access to intel) that the NKs were in violation of the '94 agreements. The principal morons were the Clinton administration and Kim (of SK) and his "Sunshine Policy". These agreements were violated every moment from the time they were signed, as indeed the armistace has been for 50 years now.

Clinton and Kim (SK) knew what was happening, but once their policy was set preferred to pretend that all was well, in the face of plenty of evidence to the contrary. I learned about this because there were so many leaks from those who knew exactly what sort of sham was being put forward for the temporary political advantage of their Chief Executives.

Well, play time is over and I'm glad that the U.S. at least has a leader who has been willing to tell the truth about the situation since the campaign, while Clinton was still trying to bribe his way into one final bit of glory in his last week in office. Hopefully the new South Korean administration is more serious than they have heretofore seemed. If not, we should let them work it out themselves and move our forces (and nuclear umbrella) to Japan and let them give peace a chance until the cows come home.

[Ned]

Sikander, I don't think asking the UN and the EU to help police the 38th parallel is "bizzare." As it is, it is our ass on the line when they, the UN and the EU, could be dictating sanctions against NK. (We could always veto such a move to sanctions, but that would boggle even my mind.)

The defense of South Korea began as a UN venture and it should become one again, IMHO.

In contrast, if it is only the US, SK and Japan who are at risk here, we alone should be calling the shots, not the UN.

But the matter has now been referred to the SC. Peace is again at risk.