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How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

mydiplomaticlife.com

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Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#51

Post by rtkwe »

Windchaser wrote: post #39
samlinnfer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korean has won, once they had nukes and ICBMs they became untouchable.

tbf, they already had artillery pointed at 10 million people, enough to commit an atrocity. The nukes were just the frosting on the cake.

Nuclear weapons and ICMBs that can deliver them to the US makes the threat more meaningful too. There was always the chance that a Trump-like president would decide a few days of shells raining down in Seoul while we hunted NK's artillery positions would be worth getting rid of NK. Road mobile ICBMs that can deliver a nuke to the US mainland removes that option unless they're REALLY REALLY strong believers in the 44 GBIs sitting in Alaska. (Ignoring their shoddy track record and the fact we only have 44 and usually shoot 2-4 at each missile)

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#52

Post by rtkwe »

totetsu wrote: post #16

Seems like every other post from this site is [dead]

The HN and Reddit hug of death is very real. Getting traction on either can direct an overwhelming firehose of traffic at sites that were never designed to scale up because they're minor personal blogs or projects.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#54

Post by orbital-decay »

zerr wrote: post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

Depending on who "we" are, "we" are the reason it exists and are contributing to its stability, never giving a shit about people or any suffering.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#55

Post by peppersghost93 »

zerr wrote: post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

Nukes. And honestly man the last time the US intervened in NK we didn't leave a building taller than 2 stories standing and killed 25% of their population. I'm absolutely certain an intervention from us would be worse for NK citizens than their current government.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#56

Post by UnfitFootprint »

alberto_ol wrote: post #38
sgjohnson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was fascinated to learn while visiting they consider themselves ‘at war’ fun fact, Japan and Russia are technically in a state of war too. The World War II hasn't ended. They have never signed a treaty over the Kuril Islands, and they both claim them.

According to wikipedia "Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 but did not sign a peace treaty." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_Joint_...

I would so love to visit, but I read an increase in tensions a few years ago caused a tourism stoppage

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#57

Post by pizza234 »

throwaw12 wrote: post #42
josefresco wrote: post #5

Most interesting observation: > When serving in Iraq or Iran, my biggest fear in those places was always the threat of physical harm, be it ambushes on our person or vehicles, being kidnapped, rocket or mortar attacks on our embassy or accommodation. There were close shaves and the threat and the fear never left you in all of these places. But as far as life in North Korea was concerned, there were none of these fear…

Why is it interesting observation? When one invades the country, they of course won't feel safety (like in Iraq), but when they dont invade country, of course it feels safe, because no one is bombing and shooting locals

NK is politically aligned with the red countries, and positioned against US. Especially after the Otto Warmbier accident, some believe that Americans/Westerners in NK are in constant danger (my opinion: O.W. did something stupid while drunk; the accusations were obviously fabricated but the incident was not unprovoked), so to those, it may seem surprising that somebody can feel safe there.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#58

Post by somenameforme »

zerr wrote: post #19

Why do we keep tolerating that regime which makes 26 mln people suffer? Why can't we do Operation a la Maduro there?

Venezuela was much more like a coup than a military action. The military didn't meaningfully resist, anti-air weaponry did not fire - and the US knew it wasn't going to fire because otherwise there would've been choppers getting fragged left and right. And then we kind of waved off that Nobel Prize winner lady who wanted war, to say nothing of the Guido guy, let Maduro's VP take over, and she instantly become a US puppet but otherwise kept Maduroing along as usual. Interestingly her father was killed by the Venezuelan intelligence services, which was created by Chavez, and Maduro was Chavez's hand-picked successor. She sounds kind of like a Gorbachev, whose formative years were spent under the joys of Stalin. Consequences of bad actions can, and often do, manifest only decades later.

Anyhow, point being - you're not going to get anything like that in most countries. Iran should make that clear enough. North Korea is orders of magnitude stronger than Iran, and Iran is already basically unbeatable simply because they were prepared for a decapitation strike which is pretty much our only card - Americans would never tolerate a real ground war which would entail hundreds of thousands dying. And this is all just ignoring the fact that North Korea also has nuclear weapons.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#59

Post by cyanydeez »

pizza234 wrote: post #57
throwaw12 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it interesting observation? When one invades the country, they of course won't feel safety (like in Iraq), but when they dont invade country, of course it feels safe, because no one is bombing and shooting locals

NK is politically aligned with the red countries, and positioned against US. Especially after the Otto Warmbier accident, some believe that Americans/Westerners in NK are in constant danger (my opinion: O.W. did something stupid while drunk; the accusations were obviously fabricated but the incident was not unprovoked), so to those, it may seem surprising that somebody can feel safe there.

It also starves its citizens in all manner of ways.

If the current US admin could do this, they would.

Re: How to Survive 3 Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

#60

Post by fragmede »

cyanydeez wrote: post #59
pizza234 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NK is politically aligned with the red countries, and positioned against US. Especially after the Otto Warmbier accident, some believe that Americans/Westerners in NK are in constant danger (my opinion: O.W. did something stupid while drunk; the accusations were obviously fabricated but the incident was not unprovoked), so to those, it may seem surprising that somebody can feel safe there.

It also starves its citizens in all manner of ways. If the current US admin could do this, they would.

What did you think that bit with the eggs was about?
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