astral-collapse:

A couple of snapshots of North Korea. The difference between the typical city and plain environments of North Korea compared to those of the Western world is vast.

I met a couple a few days ago who had traveled to North Korea. They let a certain number of tourists in. Journalists typically love to dramatize their stays, and like to depict the police state aspect of it. 

The couple themselves said that you could definitely notice it in Pyongyang, which was why they were rather glad to get out into the countryside. Their impression of the countryside was that what they saw wasn’t particularly worse than, say, rural China. 

They also found that their guide was much more flexible out of the city, and they were able to diverge a little from the strict route. 

Sometimes it pays to remember that journalists want to get read, and sometimes will exaggerate aspects of their material in order to get that. North Korea is crazy enough as it is without encouragement from international journalists. 

geopolit:

I have been working on this map, collecting news articles and documenting trends over the past couple years, and was surprised when it revealed that the world is deeply divided by two major spheres of influence that dominate and dictate global affairs.

The two major organizations at the center of this are NATO, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) headed by Russia and China. Both are military organizations with each member state promising to protect each others interests and come to aid in the event of war.

This setup creates an interesting situation whereby, at its most basic level, if any two nations from differing alliances go to war, it has the potential, through the domino effect, to bring war to every continent of the world. It is this fear of global conflict that creates such tension points as North and South Korea, Israel and Iran and Pakistan and India.

Ultimately, the global powers of the United States, Russia and China don’t want to go to war but neither is willing to cave to the influence of the other. This simple division of the world helps to explain almost every decision made on the global stage in recent years and will be a good prediction of how nations will interact in the years to come.

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Soo… I’m curious about a few things: 

Firstly, I really don’t think it’s possible to divide the world so neatly into spheres of influence. Not only is it no longer the Cold War Era, but every country frankly has rather complicated politics. I have personal experience in some of these countries, and quite honestly South East Asia, for example, is divided between being in China’s bed as it rises or banding together to resist its influence. 

Vietnam, in particular, has had a hard time warming up to China because, well, China invaded it several times. They haven’t forgotten that. 

Turkey might not be all that approving of its European allies but it IS still part of NATO. It’s certainly not closer to China than it is to the West. 

What is Belarus doing there in blue at all? Last I checked… Luvchenko was anything but pro-Western. 

Also, Africa is really not so cut-and-dry… 

Basically saying, countries may not be pro-Western but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily pro-China. 

In any case, with development going so fast in so many countries, analysts are still leaning towards a multipolar world. where America is the strongest of several strong nations all with their own spheres of influence. Although the BRIC idea is losing tract, other predictions haven’t quite nudged it off the pedestal… and yet it still poses an interesting hypothetical future. 

Extra 3: Kim Jong Un

By Stephen Haggard:

Whatever the opposite of the Midas touch is, North Korea’s leaders seem to have it. Located in a region where all of its neighbors have experienced remarkable economic growth, the North Korean economy has stagnated for more than two decades. For the last several years, the North Korea leadership has promised a new dawn of prosperity by April 15, 2012, the 100th birthday of the country’s founding leader Kim Il Sung. Instead, the country has bounced from an avoidable famine in the mid-1990s to a disastrous currency reform in 2009 to a costly — and failed — missile launch earlier this week. The country now has an annual per capita income of about $1,000, roughly the same as Pakistan. Did it have to be this way?

At the start of 2012, here are the four countries we all need to watch closely: Italy, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea.

picturesofwar:

A North Korean soldier points a gun at the photographer on the banks of the Yalu River near Sinuiju, across from Dandong, China.”

April 15, 2009.

That’s a link to book a tour to North Korea for Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday. 

No kidding. 

inothernews:

North Korean defectors who live in South Korea prepare to fly balloons carrying anti-North Korea leaflets near the demilitarised zone which separates the two countries. The slogans on the balloons read “Liberate North Korean compatriots”, “Terminate three generations of hereditary power transfer”, “Go to hell, Kim Jong-il”, “No condolence call for devil” and “North Koreans, rise up”.  (Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters via the Telegraph)

Life is really hard for North Koreans who get away. They’re totally unprepared for life outside and have a crazy time adjusting. Not just that, but South Korean companies are disinclined to help them out because they tend to need so much handholding and re-training. 

The fact that North Korea is poor is only the start of the huge humanitarian crisis that it is waiting to happen. Re-education into a capitalist, democratic system is going to be hell. At least Eastern Europe and Russia had smuggled jeans and LPs and some ideas of how it worked in the West. North Koreans get nothing. 

And you know, I think they’re right to. 

The Obama administration is making lots of smart decisions where it has to. Involving congress on areas of importance, in recent years, has only slowed it down and opened it up to complete misunderstanding. 

Look at the intervention in the Congo. How can people criticize sending a low-cost, smart operation to hunt down torturers, slavers and child abusers? 

Yet they do. 

Reading the new Wikileaks intercepted diplomatic cables about various ideas and plans to do with “What to do about North Korea?” is really interesting.

From these cables, it seems that the different various actors are considering what to do if (or rather, when) North Korea collapses, and how viable a united Korea would be.

Indeed, there’s the very interesting tidbit:

Chun argued that, in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly “not welcome” any U.S. military presence north of the DMZ. XXXXXXXXXXXX Chun XXXXXXXXXXXX  said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a “benign alliance” — as long as Korea was not hostile towards China.

An interesting point to make about the current crisis.

Though easily the most amusing bit is the last line:

“On the other hand, Sarah Palin’s proposed Nixon-to-China gambit of switching sides in the Korean conflict has been insufficiently explored. If anybody can pull it off, she can.”

I was going through Steam today and discovered a fairly newly promoted game “Homefront.” I’m always a bit interested to see games developed with modern-ish military concepts in mind, and clicked to find out more.

The advertising includes that the story was penned by the same writer who gave us the movie “Red Dawn,” which makes it suddenly unsurprising. It can’t actually be very long since it was conceived, despite the engine and graphics being rather far along, because it directly relates to certain news items right now.

However, although of course it’s promotional material, the game goes on to say the player will “Discover a terrifyingly plausible near-future world – the familiar has become alien in this nightmare vision of Occupied USA.”

That just horrifies me. That it’s “plausible.” The very first premise that the Koreas would unite is just stupid. South Koreans would never take it. The new generation of Koreans who grew up in a new world without the global fear of Communism doesn’t care as much about lost family members from the war. They would fight, and they would resist. Reunification would not be a willing choice for the South, and the US would not diplomatically just let it happen.

And the US would not abandon its bases in Japan and so on, not with that supposed situation. And the idea of Japan “surrendering” to Korea is just silly. I don’t think Japan, even if it were forced to act independently, would fall to that. Not to mention that the South Korean economy would cripple itself trying to support the north if they DID reunite… And even working together wouldn’t stand a hope against the rest.

And the idea of quick conquests of big countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia is just play silly. Probably that includes Malaysia and Singapore too. It’s not just to say that these are militarily strong countries, but they’re also strategically very difficult, with huge populations and mixed levels of developing infrastructure and jungle environment. And all of them have the equally capable will to resist a foreign occupier.

The US would have to be rather stupid and powerless to let that global situation get to a point where they’re being invaded by a tiny country like Korea. And China wouldn’t accept that situation either. It’s not the 1970s anymore, and Communists wouldn’t simply stand with other Communists.

The ironic thing is that although “Red Dawn” was a ridiculous story, it was a fun movie and achieved cult classic status. There are a lot of silly people out there who might believe that this story really is plausible.

To you, dear gamers, I tell you simply: It is not.