The Official North Korea Thread (DPRK)

[djpayload]

well see if this happens...

[montyburnz]

Special report about the struggles of young
North Korean defectors. Raw stuff.

ttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/magazine/27KOREA.html

[yangnome]

Originally posted by puppy fields
I'm probally wrong, but I also read that N. Korea has more troops than the US. That's all the US troops in the world not just in s.korea.

You are correct

[yangnome]

no reason to have a bad feeling about it. Its all a game of saber rattling that they've played for a long long time.

[key_loser]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...r_030609154015

this is off mainstream news, so the wording is pretty pro-america, but it drives the point home

[xsk8teboyx]

yeh they have more troops...it's not how many troops you have...it's can you actually feed all of them.

Originally posted by puppy fields
Interesting. I read that the US will also be pulling troop out of Japan and move them to much more "hot spots" in Asia.

I'm probally wrong, but I also read that N. Korea has more troops than the US. That's all the US troops in the world not just in s.korea.

[yangnome]

Feeding the troops hasn't been as big an issue...they just take a whats been given to help out the rest of the population and send it off to the military

[akuma]

this north korea feature on 60 mins is just like the one on frontline, more proof of pure living hell.

[YelloKitty]

god, i was watching that too. i'd like to kick kim jung il's ass. or at least pull out his hair.

[stryfe]

North Koreans want talks with South to form anti-US alliance

Mon Jan 19,10:54 PM ET
SEOUL, (AFP) - North Korea has called for talks with South Korea to plan for reunification and pool resources for a joint struggle against the United States.

Top officials from the Communist Party and
the government set the agenda for "energetically pushing forward the movement for national reunification this year" at a meeting in Pyongyang on Monday, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.

Preparatory meetings were proposed for Pyongyang, Seoul, Mount Kumgang, a South Korea-operated tourist resort in North Korea, and other locations between officials from North and South Korea "to pave a wide avenue for independent reunification through national cooperation," KCNA said.

"All the Koreans in the north and the south should turn out in a sacred struggle to foil the US moves to provoke nuclear war by the concerted efforts of the nation," KCNA said.

South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, said the meeting of top Pyongyang party and government officials was an annual event usually held in February or March.

"North Korea has talked up reunification for quite a while. It is nothing new. We tend to think they are emphasizing national cooperation because of the international situation," said a ministry official.

The Korean peninsula was split into communist north and capitalist south after World War II, a division cemented when Chinese-backed North Korea forces and South Korea and its US allies clashed in the 1950-53 Korean War.

The 15-month nuclear crisis has clouded reconciliation efforts promoted by former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung.

He travelled to Pyongyang in June 2000 for a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, signing a joint declaration calling for stepped- up economic and humanitarian exchanges to promote reunification.

The effort has produced a series of agreements on relinking roads and railways severed since the Korean War and building a South Korea- funded industrial zone in Kaesong, just north of the heavily fortified inter- Korean border.

Kim's successor, Roh Moo-Hyun, elected two months after US officials said North Korea had admitted to running a clandestine uranium enrichment programme, triggering the nuclear crisis, is also an ardent advocate of reconciliation.

"But the policy is no longer the same," said a Foreign Ministry official. "South Korea's is not willing to engage in new cooperation projects until the nuclear crisis is resolved."

The North Korean appeal for unity with the South is seen here as Pyongyang's latest move in its longstanding strategy of driving a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

"They would like South Korea to cooperate in an anti-US stand," said the Unification Ministry official.

The US hardline on North Korea and the presence of 37,000 US troops in South Korea has stirred anti-US sentiment in South Korea, a phenomenon Pyongyang is keen to exploit.

"All Koreans should turn out in an anti-US patriotic struggle to achieve national cooperation and protect the well-being and peace of the nation from the US moves to estrange Koreans from each other," KCNA said.

[yangnome]

same old song and dance...

[Batsu]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ld/3440771.stm

I watched this last night and it was by turns both surreal and harrowing.

Pyongyang looks like a giant toytown dedicated to the Kims but the rest of the country seems to be almost entirely without power. At night the reporter was driven for hours through several towns where there no lights at all. It was quite eerie.

The reporter's North Korean minders said they never once question that anything they are told is untrue. I can imagine that of the average North Korean but these guys meet foreigners and see all the things they have which Koreans don't.

The most shocking aspect was the testimony from defectors who had been camp inmates and also a former camp commandant. The latter related carrying out torture as routine and also discussed human experimentation on entire families using nerve gas. He was so unemotional about it that you could see the extent to which these people's thinking is controlled.

Unfortunately Human Rights comes pretty far down the list of diplomatic importance so this won't be changing anytime soon.

[yangnome]

Here's a PDF with good info on NK prisons and sattelite photos of various prisons, to include Camp 22

http://www.hrnk.org/TheHiddenGulag-press.pdf

[Batsu]

Originally posted by puppy fields
Now, it is claimed, it is also where thousands die each year and where prison guards stamp on the necks of babies born to prisoners to kill them.

Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.

Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They are left to an agonising death while scientists take notes. The allegations offer the most shocking glimpse so far of Kim Jong-il's North Korean regime."

This is what one of the camp survivors and the former camp commandant described watching.

It is chilling to recall the North Korean agent's description of scientists watching these experiments. Even though the parents were convulsing and vomiting they were still trying to give their children mouth-to- mouth to save them.

[iconic]

here is my first contribution to the giant robot collective:

http://members.iinet.com.au/~jtb81/pols2205-essay.doc

it's my essay on north korea in october 2003. most of the articles i used are 2003, so still recent.

the topic is North Korea: Failed State or Rogue State? i say it is both. feel free to criticise it