Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

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Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Lance » Sat Apr 25, 2020 6:28 pm

Or at least in a vegetative state, perhaps brain dead.

Is it okay to celebrate?
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Blue Monster 65 » Sat Apr 25, 2020 7:16 pm

Hoo boy ... this could make a mess of things. I mean, I won't miss the guy, but could the power vacuum at this point in time lead to some disastrous consequences?
Is there such a thing?
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Lianachan » Sat Apr 25, 2020 7:58 pm

By this point, if still alive, he’s only the second or third fucking batshit craziest leader of a country.
A-nis bidh fios aig daoine nuair a tha mi a 'mionnachadh aig dhaibh.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Arneb » Sat Apr 25, 2020 8:25 pm

I'm really not sure about the ranking. In favour of the other two, it's worth mentioning that they don't run concentration camps where whole families disappear for generations, don't have people shot by an artillery grenade and don't have their brothers poisoned if they break off contact with them.

Should we celebrate? I'd say humanity doesn't suffer a loss if he goes, but his people might, paradoxically. Tyrannies breaking apart after a long and oppressive regime (and no regime ever, anywhere, has been that long and that oppressive) don't usually lead to peace, happiness and cupcakes for everyone. Judging from places like Libya, Irak, Afghanistan, "regime change" sounds nice but often isn't. And there is that little thing about those few hundred milligrams of Uranium rapidly getting lost and turned into gamma-rays in a neutron-induced fission process. And the capability to let that show turn up anywhere in a theatre near you.

Hostage situations are bad enough, they usually get worse if chaos ensues.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Lianachan » Thu Apr 30, 2020 4:04 pm

Trump and BoJo are responsible for numbers of deaths of their own citizens that ol’ Kimmy can only dream of.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Enzo » Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:23 pm

Generalissimo Franco is still dead.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby tubeswell » Fri May 01, 2020 7:26 am

Bela Lugosi's dead

Watch on youtube.com
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Lance » Fri May 01, 2020 3:04 pm

I'm not dead yet...

Watch on youtube.com
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby g-one » Fri May 01, 2020 5:45 pm

Watch on youtube.com
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Richard A » Sat May 02, 2020 9:38 am

Lianachan wrote:Trump and BoJo are responsible for numbers of deaths of their own citizens that ol’ Kimmy can only dream of.


Well, first, it's not intentional (although Cummings's herd immunity theory does make one wonder). And secondly, Kim probably has killed those numbers (certainly comparable to the UK), just maybe not in quite so short a time. Since North Korea doesn't release statistics (not sure if it even keeps them), who knows?

But Arneb has a point- maybe. The scenario that the West would like is for the South to oversee a nice, orderly reunification process. They would say, Arneb, why draw parallels with Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan - your own country offers a much better example! There are factors in favour of that. Korea was historically one country and continues to be ethnically pretty homogeneous. Its division was as artificial as Germany's as it came about in a very similar way. (Not quite the same - Korea was essentially a Japanese colony - but was still carved up by the Allies in the same way Germany was.) True, Ulbricht never attempted to "liberate" West Germany by force - Stalin understood that that would immediately have triggered World War III while Korea, handled carefully, would not - but the parallels are still there. Particularly if the means used to bring about regime change were different to those in Iraq, Libya, etc. (Debatable whether Gorbachev would, given where the Soviet Union was in 1989, have gone to war had the US and its allies "gone to the aid of the Czechoslovak / East German people", but the fact remains that George H.W. Bush had more sense.)

But that last point brings us to an important one re. Korea: the neighbours. China does not, definitively does not, want US military bases on the Yalu river. Been there, done that, wasn't great. And Putin, not as important a figure re. Korea as Xi but not irrelevant either, has long resented that the process that started in 1989 led swiftly to Poland, the Czech Republic, etc - and, even worse, the Baltic states - joining NATO and holding military exercises 60 km from St. Petersburg. On the other hand, China has excellent relations, including economic relations, with South Korea and regarded Kim as an increasing annoyance. If there was someone else in the White House, who knows what could happen? But now, with Trump .... (Arneb, when I next come to Brandenburg, an interesting discussion would be how 1989-90 would have played out if the Donald had been US President rather than George H.W.)

So we see. Latest reports are that Kim Jong-Un's sister is taking over - keeping it in the family.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Arneb » Sat May 02, 2020 2:31 pm

I am wary of the comparison to Germany. The GDR had intact statehood when the Peaceful Revolution started, it had an economy which was overrated but was a funtioning economy nonetheless. People there knew about the West and its problems. Militarily, the principal adversary was in a position so weak that integrating unified Germany into NATO was acceptable. And West Germany had the means and the will to shoulder the exorbitant costs. I am not sure any of these conditions obtain in the Kroean case.

Maybe the nearest comparator, if it makes sense to compare the situation is neither Afghanistan nor Germany, but maybe Romania. That was tough, but it didn't turn out altogether badly.

I agree re. the question whether BoJo and Donald are worse than Kim. He is. Hundreds of thousand of thousands of people have died in prison camps in the decades since the war. Performing suboptimally in crisis with ensuing loss of life is certainly good reason to be deposed in the next election and be judged harshly by history. Kim Jong-un, on the other hand has already earned several life sentences for crimes against humanity. When I last looked, neither the people of the Divided Kindgom nor that of the Divided States of America were suffering famines en masse, had several thousand political prisoners, or were persecuted and executed if they disliked the current leadership. And what Corona will do to the North Korean pepole is very much an open question, as it hasn't really arrived yet. Korea is rife with TB, Hep B and parsitical disease, so don't hold your breath for an efficient suppression of the pandemic.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Richard A » Mon May 04, 2020 3:20 pm

No, the parallels with Germany are far from exact. And indeed, the GDR's human right abuses, real though they were (and I probably should take time out on my next visit to Berlin-Brandenburg to visit the museum in the old Stasi-HQ), were nowhere near those of North Korea's. Come to that, the GDR wasn't even as bad as Romania - and I saw both in the 1980s.

The one parallel that works - is the absorption into the Western-oriented sister-state (which of course Romania was not). Would South Korea be willing - and able - to shoulder the economic burden of absorbing North Korea? (Assuming that that were the key issue - i.e. that China did not have a problem with it, which is one hell of an if.) Yes, I think they would. I'm not sure how politically acceptable leaving their fellow Koreans in a separate state akin to Romania 1990 would be if unification were a real alternative option. It would have to be managed over a period of years rather than months - I've flown over North Korea and the contrast with the South is far, far greater than the contrast between West and East Germany was.

But anyway, it now seems that Kim has re-appeared alive and well. Though how well, who can say - standing there at the front of the crowd smiling was his sister, who some commentators had tipped to take over if Big Bro had indeed ceased to be.
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Oh, and on covid-19. I've seen reports that yes, it has arrived in the Junche Paradise. But of course not very much is reported, so who knows what the scale is? China and Russia are both sufficiently worried to have closed their borders, though.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Heid the Ba » Mon May 04, 2020 5:55 pm

Why do North Koreans draw the straightest lines?
They have the Supreme Ruler.
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Re: Kim Jong-un Reportedly Dead

Postby Lance » Tue May 05, 2020 3:25 pm

Ug.
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