its not about beefing up the NK air defence, it has more to do with testing the waters on what China's attitude is towards the NK. but you can imagine if Kim did make this kind of request he would have painted a bleak picture to the Chinese on where the political situation in the peninsula is headed. China certainly would not like such attitude from the koreans.
The sinking of South Korean Corvette Cheonan
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
- Start date
its not about beefing up the NK air defence, it has more to do with testing the waters on what China's attitude is towards the NK. but you can imagine if Kim did make this kind of request he would have painted a bleak picture to the Chinese on where the political situation in the peninsula is headed. China certainly would not like such attitude from the koreans.
ravenshield936
Banned Idiot
Kim and Chen Shui Bien are equally a waste of time
I can think of a few other differences....there's some minor differences that have grown up in the language since separation, the average North Korean is shorter than the average South Korean...and oh yeah one is a fully developed democracy with a high standard of living and the other is a homicidal Stalinist dictatorship that inflicts 1984-esque suffering on its people and keeps hundreds of thousands of people in gulags for imagined crimes. I think that pretty much covers it.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
You can also say one lives north of the 38th parallel and the other lives south. But then that wasn't my point which is the reason why some think South Korea is incapable of deception because they're simply on the Western side as if every allie of the West is put under scrutiny and goes through some check-off list of good behavior in order to be considered an allie. They would never ally with someone who would commit human rights abuses, right? A democratic allie south of South Korea is also a democracy where the Preisdent staged a fake assassination attempt in order to garner sympathy during an election. But that can't be true because democracies don't lie. Shall we bring up the Gulf of Tonkin? no you shall not..stay on topic.bd popeye super moderator
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I'm not glossing over South Korean crimes or anyone else's crimes. I was pointing out the fact that YOU'RE glossing over things. You're so set on painting the vague and apparently very evil entity known as "the West" in a negative light that you resolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that North Korea's rulers are an evil and untrustworthy regime by any stretch of the imagination. Do you realize the extreme hypocrisy that your argument is based on? You're telling me that I can't imagine that South Korea might be guilty because of my bias. But you yourself cling to discredited notions of conspiracy because of your own biased world view that inside of every geopolitical event there is a plot by "the West". So really it's YOUR bias that is producing a skewed view of the events.
I don't need lectures on South Korea history, the Vietnam War, or anything else for that matter. I already know it. It's not news to me that the South Korean government summarily executed tens of thousands of "leftists" in 1950. It's not news to me that the Tonkin Gulf Incident was falsified. It's not news to me that there were never any WMDs in Iraq.
You love pointing out the crimes of those you do not like. But when I point out that, on balance, South Korea has done a lot more to decrease human suffering than the mini-Stalin trolls that run the sad lump of a nation called North Korea, you get pretty prickly, and start dragging in straw men like the Tonkin Gulf incident. Why is that? Could it possibly be because it doesn't go with the idea at the heart of most of what you post on this website, which is that "the West" is to blame for everything?
Finn is fin.
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
And what you really don't understand the main difference between me and you is that I don't need to convince you or anyone of anything but you definitely seem to need to convince me of your perspective. What you and every critic of mine doesn't understand is that I'm practicing my rights. It is my objective to make people who hide behind rights and freedoms expose themselves as not believing those things. Why? Because people that hide behind rights and freedom use those things as an excuse to do the very things they tell everyone they cannot do. Anyone who's angry and upset and wants me to shut up doesn't believe in those rights. I throw out the possibility of conspiracy while you seem to flat out reject it simply because of the usual prejudicial notions of democracy and belief in rights and freedoms. Which in fact says nothing except the need for prejudice to taint people's opinions in whoever's favor and not by neutral representation of the facts. Next time don't make that mistake of painting the differences of the North and the South and who's right and wrong simply by how one side has democracy and the other doesn't. Don't point out how one side without democracy has massacred people as evidence of evil in general when it would be foolish to believe that "democracies" have never committed the crime. Someone like me is going to pounce.
That's all I do here and my history in this forum and in other forums is point out the hypocrisy. Where's the proof that North Korea is China's puppet? The people who say that don't throw it out as a conspiracy. They say it's fact. And we know that isn't the only thing that's said and believed and conclusions made because of prejudice. All we hear from the West is how everyone who does not blindly follow must be plotting evil. Sorry to tell you but I don't live in the binary black and white world. I guess it'll be hard to compute that I don't trust Kim or North Koreans motives either. Don't understand how that can be possible and that's the same mentality of those that hated Martin Luther King saying if he didn't stop criticizing racism in America, it must be because he's a communist.
OK Finn and Assassins Mace, calm down please. May I suggest that you both refer to the only views of the two halves of Korea that really matter, those of the Koreans living on the peninsular itself.
Its not simple, its very complex and often quite surprising.
Its not simple, its very complex and often quite surprising.
Well then even being here is just silly. What's the point of this forum if not to engage in intellectual debate?
No, I do not reject it because of prejudice. I reject it because the evidence of conspiracy is not sufficient for me to be convinced, and because there is no direct motive.
I am biased towards South Korea in this situation. But that's ok, because, even when acknowledging the crimes of South Korea, there is no moral equivalence between North and South Korea. You yourself bragged about how you don't see things in black and white. That is a good trait, and it's one I like to think that I too posses. But it's not appropriate when judging the relative values of government in North and South Korea. One is a place where people have a high standard of living and reasonable freedom. The other is a place where people are starving because of the magnificent greed and cruelty of their leaders. In your endless desire to reduce everything to an example of "Western hypocrisy", you forgot about the starving North Korean peasants, and that's the real hypocrisy here (although I'm sure they would applaud how suitably anti-imperialist you are!).
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Well there was nothing heated in my feelings on my part. But I'll say from the beginning I declared that there was no difference from a North Korean and South Korean so I don't know how all of the sudden I'm declaring North Koreans as innocent unless the presumption is that South Koreans are innocent little children, ergo, people are assuming I'm saying the same for the North.
And that's what I'm doing. I'm throwing out there the inconsistencies I see. That's not intellectual debate if all you hear is one side's view only. And if you notice all I do is use Western and in this case South Korean sources too. Why? Because if you dare to question the credibility, it's not my fault for telling lies. It's the Western media who again because of prejudice thinks they are incapable of lying because of again they're held by democratic and human rights standards. See what I mean how it's used as this universal excuse?
The South Koreans have been highly inconsistent. Why bother mentioning that the torpedo was laced with German parts to make it look like someone else did it? That's their own investigation that did that analysis. And because I can think for myself, how is that the North Koreans engineered an explosion so that only the German parts were recovered. You really can't mixed it up with North Korean parts and think someone was going to conclude it was someone else because there were German parts. North Korean parts in the mix and everyone will conclude it was North Korea not someone else. The only reason why they would bother to make this charge is for propaganda purposes. So unless the whole torpedo was German in the first place how can anyone possibly believe that the backward North Koreans were able to manage an explosion to leave only German parts to be recovered? Like I said in that post earlier... Why not put out the story that North Korea just got their hands on a German torpedo? Because it looks more diabolical for propaganda purposes for the North to have tried to frame someone on top of sinking that ship. Also look at what gets stirred up on how the North Koreans acquired a German torpedo. Pointing the finger at the Germans or someone the Germans may have sold torpedos who in turn handed one or more over to the North Koreans... A lot of people would be pissed at the South Koreans especially if that accusation was a lie. Which is why the torpedo laced with German parts was the safer route. But someone like me who knows you can't engineer an explosion so that only the German parts can be recovered. If they are willing to manipulate this, what more are they manipulating? And if it were as simple as North Korea sank a ship, why not leave it at just that. Isn't it enough? Why bother with all this other crap if the evidence is so clear?
And I always put out there they could be covering-up an accident. Maybe they got hit by a friendly torpedo by accident.
Because again as I have pointed out... for a people who have been "attacked," why is it all about punishing by doing the same thing they've always wanted to happen? Choking off North Korea with sanctions and embargos. Shouldn't you bomb North Korea yet all you want is the same thing as before?
And you don't see something strange happening here?
You know why Western hypocrisy is pointed out? Because no one else in the world demands all the people of the world to follow upon command because of a higher cause. Do we see the Chinese go around telling the world they know the only way and therefore everyone else must follow? Do we see the Chinese tell everyone they are the good in the entire universe and therefore anyone who doesn't do what is commanded by the Chinese must be evil? And you don't think you deserve any more and maybe expect less scrutiny than anyone else?
Intellectual debate requires people to think. The opposite is when you want people to be prejudice towards one side because of their reputations. The opposite is when you expect obedience without question or challenge.