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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Mar 31, 2013 - 03:53pm PT
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I didn't see any of YOU in Korea. I used to live there.
Yeah, but did you fight there?
Do I/we really have to live in a country in conflict or on the edge to understand the inherent dangers? Skully, I bow to your experience of living in a country I have never been to, but please don't insult those of us who have, at length, studied and followed the situation.
Anyway first hand experience is one thing, but don't knock looking in from the outside.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
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Mar 31, 2013 - 07:04pm PT
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37 N Koreans killed while I was there. 5 S Koreans & 3 Americans. The GI's were from My unit. 1st Btn/9th Inf.
All in The DMZ. That place is jacked.
Werner can tell you about speculating.
They can mess up S Korea something awful, but that's about it. They already did that once, anyway. Eff them.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Mar 31, 2013 - 08:34pm PT
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While their missiles at most could threaten Japan with a conventional explosive warhead they cannot touch even Alaska reliably.
There are things NK could do that would be terrible. However all those terrible things would end up MUCH worse for them. Thus they are limited to whatever creative annoyances they can come up with that won't quite get themselves killed by us or SK. Things like sinking ships.. small barrages on mostly unihabited lands. Nuke tests..or whatever other small thing they can come up with perhaps unanticipated.
I would expect something fairly soon based on past MO.
But full out war? extremely doubtful.
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Skully, I was there from 74 to 76, in the Army working as an air traffic controller. I know that's back in the dark ages, but we all took the threat very seriously. We went on high alert many times, one particularly when a US soldier was killed by a North Korean guard at the DMZ.
I don't think most people realize just how many troops they have so close to Seoul. The Oijongbu corridor is a big flat valley leading straight to Seoul, that the N. Korean hordes would charge South through. When we were there, the estimates of US and S. Korean casualties in the first 48 hrs was upwards of 40%, for the troops stationed near the border. That huge mass of N. Korean troops is only 30 to 40 miles from Seoul, like having dozens of battalions in Boulder, aimed at Denver.
As for the starving soldiers not being able to fight, ever heard of Chairman Mao's army, the Russian revolution, Cuba, French revolution? Hungry people fight like.....well, like they've got nothing to lose, and they don't. I'm sure we would win out in the end, but there'd be too many lost on both sides. Ugh!, sometimes I hate humans!
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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First thing i thought when i saw the pic Chaz! Foreign campaigns? nooo,,Silver stars?
Hi Ron, I'm back...heh heh...
No, they leave the "foreign campaigns" to peaceful countries like the peace loving people of the USA.
Since the Korean War? Let's see...ummm...Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. Did I miss any?
You're right, we gotta keep these crazy nut job psycho war mongers on a short leash man!!! G'damn N. Korean war mongers anyway, eh?
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Nice place to visit but i wouldn't want to live there.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Donald Gregg was US Ambassador to S Korea and CIA station chief.
Don't ya hate to read stuff by somebody who knows what fer?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _
Reaching out to North Korea
Obama showed on his Middle East trip to power of direct presidential involvement. He should employ that same sort of diplomacy toward Pyongyang.
By Donald Gregg
April 1, 2013
President Obama's recent Middle East trip showed what good things can result from thoughtful, direct presidential involvement. The president addressed young Israelis, reassured allies in the region and brokered an Israeli apology to Turkey for a deadly raid on a flotilla attempting to take supplies to Gaza.
The president should employ that same sort of diplomacy toward North Korea.
An increasingly dangerous confrontation is building between the United States and North Korea. The outrageous rhetoric pouring out of Pyongyang makes it difficult to do anything more than dismiss North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un. But abandoning diplomacy would be extremely dangerous. The North Koreans are convinced that nuclear weapons are the only thing keeping them safe from a U.S. attack, and recent flights of nuclear-capable U.S. warplanes over the Korean peninsula only hardened that conviction.
As distasteful as it may seem, we need to talk directly with the North Koreans. They will not give up their nuclear weapons at this juncture, and for the United States to demand that they do so as a precondition for talks will only lead to greater tension, including the possibility of a military explosion. Would it not be better to negotiate a peace treaty?
The George W. Bush administration took the position that engagement with Pyongyang would reward bad behavior, and that seems to be the approach of the Obama administration too. But though the North Koreans often sound like belligerent lunatics, there are certainly many reasons to engage, particularly on a peace treaty, an idea Kim Jong Un might well embrace.
I have been dealing with Korean issues for 40 years, since I arrived as the CIA's chief of station in Seoul. Later, from 1989 to 1993, I served as ambassador to South Korea. And time and again I saw diplomacy work where confrontation would have failed.
In August 1973, U.S. Ambassador Philip Habib learned that opposition leader Kim Dae-jung had been kidnapped in Tokyo and was on a small boat about to be thrown into the sea. It was widely assumed (and later confirmed) that South Korea's intelligence service, the KCIA, was responsible. But Habib did not jump into his sedan and confront autocratic President Park Chung-hee with an accusation. Habib first wrote Park a letter, giving him time to construct a response that kept Kim alive and enabled Park to deflect responsibility for the kidnapping.
In December 1980, I witnessed close up a confrontation that failed. Kim Dae-jung had, at that point, been sentenced to death on trumped-up charges of treason. Outgoing President Jimmy Carter sent Defense Secretary Harold Brown and me to Seoul to confront South Korea's president, Chun Doo-hwan, on the matter. Our instructions were to tell him, essentially, to release Kim "or else."
This approach failed utterly, and Kim was on the verge of execution. The incoming Reagan administration, led by Richard V. Allen, was astute enough to offer Chun a visit to the White House to keep Kim alive. In order to see Reagan, Chun released Kim, who went on to become South Korea's president and receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Granted, these experiences were in South Korea, a place very different from its northern neighbor. But diplomacy works around the world. We can't simply order Kim Jong Un to abandon his nuclear ambitions. Dialogue is needed, and Obama should reach out to those who have negotiated successfully with North Korea to help craft an approach.
Next month, South Korean President Park Geun-hye will visit Washington to meet with Obama. I was in Seoul in 1974 when a North Korean agent trying to kill her father, President Park Chung-hee, fired and missed, killing her mother instead. Still, Park Geun-hye visited Pyongyang in 2001 and met with then-President Kim Jong Il. When I congratulated her for doing so, her response was: "We must look to the future with hope, not to the past with bitterness."
Park calls her policy toward North Korea "trustpolitik," and she would undoubtedly be pleased to find thinking compatible with that policy in the White House, as would China's new president, Xi Jinping, who has already called Park, offering to help ease tension between the two Koreas.
The alternative to diplomacy is escalating conflict, and that would be a terrible mistake on the Korean peninsula. Negotiating a lasting peace is the only sensible approach.
Donald Gregg, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993, was CIA station chief in that country from 1973 to 1975. He served as national security advisor to Vice President George H.W. Bush from 1982 to 1988.
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
Reaching out to North Korea
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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the invasion has begun!
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pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
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Lol great pics.
Thanks for the reply Skully. I'm sure u can understand it much better than I.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Ron nice photo but he is looking the wrong way, he should be looking up.
That's going to be the biggest surprise: That X-37B[3]newly secretive unmanned aircraft that stays in orbit above the target for 270 days can get down to 110 miles in orbit just above and deliver "Rods [Tungsten] from God" that will wake him up. But he will not be waking up here on Earth.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Why Austin?
It is highly improbable that the missile attack plan was something slapped together last month. Odds are good the cities are genuine, calculated targets. Honolulu makes immediate sense. The North's missiles can already hit it, and it is President Barack Obama's hometown.
Los Angeles is a huge target area, ideal for missiles of questionable accuracy. Though not yet within range, it could be shortly. LA has millions of residents plus the icon targets of Hollywood and Disneyland. Washington is a no-brainer. North Korea can't hit the city, but threatening it puts nuclear bull's-eyes on U.S. leaders and America's capital. It's a personal and public tit for tat.
But why Austin?
The literal answer, and literal target, is South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.'s Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS) manufacturing facility, located on Austin's north side. However, pinpointing the hometown of this facility is agitprop excess, for it tells us that the North Korean regime is aware of its own immense and tragic failure. Moreover, the thugs are ashamed.
North Korea's real target, which the literal target represents, is South Korea's demonstrable success. Samsung and a hundred other South Korean enterprises with global reputations and reach demonstrate South Korea economic power and organizational strength. North Korea, a Communist Workers' Paradise, is a starving prison state, and its leaders are profoundly embarrassed.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Imagine the North Koreans invading the South. Once they secured the area, what would they do, and who would do it? They have no infrastructure or leadership to do anything but ask for food. How would they sustain an invasion? Do they rally think the rest of the world would let them keep the south? We will never see a north and south conflict.
JL
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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I reckon an assassination / coup is much more likely than any invasion. The generals are probably the only people in the country that get three squares a day-- why would they want to face certain destruction?
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S.Leeper
Social climber
somewhere that doesnt have anything over 90'
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Why Austin?
Because we rawk!!!
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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Check out the Daily Show for some fun on North Korea.
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pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
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boots on the N Korean ground
ron i heard that china moved some troops but the N.K have not. i was also told that the ceasfire included china in the deal some 50 yrs ago.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Kim Lil Phatphuk don't care about no stinkin' paper unless it is the
phony US $100 bills his henchman make.
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pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
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but they will act you can bet.
so that means when we go to war with china/N.K U.S won't be able to keep the good fight cuzz all of our military stuff is made in china?
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