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North Korea Dislikes U.S. Plans To Occupy It
The borg in Washington DC will not be happy about Trump siding with the North Korean chairman Kim Jong Un:
US President Donald Trump told reporters Friday he agreed with Kim Jong Un's opposition to US-South Korea war games, after receiving what he was a new letter from the North Korean leader.
"I got a very beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un yesterday," Trump said. "It was a very positive letter."
"He wasn't happy with the war games," Trump added, referring to new military exercises between US forces and the South Korean military that began this week.
"As you know, I've never liked it either. I've never been a fan. And you know why? I don't like paying for it," the US leader said.
Trump received Kim's three-page letter on Thursday after Pyongyang undertook four missile tests in the past two weeks that it said were a response to the joint exercises between the South and the United States.
We once explained how the usually big U.S.-South Korean maneuvers lead to economic pain in North Korea:
Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. The cropping season is short. Seeding and harvesting days require peak labor.
The southern maneuvers directly threaten the nutritional self-sufficiency of North Korea. In the later 1990s they were one of the reasons behind a severe famine. (Lack of hydrocarbons and fertilizer due to sanctions as well as a too rigid economic system were other main reasons.)
On Trump's order the current maneuvers in South Korea have been toned down. They no longer involve a huge mobilization of forces as they are mostly done in software and as staff exercises. North Korea no longer needs to counter mobilize for them.
But Kim Jong Un is still bitching about the issue:
On Tuesday North Korea threatened more weapons tests, and said the US-South Korea war games were "an undisguised denial and a flagrant violation" of the diplomatic process between Pyongyang, Washington and Seoul.
Why is he so miffed?
The reason is likely not the form of this year's maneuver but its content:
The current joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises involve simulations of stabilizing North Korea after it has been occupied and conventional warfare has come to an end.
The U.S. and South Korea downsized the drills under a promise by U.S. President Donald Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore last year, so now they mostly consist of computer simulations.
Government sources here said the second part of the exercises beginning on Aug. 17 starts at an imaginary point 90 days after the outbreak of a war, when stabilization operations get underway.
The stabilizing drill has not been included in previous exercises which were based on the assumption that North Korea's military would be neutralized around 90 days after a war breaks out.
It is probably a bit provocative when a neighboring country is training to occupy yours. I for one would find that an aggressive behavior and would think about how to counter it.
Who, by the way, came up with that illusory 90 days assumption? Does anyone really believe that South Korean and U.S. troops would be welcome with flowers and candy? Does anyone believe that Russia and especially China, which both border North Korea, would stay out of such a war?
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These people need to read up on the Korea War. When the U.S. crossed into North Korea and moved towards the Chinese border Mao mobilized hundreds of thousands and pushed the U.S. troops back to the 38th Parallel, the starting line of that war.
The strategic interest that China had back then is still valid today. It is hard to believe that it today will be more willing to allow U.S. troops right on its border than it was in 1950.
OMG it’s Jeff Kaye @ 11!
Thank you! Your work in particular, and that of the anti-APA torture effort, have been a deep inspiration and lodestar. I’ll never forget The Day the Tide Turned, as does my stomach, even now.
Also want to thank you for being the first to tell me, years ago, prolly Firedoglake, that I was making the Romantic argument, albeit unawares.
I began an independent social-psych project at UWashington way back when (ok, 80s) under Prof. Keating, focusing on the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis of C. Daniel Batson. We disagreed on the characterization of the self/other distinction: that it “must be maintained” (pers. comm.), vs. essential semi-permeability: from every cell of our bodies, to Sagittarius A*, there is no absolute discontinuity to be found, only imposed divisions of consensus or convenience.
I’ve kept, unwrinkled, for c.30y, a photocopy of “Some Aspects of De-Individuation in a Group,” (Festinger, Pepitone, and Newcombe, 1955), one of the founding articles of that line (baiting crowds, bystander apathy, Milgram, etc.). I can now suture it to this.
Last spring I had an experience I liken to that of a alchemist in his shed, only my unexpectedly super-potentiated situation didn’t blow up exogenously. That’s right: I blew my mind inside out, and *back again (it’s the latter part, like landing a parachute jump, that makes or breaks you).
Only this spring, in an on-line *introductory course (now my favorite ever, and I’m just 6 credits shy of a masters, and there’s more classes to come from the DPA, woohoo) did I learn, in Ellenberger (1963), just what that, and you, meant (he called it a “creative illness,” later Maslow developed it as a “peak experience” modeled after enlightenment).
When it comes to “seeing the light,” in fact, I’ve been there, done that, *replicated, and charted it (also dementia-care certified nursing assistant), ffs. Take that, mainstream psych.
Now, I’m a mythopoet who knows it, one of the many types that used to get sent to La Salpetrière. For good and ill, I’m afraid. It’s comorbid with some schizoid aspects. There, my cohorts came to the attention of all the greats: Janet, Adler, Jung; and that other guy, too.
Can you imagine?! I’m like my own, thawed out, Ice Age Man.
Efforts to take that old tyme Romantic position, and work it for all it’s worth, proceed apace.
I am very, very much obliged, and I bow, most humbly, in your virtual direction.
Posted by: TheOtherDave | Aug 10 2019 6:04 utc | 53
OMG It’s Jeff Kaye @ 11, and my post @ 58 was truncated! A link to the Atlas Obscura article on a certain infamous Parisian institution did it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(For the sake of a clear record)
OMG it’s Jeff Kaye @ 11!
Thank you! Your work in particular, and that of the anti-APA torture effort, have been a deep inspiration and lodestar. I’ll never forget The Day the Tide Turned, as does my stomach, even now.
Also want to thank you for being the first to tell me, years ago, prolly Firedoglake, that I was making the Romantic argument, albeit unawares.
I began an independent social-psych project at UWashington way back when (ok, 80s) under Prof. Keating, focusing on the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis of C. Daniel Batson. We disagreed on the characterization of the self/other distinction: that it “must be maintained” (pers. comm.), vs. essential semi-permeability: from every cell of our bodies, to Sagittarius A*, there is no absolute discontinuity to be found, only imposed divisions of consensus or convenience.
I’ve kept, unwrinkled, for c.30y, a photocopy of “Some Aspects of De-Individuation in a Group,” (Festinger, Pepitone, and Newcomb, 1955), one of the founding articles of that line (baiting crowds, bystander apathy, Milgram, etc.).
Last spring I had an experience I liken to that of a alchemist in his shed, only my unexpectedly super-potentiated situation didn’t blow up exogenously. That’s right: I blew my mind inside out, and back again (it’s the latter part, like landing a parachute jump, that makes or breaks you).
Only this spring, in an on-line *introductory course (now my favorite ever, and I’m just 6 credits shy of a masters, and there’s more classes to come from the Depth Psychology Alliance, woohoo) did I learn, in Ellenberger (1963), just what that, and you, meant (he called it a “creative illness,” later Maslow developed it as a “peak experience” modeled after enlightenment).
When it comes to “seeing the light,” in fact, I’ve been there, done that, *replicated, and charted it (also dementia-care certified nursing assistant), ffs. Take that, mainstream psych.
Now, I’m a mythopoet who knows it, one of the many types that used to get sent to La Salpetrière. For good and ill, I’m afraid. It’s comorbid with some schizoid aspects. There, my cohorts came to the attention of all the greats: Janet, Adler, Jung; and that other guy, too.
Can you imagine?! I’m like my own, thawed out, Ice Age Man.
Efforts to take that old tyme Romantic position, and work it for all it’s worth, proceed apace.
I am very, very much obliged, and I bow, most humbly, in your virtual direction.
Posted by: TheOtherDave | Aug 10 2019 7:21 utc | 56
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