I hope he does too. I don’t have that much confidence in some of his advisors though. I’m really worried about General Michael Flynn, and there are a lot of virulently anti-China people in his administration. Others are more pragmatic and reliable – I just hope those are the ones he listens to.

Hmmm. I have a concern that North Korea (DPRK) having a practice of bluff and brinkmanship could make an error of judgement and accidentally move into the suicidal category. In this event other countries would have to find a way out that saves face for the DPRK.

I bet that Trump’s enlightened advisers are counselling him to be super careful – hope he heeds this advice.

She advertises for free lance writing services (claims over 500 published articles) but also sells holistic nutrition services and intuitive card readings. She also sells an E-book “5 Steps You MUST Learn To Succeed As A Spiritual Entrepreneur!” So while I believe the photographs are real, the underlying truth of the text is in question to me.

What a crock that news release is. The No. Korean government perpetrates a cult of victim culture. Oh, and “The DPRK has so far kept the door open for overseas Koreans including those in the U.S. to visit their dear homeland any time and taken every sincere compatriotic measure to ensure their meetings with their families and relatives as desired by them.” Really! Straight to prison they go, if they do manage somehow to get in the country.

Yeah, those poor children. They’re playing guitars and singing and dancing and smiling like hell to save their very lives. Their exceptional talent is a curse and a blessing. One wrong move and they and their entire familiy could be sent to one of those ghastly gulag camps for life. That’s why everybody in the country is always clapping, clapping, clapping when Dear Leader is around. If you don’t clap, or if you nod off, it’s off to prison camp with your family (guess they do care about keeping families intact in that regard).

It’s too bad that the No. Korean TV station, Korean Central Television (KCTV) lost its Youtube channel for some violation of terms. It was fascinating. You might be able to get it through another source (is it called a “server”?), but I wonder how safe from hacking and viruses another source would be. You can find individual clips of older KCTV news reports on Youtube, but not the livestream.

I’m going down the rabbit hole too – there’s so much fascinating stuff – I just read this one: http://rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2016-12-10-0006

Imagine any other govt in the world putting out a press release like that? I went to a Red Cross international youth conference when I was 17 back in 1980. There was a young guy from South Korea there then in tears because of his family in North Korea that he couldn’t see. I’ve never forgotten him (obviously!).

Those kids – it’s so sad. They must have been playing for years and really intensively to be that good. I just imagine their skin – it’s so soft at that age and there must have been a lot of pain and bleeding that the poor things suffered as they learned to play. They’re not using picks. That’s just cruel, and child abuse. And they’re probably the lucky ones. To look good for an international audience they’ll at least get fed properly for example.

For instance, this video of little North Korean children playing guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSedE5sU3uc is, as the Youtube caption says “creepy as hell.” These kids, they look to me to be about 5 years old — are they really having fun or have they just been programmed out of fear? Those guitars are as big as they are. And what retribution would befall a little kid if he or she hit a wrong note? Here are some videos of kids singing https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=xohK0z0PgZQ, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPSTY6DfjP4. (More videos in the queues) All of these children are frighteningly precocious. If only their precocity could be freely developed and exercised according to their desires and inclinations. Numerous videos of life in No. Korea, authorized and clandestine. Then there are the videos of their amazing pageants.

I find it quite interesting to go to No. Korean news sites http://rodong.rep.kp/en/ and kcna watch https://kcnawatch.co/, which are exceedingly interesting precisely because of the source. Every No. Korea watcher should regularly check out these sources. Even in translation, one gets the full blast of the propaganda, the language and framing. Fascinating. For instance, here’s one titled
“Stupid Act of Colonial vassals”
http://rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2016-12-07-0007.

There used to be videos available on a dedicated Youtube channel but the channel has been taken down. However, one can still find plenty of great propaganda videos online, such as this one where Kim Jong-Un visits a bottle factory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYvpcn4MDMg

Also there are several books and films out about No. Korea — accounts of escape from the country, life in their prison camps. One amazing story, now filmed, is about the So. Korean actress and film director who were kidnapped by Kim Fatty the Third’s father, Kim Jong-Il. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abduction_of_Shin_Sang-ok_and_Choi_Eun-hee. I refer to Kim Jong-Un as Kim Fatty the Third because I read that it’s used as a derisive moniker in China.

Here’s a site I just came across https://nkleadershipwatch.wordpress.com/

When I say N. Korea may be one of the biggest problems for the rest of the world I don’t mean just military capabilities and intent. I mean everything from humanitarian concerns, to politics & trade, to espionage (which they aren’t too shabby at).

But even just regarding military capabilities, N. Korea has the ability to cause serious problems over a much wider area than the Korean peninsula. They have some nuclear capability. As Heather has outlined in this article they have some capability to deliver such weapons short, medium and long range, and are steadily making progress at improving those capabilities. With nuclear weapons you only need a small number, even one, to cause a globe spanning shit storm that ends up costly millions of deaths and or seriously damaged lives (likely mostly N. Korean). And though their leadership may not be suicidal at least some of it is genuinely nuts and, even more scary, very unpredictable.

Trump and Kim are both unpredictable and unstable. A war could happen by accident. Just this evening he’s gone on a Twitter rant against a union leader who showed on CNN that Trump’s fudged how many jobs he’s saved at Carrier. Apparently there are hundreds of people who thought their job was safe, and got their hopes up, and they’ve now found out they’re losing their jobs after all because Trump added some jobs to the number saved that were never going in the first place. Another bald-faced lie to make himself look good. As soon as the interview was over, Trump was attacking the bloke on Twitter.

And Trump’s supporters are saying it’s fine to treat people like this, because they’re opponents. The bastard is a bully of the worst kind. We’ve just had a guy shooting up a pizza place because of fake news put out by Trump supporters. People like Megyn Kelly got serious death threats and had to have security guards because he attacked her. Now he’s doing it to a guy in Indiana.

I’ve got no problem with Trump tweeting, but he is responsible for the safety of all USians, not just the ones who like him.

Thanks Mark. 🙂

Actually, I’m a bit like Donald Trump – I spend a lot of time watching cable news! ;-D

Yes, I had hoped too that the Trump soup (appropriate term here) would not be served as hot.
But his systematically appointing of would be Ayatollahs and ‘nut jobs’ (the distinction is not really all that clear, take eg DeVos or Carson) is a source of trepidation indeed.

Maybe I’m a bit flippant and short-sighted, but short of an actual invasion of NK, I think military picadillos are just that.
I know, never underestimate your enemy, but even if that feudal militaristic slave state could produce a delivering missile I hardly see them as a serious adversaries in international warfare outside Korea itself.