Soooo... looks like north Korea is getting crazy, again.
www.csmonitor.com

Nothing will happen, nobody cares. Just NK being a baby again.

Yeah totes nobody cares about this

What I mean is, the guys who have the power to start a war don't care. Sure it's an interesting story and all, but those guys don't want to deal with the repercussions of invading North Korea.

No, I'm pretty sure that the guys with the power to start a war do care, they'd just rather not piss off the crazy midget and China by association.

Edit: Also that wasn't an artillery exchange seeing as the South didn't fire squat.

Really? I thought CBS news said this morning that SK returned fire and sent fighters.

Apparently they did, that wasn't on any news sites last time I looked. My bad.

"The world is far too economically intertwined these days to have another war! It'll never happen! Whoops, guess we were wrong on that one!"

Not that this will be serious, NK does this kind of thing all the time when they want attention and want more bargaining power for relief or what have you, but it easily could be. All it takes is a little miscalculation for something like this to light off.

I don't know... I have a growing mistrust of China and wouldn't be surprised at all if they weren't pulling the NK strings.

China does have economic problems, as well, so it's possible they'd be all for a war to distract their population. However, we ARE economically tied to China at this point, and it's not WWI anymore, so it's also possible that they wouldn't want to get involved in something we might get involved in. Even better, we might not want to get involved at all either right now for similar reasons to China...we may have learned our lesson from last century, especially with Obama in charge. So, I could see NK thinking China had their backs, attacking SK, who thinks we have their backs, and then neither China nor the US want to get involved, and NK and SK are suddenly both in over their heads.

Yes, Obama would never enter another war, ever; after all, he's the guy that didn't send tons more troops to Afghanistan.

This is just Kim Jong-un trying to prove that he isn't a total poofter like Jong-chul.

What does this even mean? What point are you trying to make here? I was just saying I think Obama would be less likely than our previous president to commit troops to an unnecessary foreign war largely on our own. Sure, he's internationalist, but he's also not nearly as aggressive and he's got a lot of opposition at home so he'd probably like to avoid a decision like that.

this provocative attack may just be like another situation that occurs yearly with the Israelis and the Hamas, but all NK needs is a total revolution, overthrow of their government, execute their corrupt leaders and establish a sort of a constitution, restore peace with the South and keep America's world policing out of their affairs and let them hash things out, we need to get America back into shape again. Unless NK wants to attack us then thats a different story.

at least they're not throwing missiles at Japan for once?

King Fat of the Starving Peoples Republic.

He looks like an Asian version of an Eric Cartman "Goddamit you will respect mahh authoritahhh!"

Well, the problem with your analogy is that the DPRK and Korea have roughly comparable artillery. Hamas uses sticks and bottle rockets, and then Israel retaliates with American-manufactured F-16s equipped with advanced American-manufactured laser-guided missiles and cluster bombs to obliterate Palestinian homes. Of course, one could also argue that Hamas is simply retaliating against an 80 year long unbroken chain of terrorist attacks, murders and war crimes since '31 when the members of Irgun decided that restraint is for ******s.

I guess I'm asking what side Israel is supposed to be in your analogy.

I think you are under the mistaken impression that the DPRK is a country. It isn't. It's a heroin cartel.

North Korea is pretty much uninhabitable. They have no meaningful natural resources, and technically they don't have enough farmland to even feed their people (even if 3/4 of it wasn't being used to grow poppies.) That drug money is used to give important and powerful people - soldiers, military leaders, members of the party - a far superior lifestyle compared to one that would be normally possible in their ****ty country. Anybody who overthrew the Kims would need to be just as crazy and evil, or else they'd quickly be killed.

The DPRK attacks South Korea and Japan, and routinely violates their border with China, because there are no meaningful repercussions. It's what they do to the citizens of other countries - abducting them off the streets - which should alarm and infuriate you more. Thousands of South Koreans have been abducted for slave labor, hundreds of Japanese citizens and there are no unclassified statistics for other countries.

The South actually fired first. What happened is that North Korea demanded that the South cease military operations near the border. In response, the South started firing artillery rounds into the ocean, away from inhabited land, but in northern controlled waters nonetheless. The North responded by shelling the inhabited island that was part of the South.

The whole thing seems to me like a childish case (on both sides) of "Nah nah I'm on your side :P" (especially the North's proclomation that if the south infringed upon their territory so much as 0.001 millimeters (yes they actually specified this number), they would retaliate).

Honestly, the North does some stupid things (actually a lot of stupid things), but sometimes I think the South gets drunk on the power that comes with being backed by the UN, the US, etc.

How stupid can you be to conduct war exercises right on the border? Not much sympathy for either side in this case, except the innocent people who were injured and killed.

Eff em. They're a bunch of sheep with dreams of grandeur, nobody likes nor cares about them. If they are stupid enough to kick up a stink, the rest of the world will hopefully flatten the country.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

They already blew up a plane and killed most of the SK cabinet. I would say they are doing all they can without actually declaring war.

Technically, they don't need to declare war, since the Korean War never ended. They just kind of stopped shooting at each other all the time. There was never any formal declaration, from either side, that the war was over.

The DPRK is kind of like mel Gibson, every so often they find a way to piss everyone off.

Dude they already have a constitution, that even ensures the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, and electing leaders and so on.

I seriously doubt rewriting a constitution is going to do anything. Unless NK could manage to become a world leader in some sort of technology or agreed to be the world nuclear reactor for wirless transmission of free energy through the earth's mantle so they can afford to import food I don't see how they could ever become a stable socialist nation, or much less a stable republic or anything else democratic. It would be like trying to become a self sufficient community in Death Valley with no outside support.

But then why did Alan Alda get to go home?!

Do you honestly think that things will turn out any better if the new regime were to execute the leaders of the old one?

One of my good friends graduated with her bachelor's in Asian Studies and International Relations. Her thesis was on North Korea. She speaks Japanese and a bit of Korean (she's not fluent in Korean, but she knew enough to translate some sources herself for her thesis) She's going to graduate with her masters in peace operations this May.

I bring this up because this all sounds like very good news for her job prospects.

(My other friend just moved to Korea earlier this week to teach English. :-/)

The question is: What does this mean for the future of StarCraft?

Ooh this is getting good. Can't wait to see what happens next.

China's main position has been "Why can't we all just get along?" since the incident. It makes no sense that they'd provoke the North Koreans to attack. South Korea and the US are major trading partners for China and essential for Chinese growth. China has traditionally backed North Korea, and it provides a buffer to keep US bases right on the Chinese border. China has nothing to gain.

[quote=Darth Dan]Unless NK wants to attack us then thats a different story.[/quote]

The US will be involved in any war that occurs in Korea, be sure of it.

China have at least been openly pushing the 6-way talks, which the US wants, rather than 1-on-1, which NK wants. But it'd be interesting to find out what goes on behind the scenes in China-NK diplomatic discussions.

I'd guess that China are still aiming at a multi-decade approach to closing the gap on the US economy/military, how much a proxy (or first-hand) war in Korea would help that is questionable.

I just hope we stand with our North Korean allies.