The doomsday clock is still ticking. North Korea has launched a satellite into orbit. No mean feat considering it's the middle of winter in North Korea. Remember Frozen Chosin? The Washington Post has a story about this story. Some people are really excited about this rocket launch.
Seems like we've been hearing about North Korean missile tests forever. This website has got records that go back to 1984, which is 33 years ago. So North Korea has been doing this for a while, and they've launched a bunch of missiles. They used to be kind of a joke, their missiles blew up on the launch pad more often than not, and when they did get off the ground, they didn't go very far. In 1998 they launched one that went over Japan, and some people started paying attention.
We've been watching Ertugrul on Netflix, a soap opera about some 13th Century Turkish nomads (we're up to episode 30). The current story line has them migrating to some land that was granted them by the Emir Al Aziz of Aleppo. The Emir reneged on his promise, based on some rumors started by the evil Templars. So now our tribe is kind of in a jam. The Mongols pushing in from the East have forced them into country so barren that their livestock were starving to death. The Emir granted them a section of good land. It would be great except that it is between Aleppo and the Templars, so there is going be a constant state of conflict, but hey, they've got swords and they know how to use them. But now the Emir has revoked his grant and is threatening to exterminate the whole tribe if they don't pack up and move. Well, we just got here, we're not in the mood for moving, and you granted us this land, you can't be going back on your word, you lousy Indian giver.
In any case, they are prepared to fight the Emir's army, even though they are outnumbered ten to one. It may mean the death of their tribe, but at least they'll go down fighting.
Translate this viewpoint to North Korea and you can see how they could view themselves as the victims in the game of global domination. Okay, you would also need to be ignorant of the actual state of the world, but who are you going to believe? Western Imperialist Running Dog news services, or your faithful leader? And is it any different that what we have here? The news is like 99% garbage, and the 1% that might be of real concern is so fractured with competing spins it is really hard to tell what is true. Fortunately we have our own faithful leader. Which one is more trustworthy? Kim or Donald?
DAEJEON, Republic of Korea - March 26, 2013. Military leaders at a memorial ceremony for sailors lost in the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan. 46 Sailors died when the ROK warship was destroyed by a North Korea submarine three years ago in the Yellow Sea. U.S. Navy photo by Joshua B. Bruns.
Now we have fatso saying that North Korea has entered "a state of war" with South Korea a day after he threatened the United States because two American B-2 bombers flew a training mission in South Korea.
Why are the soldiers on either side of him holding his arms? If it was just this one photo I wouldn't think too much about it, but I have seen several other photos that are similar.
I really like the high quality boat he is using here. Does this mean he is a man of the people?
For comparison, here is a ship being loaded with rice in South Korea.
Where's the rice going? North Korea. OK, picture is six years old. Still.
For some reason I thought the North and South Korean military were in constant state of high alert, which would exclude any kind of trade or movement of people. That doesn't seem to be the case, witness this scene at a border crossing.
Looks more like the border crossing between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.
Many Koreans would like to see their country reunited. These ribbons hanging on the border fence bear this sentiment.
Kingdom: Ashin of the North | Main Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
A violent, vicious movie set in the Joseon Empire, which means somewhere between 1400AD and 1900AD. It was a little hard to keep track of who was what, too many furrin names. Near as I can make out, we have a group of Jurchen people who, with the permission of the Joseon Emperor, came south across the border with China and settled in Joseon, which is modern day Korea. In this case specifically North Korea. Things are going along moderately smoothly until a group of Jurchen come south across the river to hunt for ginseng. The local lord takes exception to this and kills them all. Another guy, not quite sure what his position is, a leader of a group of soldiers (we'll call him the major) dares to speak up and tell him that he shouldn't have done that. The ginseng hunters violated the Emperor's law, so they should have been dealt with within the law, not executed out of hand.
Now the Major (in an attempt to cover up the local lord's misdeed) sends Ashin's father, headman of the group of Jurchen living in Joseon, to the Jurchen in China (north side of the river) to explain that the ginseng hunters had been killed by a tiger. So now we have a tiger hunt. The Major brings a squad of soldiers and large group of peasants to act as beaters. The Jurchens (from the north side of the river) send a squad of lunatics armed with knives. I mean, who goes after a tiger with a knife? I mean, except Tarzan.
Meanwhile, out in the woods, there is a plant that can bring the dead back to life. Seems a deer ate one of these plants and in short order fell into convulsions and when the convulsions ended, the deer was now a zombie, intent on attacking and killing anything that moved. And wouldn't you know it, the first thing the deer runs into is the tiger. Of course. The deer puts up a good fight, but the tiger prevails. However, the deer got in at least one good bite and now . . . you know what happens . . . the tiger becomes a zombie!
Now we have tiger hunt and when the tiger is finally killed (after wiping out half of both hunting parties including a score of peasants), the Jurchen discover that it is some kind of devil and didn't actually kill the ginseng hunters, which means Ashin's father is a liar, and since he is also Jurchen, he is a traitor.
The northside Jurchen attack the southside Jurchen village, kill everyone and burn the place to the ground. Ashin escapes because she wasn't there.
Time goes by, the child Ashin grows to be a tough young woman who has managed to acquire a bow and a goodly supply of arrows. She is being employed by the local lord (the major? someone else?) to spy on the northside Jurchens. An opportunity presents itself and she sneaks into their village where she finds that they have kept her horribly mutilated father in chains all these years. She's pissed to say the least. She manages to escape with her father, and obeying his wish, kills him.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the soldiers from the village where she's been living have been called away to fight against a Japanese invasion in southern Joseon. That's okay, killing the people that are left will make a good start on her revenge. She turns some of them into zombies and when they get going she stands on a rooftop and shoots anyone who looks like they might get away.
Dominating the Pyongyang skyline & visible from a dozen miles outside the city is a giant futuristic building that NOBODY talks about, even as a joke or a curse. They just don’t SEE it.
Okay, that's weird, but this is North Korea, so understandable. But now my curiousity is piqued, so I go looking for more info. Seems the building has been under construction for a while, and some people have been making fun of it. Some other people are trying to finish it and put it into operation. We shall see how that goes. In that vein I found this description by Simon Parry, quoted in a story on CNN, more encouraging.
Despite the unfinished interior, Parry describes the hotel as “fantastic from the outside -- it's dazzling, coated in expensive glass tiles.”The juxtaposition of the spaceship-like building with its humble surroundings is dramatic, he adds. "In the morning and evening the effect of the sun's reflection blazing down over the rest of the city is extraordinary," said Parry.
North Korea's latest missile splashed down in the ocean 600 miles away from where it was launched, which doesn't sound like it is going to threaten anyone except their immediate neighbors. But then I read that it reached an altitude of 2800 miles. Could that be right? Or is it just a misprint? Turns out 2800 miles is correct. If North Korea altered the trajectory of this missile, theoretically it could reach halfway around the world, which puts just about everyone at risk.
I wonder how our satellite minders cope with this. Guess I better go check.
My first thought when I heard that North Korea was suspected of hacking SONY was, 'yeah, right', those guys can't even tie their own shoes. But then I realized that, just like every group of people everywhere, they do have some smart cookies. They may be impoverished, foolish and the government may be tyrannical, but they have nuclear power, biggish missiles and nuclear weapons.
Computers can give a person tremendous leverage in tackling certain kinds of problems, so the idea of North Korea hacking SONY is at least plausible.
The problem with computer security is that few people in the PC side of the business gave it very much thought. Everyone was too busy building more and faster computers with more capacity. It's kind of like big residential developments. Here's your house. Oh, you want a lock? OK, here's a skeleton key, that will keep out the riff-raff, mostly because the riff-raff doesn't know what a house is, much less what a lock is, and the idea of a key is completely unfathomable.
That worked for awhile, but eventually the riff-raff caught on and started figuring out that those skeleton key locks that came with those early computers were easy to pick. The problem is that there are whole bunch of computers out there with skeleton key locks, and more are pouring off the assembly lines every day, so any security detail is going to be faced with trying to protect a whole Levittown of houses with minimal security from a sophisticated gang of thieves with stealth capabilities.
You will note that I specified PC (Personal Computers) when I talked about weak security. IBM had a pretty elaborate security system for their mainframes. Of course, an IBM mainframe wasn't something you bought on a whim at Best Buy. It was more like a massive capital outlay, on the order of building a new automobile factory, so they could afford to spend a little more on locks.
The security protocol on IBM mainframes had like seventeen different levels, from repair technicians to operators to programmers, and no one had access to the whole system. Mostly they were compartmentalized, but there was some overlap. For instance, operators could start or stop programs, but they couldn't modify them. Programmers could change their programs, but couldn't choose which data files to operate on. The whole scheme kind of reminds me of North Korea.
My far flung corespondents have something to say about his raptureness Kim Il Jong. From Iowa Andy:
Where is the media? They are missing the story of the century.
The rogue nuclear-capable nation of N Korea has once again shown its rabid dog proclivities to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting.
The US is sending a carrier into this morass. What better target for a N Korean short range nuclear missile?
And Kim Jong can then go out in a blaze of Armageddon.
California Bob replies:
You know, I myself was thinking, too, that Kim Jong Il has been getting increasingly reckless lately, and wondered if he wasn't planning on going out in style -- or as Tom Lehrer put it, "suffused with an incandescent glow."
I'd like to know where all the bigmouth war-mongers are. Oh sure, they were all bluster when it came to the mortal threats posed by Grenada, and Panama, and Iraq. But with a real problem like North Korea -- and I consider North Korea one of the tragedies of the modern geo-political spectrum -- it's sort of, "OK, we'll shut up about that, we don't want any trouble...nothing that would actually start to impact Budweiser consumption stateside." Cowards.
And that's why I vote republican. Because the second Roman empire is nearing the end of days, and I want these morons to witness the consequences of their idiocy.
Or not. I don't care.
Michigan Mike follows up:
As a nation, we are now obsessed with our own internal political warfare. All else is of no consequence.
The truth of effective international relations, industrial economics, environmental sustainability, and human improvement will now be argued in the public forum by CNN pundits who think that "He spent a purr-fect afternoon with his safely rescued cat." is a clever pun.
North Korean leader Kim Jong un (C) plays with children during a visit to the Taesongsan General Hospital in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang May 19, 2014.
[WDW]Megaraptor provides a short summary:
Kim Jong Un grew up in Switzerland, has no friends in the North Korean government.
All real power in DPRK is held by a group called the Organization and
Guidance Department (OGD), made up of associates of his father Kim Jong
Il. When someone was admitted to the OGD, they were considered to take
on some aspects of Kim Jong Il's divinity.
The execution of Kim Jong Un's uncle eliminated the last real threat to
the OGD's power, now Little Kim basically has to do whatever they say.
It looks like a Western, but it's set in Korea, so does that make it an Eastern? The show has a bit of comic-book flavor, but that's okay, we don't really want to look too closely at what's going on here. In reality it's pretty awful, so we'll pull back a bit and let our focus be a bit fuzzy. We're in early 20th century Korea and we've got people wearing Western clothes, riding horses and carrying great big six guns. The landscape looks like the American west - wide open plains with mountains off in the distance. I suppose there could be places like that in Korea, but I haven't found any. Kind of reminds me of Clint Eastwood's old Spaghetti Westerns.
Japan invaded Korea in 1910 and occupied it until the end of WW2. The Joseon Empire that ruled the country collapsed at the end of the 19th century. Now we have Japanese soldiers roaming around the country shooting anyone they choose, and we have gangs of bandits roaming around the country shooting anyone they choose, and we have the resistance army roaming around the country shooting anyone they choose, and then we've got the peasants, who mostly just get shot. Very violent.
The story has more bad situations than any show I have seen since I don't know when. The story revolves around a half dozen Koreans. Two guys, a master and his slave, joined the Japanese army. The story starts with the slave heading north to make amends for previous misdeeds. He feels his just punishment would be his death, and he is fine with that. The man who he has wronged (by killing his family) no longer wants revenge, he is simply trying to preserve the lives of local villagers. The master is fully in thrall with the Japanese, even though he is still second class, his being Korean and all. He is disappointed in his slave, who had become his friend, but now that he has gone north, he is just one more rebel to be destroyed.
Then there is the black market arms dealer. A mature woman, dressing in the latest Western fashions, operating out of a brick, four story hotel in what looks like Topeka, Kansas in 1880. She keeps her inventory well stocked by sending her minions out to scavenge arms from the dead whenever there is a battle.
Another woman is a hitman, killing people for a price. She gets to display her talents in, I think, episode 2 where she goes all John Wick on an entire company of soldiers in a hotel.
Lastly we have a femme fatale, a real Mati Hari, who is in love with the slave, but pretends to be in love with the master to the point of marrying him, in order to get military information that can help the rebels. She has also wormed her way into the railway company's administration, so she is privy to all kinds of top secret info.
Korea Railroad Map From a screenshot taken just after the eleven minute mark of episode one
The Japanese want to extend their rail line farther north. They want to use it to transport troops north to fight the rebels. To this end they ship 200,000 won (worth about $10 million in today's money) north via an armored car. Rumor gets out about this shipment and the colonel in charge wants to cancel the operation, but his subordinate (the master) wants to let it go ahead because it is sure to attract the bandits and when they attack he will be there to crush them.
Our girl assassin gets wind of this shipment and manages to locate the manager of the bank that will be shipping the money. She pays him a visit and tells him that the bandits are going to rob the armored car and since they will undoubtedly be successful, they should fill the strongbox with dirt and keep the money. The bandits will get blamed and the manager and the assassin will get off scott free. Clever, if all goes according to plan, but something tells me that's not going to happen.
Until I saw this show I had no idea what happened in Korea prior to the Korean war. My history education kind of missed that. As far as I knew, prior to the Korean War, Korea didn't exist. That they have managed to come so far since then is flat-out amazing.
One of the things that bugs me about Korean shows are the times someone laughs at something that is not funny. I don't know whether this is a common screen writer's trick to ensure that the audience knows that this character is an idiot, or whether it reflects actual behaviors. Pretty weird in any case.
Stayed up late last night watching The Yellow Sea, a brutal, Korean crime thriller. Only the cops had guns, which they used ineffectually. The bad guys, and there were a lot of bad guys, used knives, hachets and clubs. The knives looked like the big kitchen knives you can pick up at any housewares department. The clubs were whatever was handy. It reminded me of Old Boy.
Well, now I'm wound up, I'm not ready for bed, so let's see what we can find to amuse ourselves on the net.
Clinton’s no liberal hero. The former president is suddenly at the center of the 2012 race. Have we forgotten how he screwed the economy? By Matt Stoller on SALON.
I heard Clinton blamed for setting up the situation that led to the great economic disaster that happened during Bush's term. I didn't want to believe it then, I mean, Clinton was a good guy, and Bush was a bumbling fool. Except they are both part of the system. So all this made perfect sense at 2AM this morning. I'm afraid to look at it now.
Primary locations in the movie The Yellow Sea: Busan and Ulsan, South Korea and Yanji, China. 500 miles of the Sea of Japan separate the two areas. The Yellow Sea itself is on the other side of the Korean Peninsula. Note that Yanji is right near the intersection of China, North Korea and Russia. There is a river along the border between Russia and North Korea, so it looks like China has access to the ocean there. Tenuous, but access.Ulsan is home to Hyundai, as in the biggest shipyard in the world and the biggest automobile factory in the world.
So. A 500 mile sea voyage to get to South Korea, then sneak into the country in order to find work. That's a little thin. But Ulsan is a booming industrial town, so that makes it a little more believable. Update: Yanji is populated by ethnic Koreans so they would probably be able to fit in better in South Korea than they would in Japan, which is approximately the same distance away, but, well, Japanese.
Update October 2016. Adding a mention of Vladivostok here because it's the nearest Russian city to this intersection.
Update August 2020. Replaced missing map, added link to map of the intersection of the three countries.
I was giving Syaffolee a hard about knowing where Vladivostok was, which prompted me to check. It's about 80 miles from North Korea as the crow flies, but about twice that far by car.
Khasan is right where North Korea, Russia and China all meet. It is on the Tumen river which forms the border between North Korea and the other two countries.
Hyon's band was responsible for a string of patriotic hits in North Korea, including "Footsteps of Soldiers," "I Love Pyongyang," "She is a Discharged Soldier" and "We are Troops of the Party." Her popularity reportedly peaked in 2005 with the song "Excellent Horse-Like Lady."
China controls the DPRK and when Trump defeats China on the economic issues, China will save face by giving up DPRK’s nukes in order to get a better trade/economic outcome.
The defeat of North Korea’s nukes doesn't come by confronting North Korean nukes; it comes from China giving them up because their economic survival is dependent on it.
China saves face in defeat by positioning the actual defeat at the feet of Kim Jong—un.
Everything else is chaff and countermeasures. - The Burning Platform
This makes more sense than anything else I have heard about North Korea. As to whether this scheme is actually came from Trump or his advisors, I don't care.
I like this. It is a coherent, graphic representation of a over 50 years of atom bomb testing. The following note is found at the end of the video. I'm including it here because I knew I read something about a book, but I couldn't remember where I read it. I probably spent the better part of an hour looking for it before I realized it might be in the film itself.
The film was made based mostly on the data of
"Nuclear Explosions 1945-1998" by Nils-Olov Bergvist and Ragnhild Ferm
copublished by the Swedish Defence Research Establishment (FOI)
and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (PIORI)
in 2000.
Isao Hashimoto 2003
The video shows the tests conducted by six countries:
United States of America
Soviet Union
Great Britain
France
India
Pakistan
The USA did over half of all tests. I was surprised by the number the French did.
North Korea is not included because the video stops at 1998, and North Korea's tests happened later. South Africa had a atom bomb program, but they gave it up. Israel might have an atom bomb program, but nobody who knows is telling. Same with Iran.
I remember learning about radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons when I was in elementary school. This was back in the days when people were actually building bomb shelters. I didn't think too much about it at the time. Atom bombs were very bad, but the adults seemed to have things all figured out, and besides, there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I soon stopped thinking about it. As time went by I heard less and less about it. Oh, every so often you would hear someone ranting about radiation poisoning the environment for the next zillion years. In general we seem to have a more rational view of the situation now. I had a hard time finding any information about radiation from old atom bomb tests. I finally found this bit on the World Nuclear Association website. I have no idea who they are, but their explanation seems to be coherent enough.
Radiation can arise from human activities or from natural sources. Most radiation exposure is from natural sources. These include: radioactivity in rocks and soil of the Earth's crust; radon, a radioactive gas given out by many volcanic rocks and uranium ore; and cosmic radiation. The human environment has always been radioactive and accounts for up to 85% of the annual human radiation dose.
Radiation arising from human activities typically accounts for up to 15% of the public's exposure every year. This radiation is no different from natural radiation except that it can be controlled. X-rays and other medical procedures account for most exposure from this quarter. Less than 1% of exposure is due to the fallout from past testing of nuclear weapons or the generation of electricity in nuclear, as well as coal and geothermal, power plants.
Uniberp has a long history of Volvos. In fact he has owned three Volvo 144's, the same model as the ones in this story about criminal North Korea. It's kind of small potatoes now that they're threatening the entire world with nuclear missiles. I guess it just goes to show you shouldn't give a gangster an even break, which kind of makes me wonder whether we should have relaxed our positions with Iran and Cuba. I can sort of understand how Iran got to be fucked up. That part of the world has thousands of years of squabbling to their credit. It might not be possible to untangle that mess. But Cuba, criminently, the revolution was only 60-odd years ago. Then again, maybe the tropics are doomed to be ruled by gangsters. Before the revolution it was the Mafia, now it's communists. In both cases the working class is getting screwed over by the elite.
Which reminds me of a story told in the opening episode of Ozark. It seems a woman has been working in a grocery store for umpteen years and the owner was very happy with her. She was diligent and productive. Then one day he sees her slip a few pesos out of the till and into her pocket. Now the question is, what should the owner do? Should he warn her not to do it again and give her a second chance? The correct answer in the context of this show is to fire her. Because while this might be the first time she has been caught stealing, it is not necessarily the first time she has stolen something.
Reading about the airliner incident brought a couple of questions to mind. The first one was why was a giant airliner carrying only a hundred people? Every plane I've been on recently has been packed to the gills. And then I plot the trajectories on a map, and I wonder why are they diverted to Cold Bay. Cold Bay is way south of the Great Circle route from Shanghai to Chicago. I smell a conspiracy! The CIA is probably up no good, and this engine malfunction story is just part of the coverup.
Then I do a little more checking. Seems airlines sometimes need to stage a plane to be ready to pick up a full load of passengers, but there just aren't enough people where the aircraft is, who want to go where the airplane is going, but the plane has a schedule to keep so it goes anyway, which means that sometimes they are darn near empty. Wish I could find one of those flights when I need one.
Looking at the Great Circle route again I notice that it goes over North Korea and we don't want to be flying over North Korea. They might not be able to hit the broadside of a barn with a bowling ball, but let's not tempt fate, eh? The route also goes over the Kamchatka Peninsula, which is part of Russia. These days I am pretty sure airlines are allowed to fly over Russia, but maybe they need permission, and you know, maybe we ought not go there either. Plug those allowances into the route and Cold Bay looks like a more likely solution.
I don't much care for the narrator's ominous tone, but this video, at least, tells a pretty good story about the beginning of the Korean War. I didn't realize just how much territory the North had overrun before they were stopped. A good story? Make it a pretty amazing story: a ship with a big gun can defeat a horde of maniacs who don't have a big gun. Sounds kind of like the story of the British Empire.
South Korea. Busan is on the SE corner. The long, thin island just offshore is the Japanese island Tsushima. It sits in the middle of the Korean Strait, half way to the main Japanese island.
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