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The 2019 Trump Presidency Thread

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Captain.Heroin said:
I'm not a Fox News hating commie. I just happen to link to fox because they don't prevent free users from reading, whereas other news outlets want you to buy their online subscription service and what-not.

I appreciate the scrutiny and free-thinking though :)


Not buying it. Most of Koreans, and the peninsula, want reunification and reuniting loved ones across borders. I welcome the idea, though.

*I just tried looking up reunification opinion polls and found no stats so I might be wrong*
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It's pretty naive to think that South Korean Intelligence has necessarily the same interests as the Korean people. South Korean intel NIS has power and influence because of the NK bogeyman, SK intel also realizes that the US will continue to throw money at them if they keep things just under boiling. To frame it a different way do you think the CIA primarily acts in the interests of the American people or in its own interest which may or may not be co-incide with the interests of the American people?

At the moment south Korea are in a interesting situation the disgraced, conservative former president Park Geun-hye, US favored and heavily (and it turns out illegally) backed by south korean intel has been sent to jail for a long time I think the corruption scandals involving lee Myung-Bak who was also hardline anti NK have had an impact. I hear there are also other prominent conservatives in Korea who have corruption problems which haven't hit them yet. The problem for politicians isn't corruption it is getting caught being corrupt.

The current politics could lead to a real detente with the North which would open up reunification, the majority of both north and South koreans would likely support it, but the US the principle backer of south korea, doesn't see reunification as being in their geopolitical or financial interest as SK buys a lot of US weaponry and a reunified Korea would most likely not host US troops. The SK treasury have also calculated that SK could not absorb the costs of re-unification without immense damage. As the US is not going to pay for it, which leaves just China as the only player with the ability and vested interest to pay for the re-unification of Korea. So what happens in Korea is ultimately up to the Chinese and the Koreans.

I don't really need to convince you by argument. I suspect that is probably a lost cause and we will never agree, all I can ask is that you look at the full and complex story and game out the consequences of following your preferred simplistic and naive approach.
 
I'm not sure the south Koreans really want reunification.

I mean, they have things pretty good right now. Reunification would only make their standard of living worse.

The north Koreans aren't just gonna come to south Korea, see all the freedom and wealth and start acting like a South Korean. They're a people that have been brutalized for generations. Even if the north Korean goverent collapsed tomorrow and south Korea took over the whole lot. The north Koreans will pose a significant humanitarian challange for decades to come.

North Koreans who escape to South Korea generally never entirely recover from their experiences and become healthy productive citizens of South Korea.
 
I think the south should be freed from kim and his dicator family even if they had to be a war to get rid of him which their could be, one day
 
JessFR said:
I'm not sure the south Koreans really want reunification.

I mean, they have things pretty good right now. Reunification would only make their standard of living worse.
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From personal conversations there is a surprising amount of support of reunification in the South even amongst those in business that do very well out of being an american asset. I don't know any North Koreans and have never been there. Standard of living is not everything, when you cannot visit your family or your ancestral home and your cultural identity and history is Korea there are things money can't buy (difficult though that may be to accept). West Germans generally supported reunification with the East even though they knew it was going to hit their wealth hard and it did lead to a lost decade in Germany. South Korea is a wierd place anyway with a very nationalistic martial culture IMHO so I expect most North Koreans will integrate just fine, but the South Koreans cannot afford to do it alone.


"The north Koreans East Germans aren't just gonna come to south Korea, federal republic see all the freedom and wealth and start acting like a South Korean. They're a people that have been brutalized for generations. Even if the north Korean east german goverent collapsed tomorrow and south Korea took over the whole lot. The north Koreans will pose a significant humanitarian challange for decades to come."
 
You may be right about the support for reunification, but I think you're probably wrong about North Koreans integrating just fine.

I mean it's not a hypothetical. Quite a few north Koreans have escaped to the south. And most of them do not integrate just fine at all.

And I do not accept that North Korea and East Germany are that similar at all.
 
JessFR said:
You may be right about the support for reunification, but I think you're probably wrong about North Koreans integrating just fine.

I mean it's not a hypothetical. Quite a few north Koreans have escaped to the south. And most of them do not integrate just fine at all.

And I do not accept that North Korea and East Germany are that similar at all.
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There is obvious selection bias, those that escape were pushed to escape rather than pulled to use an economics term. It is hardly surprising that they therefore struggle to integrate made all the worse because there is no way back. The reality is you as a well adjusted capitalist westerner would struggle to integrate into South Korea.
I think there are major parallels between East Germany and North Korea, they are countries divided by ideology but with a national and historic cultural identity which has been together for much longer than they have been divided.
 
SK Intel was probably a lot more interested in uncovering the roots of the Samsung connections, cleaning up the gov't, etc. I don't believe the Trump-ian belief that "all nat'l intelligence is evil/fake news" type belief system. The CIA might have a bad track record over a variety of things; this doesn't mean all intelligence agencies are like this.
 
I hope kim is killed soon even if we have to blow north and south korea to the ground they will be grateful when they can live in freedom the longer we wait the stronger korea gets to
 
Captain.Heroin said:
SK Intel was probably a lot more interested in uncovering the roots of the Samsung connections, cleaning up the gov't, etc. I don't believe the Trump-ian belief that "all nat'l intelligence is evil/fake news" type belief system. The CIA might have a bad track record over a variety of things; this doesn't mean all intelligence agencies are like this.
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I look at the evidence and form the conclusion that intel agencies often run an agenda which is directly at odds with that of the people they supposedly represent, The NIS is as good or as bad as the CIA MI6 The Mossad SVR DGSE or whoever in this respect, it is the nature of the beast and the people it attracts and uses and abuses. The evidence speaks for itself.
 
Pete556 said:
I hope kim is killed soon even if we have to blow north and south korea to the ground they will be grateful when they can live in freedom the longer we wait the stronger korea gets to
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why on earth would the u.k. consider attacking the republic of korea?

alasdair
 
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