SMITE THEM, just fucking smite them already.

[chronovore]

Reuters: North Korea said to be deploying missiles
VIENNA/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea deployed more than 10 missiles on its west coast apparently for an imminent test launch, a South Korean newspaper said on Thursday, and Pyongyang halted U.N. monitoring of its nuclear complex.

The potentially destabilizing moves followed reports that the United States had offered to remove North Korea from its terrorism blacklist this month in an effort to keep a nuclear disarmament pact from falling apart.

It would be an unprecedented test if North Korea fired all 10 of the surface-to-ship and ship-to-ship missiles. Intelligence sources quoted by the Chosun Ilbo paper said they thought the North may launch five to seven of them.

North Korea has forbidden ships to sail in an area in the Yellow Sea until October 15 in preparation for the launch, an intelligence source told the paper.

A South Korean defense ministry official declined to comment on the report but said the government had no indication of unusual activity in the North. remainder of article at website

I really dislike Kim Jong Il; the little shit and his puffball hairdo seem really out of touch with reality. I mean, like CRAZY. He's either crazy, or wants to be perceived as crazy, which is in itself potentially worse than being crazy. If the world were a big neighborhood, USA would be the big, rich house with the loud jackass in charge of the local neighborhood association who always told everyone else how to keep their lawn straight, and when they needed to rake their leaves or repaint their porch -- but North Korea would be the lonely shack at the end of the block with the batshit guy who is rumored to have a shotgun, and may or may not have been killing the neighborhood pets.

Here, we really have something of a terrorist nation; a government which seeks to use fear as a means of being allowed to participate in the world theater, to shape other nations policies and plans.

They've test fired rockets toward Japan. Shit-howdy, wasn't The Bay of Pigs more or less about keeping a test firing from even being feasible?

Comments

[nattotastic.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't think KJI is even really running the show anymore since he's been sick. I think the country is being collectively run by upper management and that's even worse, because now teh crazy is unpredictable. Adding insult to injury, the NKoreans are starving again.

What would really help in this situation is for Japan to be able to counter and disable every single one of NK's crappy missiles instead of letting them fly over Aomori like in 1998. Kind of a "no, we aren't going to let you get away with it any more" kind of thing. Standing up to the bully and such.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Looking back at this, I can't understand why Japan can't sit in international waters, largely in the suspected path of the rockets, then launch countermeasures. That could be exciting.

[nattotastic.livejournal.com]

That was the debate back in '98. Japan was shocked that N. Korea would violate their airspace so blatantly. There was a lot of talk about "would shooting down the missile constitute self-defense?" In the end, the government took a lot of flak for not having a policy in place regarding what to do for situations like this. IIRC, the policy now is to counter any invasion of airspace.

The North Koreans, for their part, have a way of bulldozing through diplomacy that rivals even the Bush administration for sheer damage potential. That missile stunt cost them a loan from Japan for a nuclear reactor; food aid from S. Korea; and increased nationalistic feelings in Japan-- which is the very antithesis of a desired outcome for the N. Koreans.

But hey, they got to prove their missile could make it to Honshu. Big deal, Chinese air pollution had them beat by about 20-25 years.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

If the world were a big neighborhood, USA would be the big, rich house with the loud jackass in charge of the local neighborhood association who always told everyone else how to keep their lawn straight, and when they needed to rake their leaves or repaint their porch -- but North Korea would be the lonely shack at the end of the block with the batshit guy who is rumored to have a shotgun, and may or may not have been killing the neighborhood pets.

This is made of awesome.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think I didn't get notification of this response through LJ.

KJI -- I wonder what will happen when he dies. I suspect a power struggle among the generals, but it also may be a chance to move past the crap, that "we're a communist monarchy" horseshit they've been riding for decades.

[epiphaniesrus.livejournal.com]

I believe that he's genuinely crazy. A recent episode of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" on NPR had a series of questions asking "which of these three things can actually be found on the North Korean Ministry of State website about KJI?

The true ones included a claim that his first attempt at a game of golf ever resulted in a score of ~30 under par, and that on the night of his birth the military mountain base where he was born experienced a halting of bad weather and an unexpected meteor shower - yes, the heavens allegedly opened up and greeted his arrival. Which, you know... there's no possible way people can look up meteorological data for that date or anything.