North Korea

[ScottDLS]

Haven't we still been at war since 1953 cease fire?

[Abraham]

The Bernie Sanders supporters ought to take a good long look at this communist totalitarian country.

The people including the military are starving and depend on food handouts and materiel from us and other countries to survive.

While I think they most often bluff, (not always, but most often) yeah, they can wage war until they keel over from starvation weakness...

[TreyHouston]

Yes, when i was deployed in S Korea it was counted as a war deployment.
True, most N Koreas army is used as farming. Most of their military vehicles (largest in the world) are broken. BUT, IF they engage in war with S korea they will utterly level each other out. Noone will win but N Korea has nothing to loose, thats the point. I fear this time is close upon us for this to happen.

[Topbuilder]

On the scale of "wars and rumors of wars", I don't think this even registers.

[The Annoyed Man]

I learned something interesting about the two Koreas over the past week. We had a pair of South Korean church interns staying with us for a week - a long man (James), and a young woman (Sandy), both about 23 years old. They've been doing an internship at our church since mid-June, and will be going home on August 10th. They left our home and moved on to the next host family just yesterday.

I was talking with James about some purchases he had made here a few days ago - among which was a pair of music headphones. He said the headphones had cost him $99 here, but the exact same item sells for $300 in South Korea. He said that a basic iPhone sells for $1,000 there. I asked him why stuff was so much more expensive there, since it's not like South Korea is a technology backwater. He said that taxes on goods are HUGE there. When I asked him what those taxes were supporting, he said two things: (a) their military; and (b) the South Korean gov't socks way every penny it can against the day of Korean reunification. The fund has grown to be enormous because they've been doing this for a long time now. The south's gov't knows that, in the event of reunification between north and south, the north is going to become a crushing financial burden to the south, so they have been banking this tax money for years now against that eventuality. The north has virtually no infrastructure. Their people are starving. There are few roads. There is very little electrical power. Many of the buildings are poorly built and unsafe. The Norks have devoted all of their infrastructure building & maintenance to the military, and almost none for the rest of society. The two Germanies faced the same situation when the iron curtain came down, but it was not nearly as severe as what will happen between the two Koreas, because the discrepancy of conditions in the north and south are FAR more pronounced than what existed between East and West Germany.

Anyway, you live and you learn.

[Jusme]

I learned something interesting about the two Koreas over the past week. We had a pair of South Korean church interns staying with us for a week - a long man (James), and a young woman (Sandy), both about 23 years old. They've been doing an internship at our church since mid-June, and will be going home on August 10th. They left our home and moved on to the next host family just yesterday.

I was talking with James about some purchases he had made here a few days ago - among which was a pair of music headphones. He said the headphones had cost him $99 here, but the exact same item sells for $300 in South Korea. He said that a basic iPhone sells for $1,000 there. I asked him why stuff was so much more expensive there, since it's not like South Korea is a technology backwater. He said that taxes on goods are HUGE there. When I asked him what those taxes were supporting, he said two things: (a) their military; and (b) the South Korean gov't socks way every penny it can against the day of Korean reunification. The fund has grown to be enormous because they've been doing this for a long time now. The south's gov't knows that, in the event of reunification between north and south, the north is going to become a crushing financial burden to the south, so they have been banking this tax money for years now against that eventuality. The north has virtually no infrastructure. Their people are starving. There are few roads. There is very little electrical power. Many of the buildings are poorly built and unsafe. The Norks have devoted all of their infrastructure building & maintenance to the military, and almost none for the rest of society. The two Germanies faced the same situation when the iron curtain came down, but it was not nearly as severe as what will happen between the two Koreas, because the discrepancy of conditions in the north and south are FAR more pronounced than what existed between East and West Germany.

Anyway, you live and you learn.

So they are basically pre-subsidizing the North. I guess it's a good idea to plan like that, but I don't know if I were a South Korean citizen if I would be as tolerant about my tax dollars being stashed away, and it increasing my cost of living so much.JMHO

[The Annoyed Man]

So they are basically pre-subsidizing the North. I guess it's a good idea to plan like that, but I don't know if I were a South Korean citizen if I would be as tolerant about my tax dollars being stashed away, and it increasing my cost of living so much.JMHO

The way James was talking about it, he seemed to just accept high taxes as normal. You and I might not like it, but we know a different way of living. If what Korea does is how you live, and how your parents lived, it's normal. They have a hard choice. They desire reunification. If it does happen, it could potentially destroy the south's economy unless they prepare financially in advance for it. Hard cheese, but probably the right thing to do.......if reunification is the longterm goal. I'm not qualified to say one way or the other if a Korean reunification is a good idea or not, but I understand their desire to do so.

[crazy2medic]

Here's my proposal, when North Korea invades, we stop them at the California/Nevada border, tell them if they'll quit shooting we'll quit shooting and they can have California, that way they can manage California and the residents there won't notice any change in government, jerry brown and kim jong un can argue over who gets to sit in the governors chair!

[TreyHouston]

Here's my proposal, when North Korea invades, we stop them at the California/Nevada border, tell them if they'll quit shooting we'll quit shooting and they can have California, that way they can manage California and the residents there won't notice any change in government, jerry brown and kim jong un can argue over who gets to sit in the governors chair!

that made my night!!!