LOOKS LIKE ITS ON...NORTH VS SOUTH

[bountyhunter69]

i just seen on fox news..the south says if north does it again....its on..they will retalliate..i was there in s korea,1969-1971..k 6 camp humpherys..i wonder who china will side with this time? china better remember,we owe them a lotta moo laa

[1Admin]

And moo laa is probably what's behind this move!

I was just heading to the forum to start a thread on the Korean situation, thanks for starting one. I'm gonna stick this and as folks see news updates, please post them here.

[Christian for Israel]

SK doesn't want us so why are US troops still there? i say pull out and let those two go at it. there's no longer a danger of a communist domino effect so who cares if they get their butts kicked?

[bountyhunter69]

IMO the reason the US still has troops there is strategy,being able to have troops and air bases in that area..we abandoned,left,surrendered or whatever in Viet Nam..we do need a place in the area of south korea for troops and air bases,especially with wishy washy china and russia

[Klayton]

I agree with Christian...

When I was stationed over there, the local nationals treat you like CRAP, unless they are actively making money off of you.
We do NOT need the strategic location. This has been proven over and over again with Iraq and Afghanistan. Our Naval forces can be in firing range of ANY city in under a week, most in under 3 days. The strategic excuse is just that an excuse. You don't think if we were NOT in SK if SHTF they would not allow us to land and occupy temporarily to aid them?

SK is NOTHING but a money sucking parasite on the United States. I say pull the troops out, and let them start spending their paychecks on US soil! :)

[crossbow]

SK doesn't want us so why are US troops still there? i say pull out and let those two go at it. there's no longer a danger of a communist domino effect so who cares if they get their butts kicked?

I second the motion.

[Christian for Israel]

I agree with Christian...

When I was stationed over there, the local nationals treat you like CRAP, unless they are actively making money off of you.
We do NOT need the strategic location. This has been proven over and over again with Iraq and Afghanistan. Our Naval forces can be in firing range of ANY city in under a week, most in under 3 days. The strategic excuse is just that an excuse. You don't think if we were NOT in SK if SHTF they would not allow us to land and occupy temporarily to aid them?

SK is NOTHING but a money sucking parasite on the United States. I say pull the troops out, and let them start spending their paychecks on US soil! :)

absolutely!

we have troops in over 150 coun tries around the world at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, which are going to those countries...and for what? we have more satellites than any other country, the largest navy in the world, ballistic missiles, etc. what could possibly happen that we couldn't detect and defend against from home? seriously, BRING THE TROOPS HOME and stop the financial hemmorhage...we just can't afford it anymore (and most of those countries don't want us there anyway...we'd probably be more popular in the world if we brought the troops home).

[Gordon]

GM put a lot of money in buying Daewoo plants to produce cars. Hyundai/Kia has tied up a lot of money here in plants. The south doesn't want us there unless they need us to keep the north out of the south. The south likes our capitalistic ways enough to know they don't want the north's communism. The south needs our commerce enough that they will keep us there to fight for them. The north will continue to posture with their nuke program until we give them lots of money and then they will slow down for a while. I don't think this is the start of anything big. I could be wrong, if we wake up in the morning and it is raining burned kimchi we will know I was wrong.

[Matt In Oklahoma]

My worry is that others will start backing this isde or that and this will escalte quickly sucking in everyone.

[Bearman202]

I spent three years in Korea, from 76-79, and I loved it. It was cheaper than dirt to live there, (apartment cost was $24 a month) and a plentiful supply of available hookers. I've since grown up a bit, given up the hookers, and taken a good hard look at my experience there. The average Korean is about as hard a worker as you're going to find anywhere. The one thing that still gets me is that I never met a lazy Korean. The reason for that was pretty simple. They didn't have ANY form of welfare. If you didn't work, you didn't eat. My ex was from there, and she taught me several things. The main was that if she made a dollar, she would save $1.10 of it. i.e. she wouldn't spend ANYTHING she didn't absolutely have to. I got my financial training from my father, and his attitude was that they put eagles on money so it could fly. The downside of the Korean situation was that as far as I could tell, they had NO concept of honor. They did what they considered necessary to survive. I know I'm looking through lenses that are colored by living in a land of plenty, but that bothered me. I think it will bother me less when the bottom finally falls out here, but I hope not.

Back to Korea. In their civil war, they had the same problem we had back when. The north had all the technology and manufacturing, and the south had all the agriculture. The north is very hilly and rocky, and it's hard to grow enough food to support themselves. They had a brother-in-law deal going with the Soviet Union, similar to Cuba, and when the Soviets went away, so did the deal. They are paranoid as it gets, and spend a bigger part of their GNP than we do on their military. Plus, with the communist system, the military is the only thing keeping the government in power. When I was there, the average Korean had received so much indoctrination by the time they entered high school that the idea of being anything OTHER than Korean was considered a birth defect. I used to laugh at my ex about that. Every country that has occupied another country in that part of the world has occupied Korea at one time or another. When Japan had it, they basically strip-mined the country of anything of value and sent it back to Japan. That was one of the reasons the U.S. military wasn't allowed to cut down a tree. They had to dig it up and move it. Prior to us being there, if it was big enough to make a board out of, the Japanese had already cut it down and sent it back to Japan.

Now for the good parts. If a Korean makes you his/her friend, they will take a bullet for you. Seriously. They will expect the same in return, though. There is NOTHING they won't do for you. If you go out to eat with Koreans, they will argue over who GETS TO PAY the bill. It's a point of pride to them to show they can afford it.

Now the downside: Creativity was NOT encouraged, so they don't do it. Show them something, and ask them to make a copy, and they can do that. If you give them a part with a scratch on it, there's an excellent chance that they will make you an exact duplicate of the part, WITH the scratch on it. When they are working, they become single-mindedly driven on the task at hand, which is why many Koreans come to America and end up with a LOT of money. Add what they consider unlimited earning ability here, with all the minimum-wage jobs available and their inborn frugality, and they do well. They consider the average American both wasteful and lazy, and can't understand how we did so well in the world. <G>

I never had a problem there, and learned to like the country and the people a lot.

[monkeybird]

This issue needs to be viewed as a bigger picture. China has been supplying NK with weapons as well as the necessary equipment and knowledge to develop their nuclear arsenal. SK does not have nuclear weapons, so you have a major imbalance of power. Some have advocated giving SK nukes to re-establish the balance of power. I'm for keeping out nukes and somehow disarming NK.

This is not about NK vs SK. The Chinese have warned us to - stay out of it. Oh, really, think about this. Obama as done so much butt kissing, we've become the laughing stock of the world.

The far reaching affects of a war could spread far beyond the borders of NK and SK.

[Defuz]

On the surface I have to admit that the Korean situation looks bad, but I wonder if that's likely just more dysfunctional panhandling as some of their threats have not received the same old, "Give them more aid" reaction of years past. Time to step it up a notch, hence the lobbing of a few missiles and threats of nuclear enrichment. It strikes me that anything north of the DMZ is truly messed up.

[Hawkeye]

U.S Carrier group on the way over there now.

[Klayton]

We gotta remember who holds US by the nuts! CHINA!! And if China is telling us NOT to get involved and we do, who do you actually think is going to get the short end of the stick here?

US has possibly put themselves in the worst international political position EVER!

Thank you obama, thank you SoFA, thank you democrats and liberals who insist we constantly play the role of world police...

[Christian for Israel]

plenty of republicans have played that game also. republicans and democrats have been the SAME PARTY for decades...the window dressing may be a bit different but the agenda is the same.