N. Korea vows to blow up South propaganda facilities

I normally post matters of substance, but just this once...

They should fight fire with fire, and blast Celine Dion music back at S.Korea in retaliation.

The way I see things popping off over there is like this. It will be one big concert of a push. S.Korea won't have a chance, and neither will Israel. Because when it starts, you'll see Iran, N.Korea, Turkey, Syria, and possibly Karzai in Afghanistan jump on the bandwagon. It will be multiple fronts within 24 hours. It will be like nothing we've seen yet. It will go from peacetime to utter destruction of the ME instantly. The only question is will it be WWIII or will it be a strictly ME against US/Israel.

Originally posted by PayMeh
I normally post matters of substance, but just this once...

They should fight fire with fire, and blast Celine Dion music back at S.Korea in retaliation.

The way I see things popping off over there is like this. It will be one big concert of a push. S.Korea won't have a chance, and neither will Israel. Because when it starts, you'll see Iran, N.Korea, Turkey, Syria, and possibly Karzai in Afghanistan jump on the bandwagon. It will be multiple fronts within 24 hours. It will be like nothing we've seen yet. It will go from peacetime to utter destruction of the ME instantly. The only question is will it be WWIII or will it be a strictly ME against US/Israel.

I don't know if Iran, or NK will make a move tho, they like to talk a big game but when it comes down to it, I think they are scared to make a move, knowing the United States and their allies would turn each of their countries into a junkyard within hours if any of them attempted anything.

Originally posted by InvisibleObserver
reply to post by BlasteR

 

Thanks for your reply

Loudspeakers the size of buildings on the NK side, whoa that's insane. I can just picture that, ringing out some garbage that I wouldn't be able to understand.

I hear there are a lot of gesturing along the border between the soldiers standing guard on both sides.

People forget and the younger generation don't know the Korean war never ended, kinda crazy it was just put on pause and nothing was ever signed to end it. My grandfather also served in the Korean war.

Thanks! My visit to the 38th Parallel was actually mandatory at least once while we were stationed at Osan AB. I'm so glad I went too. We were all required to wear Air Force Blues and we were driven over in buses.

While we were out walking around there were all those North Korean guys videotaping and photographing us up in the windows from the North korean side while we walked around with our guide. He said it was normal and that they use the videos and photos for propaganda. This area was where the building sits that holds all the peacetalks (Half the building is on the North side, half of the building is on the South). I still have the photograph of the actual border marker. from inside the building.

I'm one of a very few number of Americans who have walked on North Korean territory within that building. Of coarse the entire experience was extremely intense. North Korean guards literally stare at the South Korean guards and vice versa, pretty much 24/7. The South Korean guards fill their pockets with ball bearings so one man walking around sounds like a dozen.

Over the years, each side has raised the height of their flagpole simply to be higher than the other's. We saw the site of an old tree where American soldiers went to chop down a tree that was blocking their clear view from the lookout point (can't remember what year it was). A captain and another officer were axed to death by North Koreans at that site (we saw the plaque there).

The entire scene from that lookout point was surreal. You see an immense South Korean flag seemingly hundreds of feet high and a North Korean flag even higher still. You see speaker systems all over the hillsides on the North korean side of the DMZ, some of them, like I said, the size of 2 story buildings. They even have an entire town that is completely empty (we were told) that is prepared for people who want to move over to the North Korean side. They pretty much constantly blast all kinds of propaganda. They talk about things like how the think their side is better and why, they say they have an entire town ready too (the empty one), things like that. I spoke with one of the Army guys stationed at the nearby army post that said they blast that stuff at the darndest hours too but you eventually get used to it.

Other than the main guard post I saw the entire North Korean side was pretty much a barren landscape.

They took us to the site of these immense tunnels that North Korea tried to dig into the South Korean side to move men and artillery through for an invasion a few decades ago. Eventually their plot was discovered but the tunnel still remains. It was like a trip into the mind of a North Korean leader in a way. We actually went all the way down into the tunnels, almost to the North Korean side which are constantly guarded.

-ChriS

reply to post by BlasteR


Thanks BlasteR

Interesting information you provided. I've seen parts of where you were on tv documentaries, you are lucky to see that close up and in person.

Sounds like a really intense place to be, like a silent intense.

I know they have to take it seriously being there and all, but I probably would have a hard time keeping it together and not laughing at the guards on both sides literally standing face to face on guard. If I were them I would be tempted to crack jokes, or engage in conversation or at least see if they wanted to play some cards.

I've been looking for some youtube videos with a little more background on what I saw.

Here are a couple that do a pretty good job at it.

This is basically the same tour I took in 2000 but this is not the entire thing.


This one explains the DMZ in a little more detail


The JSA where the room is for the peace talks can be found in google earth at these coordinates (Area with all the guards shown in the first video):
37°57'21.74"N
126°40'38.21"E

Some more background on the empty city on the North Korean side sometimes called "Propoganda village".

Kijŏngdong, Kijŏng-dong or Kijŏng tong is a village in P'yŏnghwa-ri (Chosŏn'gŭl: 평화리; Hancha: 平和里),[1] Kaesong-si, North Korea. It is situated in the North's half of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Also known in North Korea as Peace Village (Chosŏn'gŭl: 평화촌; Hancha: 平和村; MR: p'yŏnghwach'on; ), it has been widely referred to as Propaganda Village (Hangul: 선전마을; Hanja: 宣傳마을; RR: seonjeon maeul) by those outside North Korea. Kijŏngdong is one of two villages permitted to remain in the 4-kilometer-wide (2.5 mi) DMZ set up under the 1953 armistice suspending the Korean War; the other is the South Korean village of Daeseong-dong, 2.22 kilometers (1.38 mi) away.

The official position of the North Korean government is that the village contains a 200-family collective farm, serviced by a childcare center, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and a hospital. However, observation from the south suggests that the town is actually an uninhabited Potemkin village built at great expense in the 1950s in a propaganda effort to encourage South Korean defection and to house the PRK soldiers manning the extensive network of artillery positions, fortifications and underground marshalling bunkers that abut the border zone. Though no visitors are allowed, it is the only settlement in North Korea within direct eye- and earshot of the Korean DMZ, and by extension, the West.

The village features a number of brightly painted, poured-concrete multi-story buildings and apartments, many apparently wired for electricity – these amenities represent an unheard-of level of luxury for any rural Korean in the 1950s, north or south. The town was oriented so that the bright blue roofs and white sides of the buildings next to the massive DPRK flag would be the most distinguishing features when viewed from across the border. Scrutiny with modern telescopic lenses, however, reveals that the buildings are mere concrete shells lacking window glass or even interior rooms, with building lights turned on and off at set times and empty sidewalks swept by a skeleton crew of caretakers in an effort to preserve the illusion of activity.

The world's highest flag tower stands at the entrance of Kijŏngdong, 160 meters tall (525 ft) and flying a 270-kilogram (600 lb) North Korean flag. In what some have called the "flagpole war", a brief battle of one-upmanship saw the shorter South Korean flagpole at Daeseong-dong extended to 100 meters (330 ft) with a 130-kilogram (300 lb) flag, making it briefly taller before the North Koreans countered with the current record-holding tower.

Propaganda Village in google earth:
37°56′43.8″ N
126°39′21.6″ E

-ChriS

To be quite honest. I believe that North Korea is just jealous. Jealous of the fact that they don't have good enough computers to run Starcraft... The South Korean national sport.

Obviously they just want to compete on a national level....

And Starcraft 2 is coming out very shortly. So they'll be even more behind in the technology stakes!!!

ROFL?!!!!

Seriously though... I think War between the two may happen shortly.... The North will think the South are too afraid of them and launch some attacks like this "Propaganda thingo"... And they South will retaliate sick of being pushed around. Then all hell breaks loose....

reply to post by BlasteR


Sounds interesting - I've been along the western border of NK, but it's obviously not as intense. At dandong, across the river the north has a quite large ferris wheel; the entire 15-20 years it has been there it has reportedly never been turned on. Mere illusion to make people think life in NK can be fun and jolly with such decadent things as ferris wheels. I think there are similar 'theme park' items set up along the south korean border as well.

reply to post by DaRAGE


OMG I know!

They're so serious about Starcraft in Korea that they used to televise Starcraft matches and play them on the military channels at the base.

Maybe starcraft 2 was on the list of things not to allow into North Korea as part of the Sanctions!

-ChriS

Originally posted by cloudbreak
reply to post by BlasteR

 

Sounds interesting - I've been along the western border of NK, but it's obviously not as intense. At dandong, across the river the north has a quite large ferris wheel; the entire 15-20 years it has been there it has reportedly never been turned on. Mere illusion to make people think life in NK can be fun and jolly with such decadent things as ferris wheels. I think there are similar 'theme park' items set up along the south korean border as well.

It has basically been a propaganda battle over the many years since the Korean War was fought. Seemingly because of the North's communist isolationism and the South which still takes it personally.

The sad part is.. Alot of families have been split apart because of North Korea's isolationism and for alot of them the split is and will be permanent. Getting into North Korea is the easy part. Defecting isn't exactly easy without being killed. Alot of horror stories online of North Korean defectors who've had their entire families massacred by the North Korean regime just for defecting.

When I first got to Osan Air Base for my year long "remote tour" back in 1999 we were given a mandatory briefing that gave us alot of information about the history and political events that had taken place over the years. We were told that approximately 80% of the children in North Korea under the age of 12 are visibly malnourished and that many of them don't make it to adulthood because of famine, poverty, disease, etc.. And the really sad part is that we will never know how many innocent human beings have died and will die because of North Korean isolationism.

Pretty much everything North Korea wants us to see is fabricated. And the entire geopolitical scenario is made so much more bizarre by the wierdness of the "Dear Leader". China has pretty much told them "You're on your own".

-ChriS