Posts Tagged Korea

In North Korea, Even Army Is Starving

Food shortages in North Korea have become so acute that even the traditionally well-fed military is starving, according to hidden camera footage from inside the impoverished communist state.

Based on the footage, shot by an undercover North Korean journalist, ABC News reports: “It is clear that the all-powerful army, once quarantined from food shortages and famine, is starting to go hungry.”

One soldier told the journalist: “Everybody is weak. Within my troop of 100 comrades, half of them are malnourished.”

The regime “used to put the military first, but now it can’t even supply food to its soldiers,” said Jiro Ishimaru, who trained the undercover reporter. “Rice is being sold in markets but they are starving. This is the most significant thing in this video.”

http://news.newsmax.com/?Z64DYtn7uU737iUev.DT36E-6QyexJI1Z

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Never Fight a Land War in Asia

Never Fight a Land War in Asia is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

By George Friedman

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had ideal outcomes, it is useful to ask three questions: First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars?

The Hindrances of Overseas Wars

Let’s begin with the first question, the answer to which is rooted in demographics and space. The population of Iraq is currently about 32 million. Afghanistan has a population of less than 30 million. The U.S. military, all told, consists of about 1.5 million active-duty personnel (plus 980,000 in the reserves), of whom more than 550,000 belong to the Army and about 200,000 are part of the Marine Corps. Given this, it is important to note that the United States strains to deploy about 200,000 troops at any one time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many of these troops are in support rather than combat roles. The same was true in Vietnam, where the United States was challenged to field a maximum of about 550,000 troops (in a country much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan) despite conscription and a larger standing army. Indeed, the same problem existed in World War II. Read the rest of this entry »

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South Korea, Israel Under the Gun

A history lesson and some perspective from Col. North

After the Cheonan, an ROK navy patrol boat, blew up in international waters, killing 46 sailors March 26, Seoul’s military — as our mutual defense treaty requires — turned to the U.S. for advice on how to respond. The O-Team counseled caution — urging the South Koreans to invite an “international committee” to conduct a “fair, impartial and transparent investigation” to determine what happened.

Sister Ship

Sinseong, a sister ship of Cheonan

They did — and the panel found overwhelming evidence that the Cheonan had been sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine. The Obama administration’s response to this overt act of war: to refer the matter to the United Nations. In Pyongyang, the brutal regime that has starved its people to build nuclear weapons now promises “total war.”

It’s even worse for Israel — abandoned by the Obama administration and beleaguered by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon’s detonating on Tel Aviv, renewed rocket attacks on civilians from Iranian-supplied Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and a rearmed, Iranian-supplied Hezbollah terror movement in southern Lebanon. Last week’s flawed effort by Israel Defense Forces to inspect a so-called “humanitarian aid flotilla” for weapons and military equipment has resulted in international opprobrium because nine “activists” aboard the vessels were killed. The O-Team’s response: to demand that the United Nations conduct a “fair, impartial and transparent investigation.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to be thankful no one insisted on a U.N. investigation after more than 70 were killed in Waco, Texas, in April 1993.

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