People have not forgotten how to talk. They are talking just fine on several simultaneous channels to those that need to be told what's up (the mafia principal as Chomsky calls it). Average citizens in major world power centers (US, Europe, China, etc) are told what they should worry about by major media (a supposed crazy enemy wants to drop the bomb on us and end the world as we know it), in order to keep us tense enough to support their military/diplomatic/financial actions that corner those (NK, Iran, etc) that refuse to play along with the maestro's will.

In the meantime, the hedgehogs (credit to VK) either play by the geopolitical handbook offered to them, or hold onto their very little power by digging in...always at the expense of their own domestic population. If you play along (Saudi Arabia, etc), you can have the most wicked human rights violations taking place in your country, and the masters will give you a hug for it.

But I can't see how any country can be allowed to threaten to use nuclear weapons and expect the rest of the world to just ignore them. Either they expect to be taken seriously or they don't

What is wrong with threats if they save your country?

Hah, the corporate run media mentions joint US and SK military exercises provoking NK all the time. It's not secret information. Everyone in the West that follows this stuff knows this. Know what the North Korean media reports? That Kim Jong-Il scored 11 holes-in-one in one round of golf. Know what they fail to mention? That NK started the Korean War (they say SK started it, even Russia and China know this isn't true).

I don't know what a regime has to do for people to think it's bad. Prison camps in 2013 that can be seen on Google Earth? Punish the children of people sent to labor camps with slave labor because their parents committed a political crime? Make everyone hang pictures of some ugly guys in their house that they never met? Punish people for complaining about being hungry because it might be a criticism of the regime in disguise?

How do we know all this is true and not lies fed to us by the corporate media? Because these are the same stories that thousands of North Korean escapees (who never met each other) have corroborated for half a century. As a matter of fact, you can easily meet North Koreans in China, even North Koreans who haven't escaped. These people work in China at North Korean restaurants. They wear the Kim Il-Sung lapels and feature war propaganda on their TVs, and it's obvious they've selected the most beautiful waitresses to represent North Korea abroad. When I went, I was careful to not ask sensitive or difficult questions, but when I asked if they liked Beijing, the waitress suddenly looked very pensive and then declined to comment. Also, when I commented that there are differences between our spoken Korean (hangukmal), she immediately corrected me to say "no, it's called chosunmal, not hangukmal". South Korea refers to Korea as hanguk and North Korea calls it chosun. Later I learned that they go to work on a specialized bus and get sent back home on the same bus and don't get to wander around Beijing freely. I should note however, they were very friendly people and even turned off the anti-US propaganda on TV when they found out we were from the US. It made me realize that NK is just a couple of powerful men with 20 million hostages.

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to know what happens in North Korea. That said, I'm not endorsing that we start a war and kill their leaders, I think it's wise to be honest about the situation and tread carefully. But, I'm not against letting their current regime collapse internally. It's sad that their whole system would collapse if everyone in their country saw one crappy South Korean drama.

Hah, the corporate run media mentions joint US and SK military exercises provoking NK all the time. It's not secret information. Everyone in the West that follows this stuff knows this. Know what the North Korean media reports? That Kim Jong-Il scored 11 holes-in-one in one round of golf. Know what they fail to mention? That NK started the Korean War (they say SK started it, even Russia and China know this isn't true).

Please stop talking on such level. NK really have nothing to fight present media pressure. As for military preparations of US and SK, somehow they mention them rarely and in pass by mode and omit totally most of the time, leaving only "badly translated" responses. They are not secret, but all western media are not media at all, but one giant criminal machine. And her they are also not working for common good.

You can like some country or not, but it is up to people of this country to decide how they live. And you must honor that they stand by their position.

Yes I wholeheartedly agree that the western media is extremely flawed, but can we have another media solution please? Because it seems there are other sources of information unknown to most of us. The media is the new "religion" and everybody uses it accordingly to their needs and I mean EVERYBODY(east, west, north, south and center included:). So news become(has always been?) very relative concept even more so in a bigger and complex world.

@driftwood +1 and i am not a hippy either ; )

@Jasketti

Really? I've yet to meet one person who has a picture of Bush in their house, and I was born in Texas and lived there for over 25 years. Even if everyone in the USA put a picture of Bush in their house, your argument would still be a red herring because they would have done so voluntarily. If you don't see a big difference between being forced by national law to put up two portraits of your country's former leaders in your home and putting one up voluntarily, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Yes, prisons and mistreatment in them exist in every country (except maybe Norway), but again that's besides the point. North Korean prison camps hold entire families (and their next two generations, thanks to Kim Il-Sung's three generations policy) because one person in the family had a disagreeing opinion about their government. There are also thousands in these camps because of the grave offence of trying to leave the country. If you think the labor camp system in North Korea is even remotely comparable to prisons in Western democracies, then again, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I don't think anyone here will argue that corporate-run media are honest saints. There's certainly a lot of bullshit to sort through when trying to search for the facts (it's true, lots of stuff on NK is pretty low quality). However, with a variety of sources, we at least have the option to find the truth. This is why I think it's quite disingenuous to conflate North Korea's state-run media with the corporate media. NK news doesn't have competition and it shows. I've read North Korean news in Korean and the New York Times, and trust me, they're very different.

Do other countries like the USA do fucked up shit? Of course. There are plenty of threads on this forum to talk about fucked up shit in other countries (some are quite interesting), but I talk about North Korea because I thought it matched the title of this thread quite well.

NK uses threats as an extortion tactic. They have for years. This is how they get food to feed their military personel. Eventually NK has to drop it's utopian dreams and reunite with SK.