Koreas Paramount Leadership

[Gary Oak]

That is one great shoeshine Mr Supreme Leader (Picture: Rex)

When a country cuts itself off from the world with the exception of Dennis Rodman - whether you can trust the news coming out is anyone

[Blue Frost]

Typical of little big men, Obama would do the same if he could get away with it.

[Gary Oak]

Koreans have made a real impression on the peoples of many Asian nations. THe white people who I have met who have lived there are quite unanimous about how racist they are.

http://iamkoream.com/bali-businesses-ba ... -tourists/

[Blue Frost]

LOL, leave your luggage I would think it would be floating in the sea.
I wouldn't ban them, all is not bad, but there would be rule changes.

[Gary Oak]

33 Unbelievable Pictures Of Life Inside North Korea

http://viralmozo.com/2015/06/08/33-unbe ... h-korea/4/

[Blue Frost]

They have very few fat people, or lazy ones except for fearless leader.
Nice look into their lives, it's nice in a way, but so very sad in even more so.

[Gary Oak]

Koreans tell it how it is.

http://www.koreaexpose.com/voices/korea ... ll-joseon/

KOREA, THY NAME IS HELL JOSEON
by SE-WOONG KOO
SEPTEMBER 22, 2015

One of the biggest scandals of 2010 involved Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, whose own daughter was found to have mysteriously qualified for a plum job inside the ministry, presumably with the father’s backing.

This itself would not have been ordinarily such big news in South Korea, but the timing was most unfortunate for the minister-daughter duo: Only two weeks earlier then-president Lee Myung-bak had announced the launch of a campaign to make South Korea a more “Just Society.”

Yu was forced to resign in a bid by the Lee administration to contain the damage from the scandal, but it was already too late. A poll conducted in the aftermath of the scandal showed that more than 70 percent of South Koreans believed their country to be a place without justice.

Perhaps more importantly, the development underscored a certain truth of South Korea: a country where official rhetoric in service of a lofty ideal could scarcely be more distant from a reality controlled by self-serving figures in power.

That episode came to my mind a few days ago as I encountered the news that three out of four attorneys hired at the Board of Audit and Inspection — the government organ responsible for nothing less than monitoring the behavior of public officials — were children of high-ranking officials and lawmakers suspected of being hired not for their abilities but for their family backgrounds.

Five years after Yu’s resignation and the attempt to make South Korea fairer, the life of South Koreans continues to suffer from small injustices that reflect the existence of two realities here: one available only to those from the right backgrounds and another that is experienced by everyone else.

Though an exact number is hard to come by, it seems that more and more South Koreans in their 20s and 30s are calling this gap between the two realities proof of South Korea as “Hell Joseon” — an infernal feudal kingdom stuck in the nineteenth century — and this language is catching on, to much hand-wringing in the domestic media. There is even a website dedicated to exposing South Korea’s ostensibly hellish and backward reality — named Hell Korea — and each morning I find the Hell Joseon Facebook group with more likes than the previous night.

One illustration purporting to show this truth of South Korea as hell has captured the popular imagination, a map titled “Hell Joseon: An Infernal Hellfire Peninsula.”


“Hell Joseon: An Infernal Hellfire Peninsula” (Source: DC Inside)
According to this map, being born in South Korea is tantamount to entering hell, where one is immediately enslaved by a highly regulated system that dictates an entire course of life. Onerous education and service in the abusive military are the norm, and the only goal for the young is to become servants of the mighty corporations that rule the realm from its heart.

Politicians turn blind eyes to the plight of the people from the luxury of their throne afar. “Golden Spoons” — euphemism for those born into wealth and power — simply skirt the whole system by drawing on resources provided to them by their families. For commoners, however, failing to enter the corporate world means having to wallow in the Pool of Joblessness, though some take refuge in the Fortress of Bureaucrats by taking the civil servant examination.

Yet the ultimate destiny for the majority is to run one of South Korea’s ubiquitous fried chicken joints — considered the least prestigious and profitable form of business — whether because there is no other job or one has been forcibly retired in the 40s. Then at the end of this long, tortuous journey, one meets death at Tapgol Park, the symbol of elderly poverty in downtown Seoul frequented by crowds of seniors who gather to kill time and eat free lunch dispensed by charity organizations.

The only escape is to become self-employed and eke out a self-sustaining but disreputable bandit-like existence on the margin of society, or wade through the Forest of Emigration and leave South Korea altogether, finding freedom in countries beyond hell.

If we are to go by this depressing assessment of South Korea, what angers the young are obvious: having to sacrifice youth for interminable education, the state and a job one does not believe in; a narrow path to financial security and an even more narrowly defined path to success; growing inequality and hereditary privileges of the haves; lack of social welfare that might cushion the fall to poverty; and elite corruption.

In their response to South Korea’s myriad ills, the Hell Joseon camp share rage with the users on Ilbe, the notorious rightwing online discussion forum known for bashing women, minorities and leftist politics. As do Ilbe users, those who describe South Korea as hell ascribe the country’s problems to some innate character of the South Korean people — described as “slavish” (noye geunseong) or “primitive” (migae) — and take pride in their ability to identify such failings with the detachment of objective outsiders.

But if some Ilbe users are distinguished by a measure of political conviction — however wrongly motivated — that while the country may be heading in a wrong direction, it can be redirected and reformed perhaps, self-described inhabitants of Hell Joseon, on the other hand, find no hope for South Korea; they seek only to abandon and escape the system altogether. For what is hell if not a place that defies reform? Its laws are immutable and suffering is the way of being for all eternity; no one ever dreams of turning hell into heaven.

The Hell Joseon discourse embodies despair and hopelessness of the most extreme variety, the idea that the South Korean state cannot be redeemed through effort. In fact, “effort” — noryeok in Korean — is one of the most hated words in the Hell Joseon lexicon, seen as part of an insidious tactic of the ruling class to trick the population into continuing to believe that work is meaningful, mobility possible, and justice alive.

In some ways young South Koreans are already taking revenge on a society that they believe has failed them and is beyond redemption. The falling rates of birth and marriage; one of the highest percentages of youth between 15 and 29 who eschew education, employment or training in the industrialized world; not to mention the rising suicide rate among teenagers: All this may partly correlate with worsening economic circumstances but nonetheless serves to punish the state by withholding greater productivity and children the officialdom desperately seeks for the goal of maintaining and growing the nation.

Self-destruction is not only a form of escape; it ensures the death of the system one so despises. To the South Korean state demanding life, denizens of Hell Joseon answer: “The best thing for a South Korean is never to be born; the second best is to die as soon as possible.” And in dying or running away to a foreign country, they gleefully watch the nation they leave behind burn and succumb to ruin.

For the young South Koreans who have grown to detest their nation, the Republic of Korea — Daehan Min’guk — already ceased to exist some time ago. They now call this land Daehan Mangguk: the Failed State of Korea.

[Gary Oak]

So Fatty Kim The Turd is ready for war with the USA. I doubt that the USA is particularly scared by this threat. is Fatty Kim The Turd dillusional ? What I just called him on this thread would give anybody in North Korea then death sentence by the way. Is Fatty Kim The Turd a military genius ? Does he actually have any particular talent at all ? Liu Yun Shan is a Chinese name so it is a very safe bet that he is a Chinese agent and is getting directives from China for Kim Jong Un.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/kim ... lsignoutmd

Kim Jong Un declared Saturday that North Korea was ready to fight “any kind of war” against the United States, as he presided over a huge military parade in the center of Pyongyang to mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party.

The highly orchestrated event included goose-stepping soldiers, convoys of rocket launchers and missiles, and fighter jets roaring overhead. It was the biggest such parade North Korea has ever held, part of Kim’s efforts to bolster his leadership of the world’s most closed and authoritarian state.

“We have stood up against the American imperialists, and we are ready for any kind of war against the United States,” Kim said in a long speech before the parade, his first public address in three years.

“Our military’s invincible spirit causes anxiety and fear to our enemies,” said Kim, who in addition to leading the country as the “Great Successor” holds the post of first secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party. “We can firmly declare that we can fight and win against the U.S. anywhere.”

Wearing his trademark navy blue Mao suit and reading from notes as he stood on a balcony overlooking rows of soldiers in Kim Il Sung Square, Kim was flanked by generals decked out with medals.

But also at his side was Liu Yunshan, the fifth-most-senior official in China’s Communist Party. The North’s official Korean Central Television showed footage of the two men laughing and waving throughout the event. Analysts said it was significant that Liu featured so prominently at the event and wondered whether it signaled an improvement in the frosty relations between Pyongyang and Beijing.

After Kim spoke, rows of tanks, trucks bearing Scud missiles, and 107mm and 300mm rocket launchers rolled through the square, the center of the capital and home to the Korean Workers’ Party headquarters.


A formation of military planes flying over the proceedings formed the symbol of the Workers’ Party – a hammer, sickle and writing brush – and the number 70, to Kim’s evident delight. Banners floating above the square read: “Long live the invincible Korean Workers’ Party” while people held up cards saying: “Military-first policy” and “Protect the mother nation.”

Analysts say that this year’s parade, celebrating seven decades since the creation of the Korean Workers’ Party, is about boosting the regime’s claims to legitimacy and further enabling the 30-something leader to present himself as the rightful heir to the system established by his grandfather, North Korea’s “eternal president” Kim Il Sung.

The surprising component of the weekend’s events was the prominence of Liu, who greeted Kim with three hugs and a broad smile when he presented the North Korean leader with a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday evening.


Relations between the neighbors, once called “as close as lips and teeth,” have soured in the three years since Xi took office and made it clear that he thought little of Kim and his penchant for nuclear and missile tests. Kim did not attend China’s own military parade, marking the end of World War II, in Beijing last month.

But Liu brought a letter from Xi that said China had “been striving to treat the bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term perspective in a bid to maintain, consolidate and expand the bilateral relations,” according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, which carried reports of the letter prominently.

“Under the new circumstance, the Chinese side is willing to seek closer communication and deepen cooperation, pushing for a long-term, healthy and stable development of the Sino-[North Korean] ties,” the letter said.

“The overt embrace of China and the overt diplomatic message was striking,” said Adam Cathcart, an expert on China and North Korea who teaches at Leeds University in England. “This seemed like quite a concession on the part of the North Koreans after several years of giving them the cold shoulder.”

Coming after last month’s parade in Beijing, which was attended by South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Liu’s prominence at Saturday’s event showed that China was not playing favorites between the Koreas and wanted to be seen as the diplomatic power in Asia, Cathcart said.


“I don’t have high expectations that North Korea is going to do what China wants, but we should be happy that somebody is talking to North Korea,” he said.

The high-profile Chinese delegation — which also included a senior member of China’s People’s Liberation Army — appeared to have paid initial dividends.

North Korea had warned that it was preparing to test what it calls a rocket for launching satellites into space but which is widely seen as cover for a long-range missile program.

Analysts had speculated that the regime would conduct the launch in the days leading up to the anniversary, but that did not happen, leading some to wonder whether Beijing had leaned on Pyongyang to behave itself while Liu was in town.

Furthermore, satellite imagery suggested a launch was not imminent. “The absence of any visible preparations for a launch indicate it is increasingly unlikely that a test will be conducted this month,” analysts Jack Liu and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. wrote in a post for 38 North, a Web site dedicated to North Korea.

Yoonjung Seo in Seoul contributed to this report.

[Blue Frost]

War with the US is alright except the loss of life in South Korea, they are the ones who would suffer most.
It would be better if there was a nuclear bomb dropped off at fearless leaders parade in my opinion.

[Gary Oak]

Enjoy

11 Things You Didn't Know About North Korea

[Blue Frost]

So now we need to get the soldiers hooked on some good weed they will come right on over.

[Gary Oak]

South Korea also is feeling the pinch.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... story.html

South Korea was once an economic tiger but seems to have ‘lost its mojo’


South Korea President Park Geun-hye, center, receives German President Joachim Gauck and his partner, Daniela Schadt, at a ceremony in Seoul on Oct. 12, 2015. (Wolfgang Kumm/European Pressphoto Agency)

By Anna Fifield October 13 


SUWON, South Korea — When South Korean President Park Geun-hye arrived in Washington on Tuesday, she was accompanied by 166 business representatives — three times the number she took with her during her first official visit two years ago.

The business contingent was to include the presidents of Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor and the head of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Also slated to accompany the president is Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, the country’s third-largest conglomerate, whose conviction for misappropriating company funds Park recently quashed, releasing him from prison and saying that the South Korean economy needed him back.

Park’s biggest challenge is not North Korea and its nuclear weapons, or cozying up to China without alienating the United States. It’s the economy. And the fact that she has taken such a huge business delegation to the United States reflects that.

“There are still many mountains to cross for a new economic takeoff,” Park said during a meeting with her economic advisers last week, according to a Yonhap News Agency report.

Park will confer with President Obama at the White House on Friday, a meeting that was delayed when she canceled a planned visit in June to stay home and deal with the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome — which itself became another economic challenge, deterring much-needed tourist visits.


[South Korea’s Park is criticized for postponing U.S. visit]

South Korea went through several decades of astonishingly fast industrialization — propelled by exports of high-tech ships and low-cost cars, and led by Park’s father, former president Park Chung-hee — to become a global manufacturing powerhouse.

But now the economy is hitting the buffers. “This feels like an economy that’s lost its mojo,” said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC in Hong Kong.

Exports account for half of South Korea’s economy, with 60 percent of outbound goods heading to emerging markets. Chief among them is China, which is going through its own economic slowdown, crimping demand for Korean products. Then there’s North Korea’s saber rattling and China’s devalued currency, which is making it more expensive for Chinese tourists to come here.




[North Korea threatens action in South Korea over broadcasts]

These factors have coincided to bring about a fall in South Korea’s exports for nine consecutive months, including by 8.3 percent in September from a year earlier.

“Korea is a highly export-dependent economy and has been for decades,” said Neumann of HSBC. “That means that it’s at the forefront of this global trade downturn.”


Things at home are hardly rosier. Wages have remained stagnant, home prices have gone through the roof, and South Koreans continue to have exceptionally high debt levels.

This is making the central bank reluctant to cut interest rates out of fear it will encourage even more borrowing.

The International Monetary Fund last week cut its forecast for South Korean growth this year to 2.7 percent, a full point lower than it projected in January. Compare that to the more than 6 percent growth rates South Korea was chalking up five years ago.

To try to lessen South Korea’s reliance on exports, Park has been promoting a “creative economy” strategy — fostering start-ups and encouraging entrepreneurship. But the effort is moving slowly and will not provide any relief to South Korea’s 3 million small and medium enterprises.

In Suwon, an industrial city outside Seoul that is home to Samsung Electronics, the corporate behemoth that looms over the South Korean economy, the mood is depressed.

“It’s terrible. It’s really terrible. Seventy percent of our business has gone to Vietnam,” said a representative of one company that makes parts for smartphones. He spoke on the condition of anonymity for him and his company to avoid angering clients, which include Samsung and LG. “Two years ago, our orders started to fall. A lot of companies that deal with Samsung have gone bankrupt.”

[‘Eventually we will face a situation that will be beyond our control’]

In a light-manufacturing park on the outskirts of Suwon, hundreds of smaller firms produce the tiniest of parts for the electronics giants. While it is the conglomerates whose brand names are known, it is these small companies that make their products work. And they are being squeezed by the clients on one side and on the other side by Chinese and, increasingly, Vietnamese competitors who can make the same products.




“We’re now competing with Chinese companies, and the unit prices have dropped significantly,” said Chun Yong-son, the owner of Kyungsung Electronics, a small company that supplies LED lights to television makers.

“For example, if it costs $1 for a Korean company to make something, it costs only 30 cents for a Chinese company to make it,” Chun said, sitting outside his building, smoking with his workers. “So we are losing a lot of manufacturing.”

Park’s policies are not helping, he said. The minimum hourly wage will rise from $4.85 this year to $5.25 next year.

Chun said he might have to lay off some of his 20 employees next year to counteract the increase. “It’s inevitable that people will lose their jobs, because there is less work, requiring fewer people,” he said, adding that the increase in labor costs will compound that problem.

This has other repercussions. A travel company called Hana Tour has a branch in the industrial park, and it reports a decline in business trips as a result of the economic worries.

“If two people used to go abroad in the past, now only one goes,” said Yoon Jung-hwa, a travel agent there. “Sometimes we call regular clients to ask why they’re not traveling, and they say they’re making fewer trips because the economy is bad.”

Now is a time of reckoning, said Lee Kwi-son, a real estate agent who rents out units in the industrial park.

“Companies around here are reaching the point where they have to decide if they’re able to carry on,” he said, “if they will have to scale back or if they will have to wrap up their businesses

[Blue Frost]

Kim Woo-jung helped it grow, and he was a poor kid that made it super big.
To bad there isn't more people like him.

DEAWOO is his baby.

[Blue Frost]

North Korean Escapee Gives Eye-Opening Insight Into The World’s Most Secretive Country

[video][/video]

[Gary Oak]

it was another purge speculation that led to Stalin's assassination and one of these times it may very well lead to Kim Jong's too. He is a 30 year old spoiled brat who isn't particularly learned or talented. HI believe that his more experienced cronies must resent this pompous cruel psycho and if they knokw that their heads are going to be next on the chopping block they may in a desperate bid to stay alive may assassinate him.

State Funeral List In North Korea Triggers Perge Speculation

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/sta ... lsignoutmd

[Blue Frost]

The more the better, you get rid of all the experienced people any war he will loose.

[Blue Frost]

[video][/video]

[Blue Frost]

Both are actually sad, but the slave labor is the worst.

[Blue Frost]

[video][/video]

[Gary Oak]

Would 33 year old Fatty Kim the Turd feel an ounce of guilt about burning millions of people in a nucleur blast ? I don't think so. The whole country is forced to worship this short fat ugly control freak.