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Kinda? Maybe?
At least two are dead and 175 rounds were exchanged, but the shelling seems more like a stupid accident (“the North blamed the South for starting the exchange; the South acknowledged firing test shots in the area but denied that any had fallen in the North’s territory”) than the beginning of an invasion.
Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua.... More by Brendan Kiley
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If our armed forces weren’t so over extended in the middle east, they could fix the North Korean situation in a couple of months.
An “accident” Brendan? North Korea has offered several explanations, but I didn’t see “accident” amongst them.
Admittedly, they only killed two people – so I can understand your desire to dismiss the incident with the Stranger’s customary swagger. I suspect that the South Koreans might be a little excitable about the prospect of NK shelling as Seoul is expected to be wiped out by NK artillery in the first few hours of a resumption of hostilities between the two countries.
@2: The accident mentioned is the shots fired by SK perhaps landing in NK. Whether NK thought that SK fired first is actually a question that matters when setting expectations anout whether this is a resumption of hostilities or just an unfortunate misunderstanding.
“I was just cleaning it!” – Kim Jong Il
@1, they could fix it, however it would be at the cost of hundreds of thousands of SK and American Serviceperson lives.
Mr. Predator Drone, meet Mr. Kim Jong Il.
End the Two Wars of Republican adventure in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And then maybe we’ll care.
@5: Kim Jon Il’s regime could be toppled with even less bloodshed than it took to remove Saddam Hussein’s regime, and there would not years of ensuing sectarian/ethnic/terrorist violence and chaos that have caused such great loss of life in Iraq.
@8 Kim Jong Il has more artillery than just about any other army in the world, and he could easily open a can-o-whoopass on Seoul, with it’s metropolitan area of nearly 25 million people just a few miles from the NK border.
@8
Um…..according to the DOD North Korea has 9.5 million troops while we have a lonely 3 million who are currently scattered. Any conflict is bad idea.
That rings bells a draft and NK would deploy their nuclear arms we know they have.
If a war does break out, what will happen to the economic stability for the South Koreans or maybe even the global economy? Some of our best electronics and automobiles come from there. There are millions of people living very close to the border, Seoul is right there, and I have a feeling if Seoul is ruined after the war, it’s going to take years and years for the city to be back to where it was. U.S. may have some heavy casualties as well, and there may even be terrorist threats (I’m not sure in the U.S. but in Korea). One way to resolve this is do nothing and I don’t mean the South Koreans with it’s allies shouldn’t fight back because they sacrificed so much for the North, I mean we should not be giving the North Koreans any aid or money. Let their own stupid government starve themselves to death. Why should the U.S. and it’s allies try to help a nation when that nation refuses to take care of themselves? Is it common sense to try to help a homeless person, but when you try to help the person, he or she wants to kill or rob from you? Power without perception is useless and therefor has no true value. Fear always leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. I sense a lot of fear in the North Koreans.