"If they want a future with us, if they want to work with us, if they want to be a member of the international community, they're going to have to get out of this nuclear business," U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said on Sunday.
Ugh, this drives me crazy. I know there are people at State that understand Juche and the North Korean world outlook, so where does this ignorant BS Hill is uttering come from?
Isolation from the world community, in Pyongyang terminology, “self-reliance,” is a goal to be obtained, not a threat to be worried about. If you want to get the North’s attention, and really get them worried and ready to deal, you threaten them with MORE foreign interaction, not less. You threaten radio broadcasts, leaflet drops, satellite phones, defector education and re-training camps along their border, THEN you’ll get the North’s attention. Threatening the North with isolation is like threatening the Middle East with oil, or the French with wine – they have it already, they like it, and they really wouldn’t mind more.
There is a HUGE disconnect somewhere along the line from the people at the State Department who actually know something about the North, up to Hill and the others doing the talking and forming the U.S. negotiating positions. No wonder the North keeps doing whatever it wants – the people running the show on the U.S. side can’t tell a carrot from a damn stick.
I've added a few more photos from the trip to Iran, and hope to add more over the next couple of days. Enjoy, and let me know if you see anything you like or have any questions.
I’ve been hearing and reading these for years, so finally decided to put up a few of my own.
You know you’ve been in a long time (too long?), when:
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you see scissors and toilet paper on a restaurant table and … well, you don’t really think much of it
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you’re driving your motorcycle down the sidewalk and get irritated when people don’t get out of your way
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you have ever owned, or at least know the meaning of, the expression, “bee-bee”
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you hate going all the way out to Incheon Airport because you remember how easy, quick and cheap it was to get to Kimpo (and you remember when “Gimpo” was actually called Kimpo, Busan was Pusan, and Gangnam was Kangnam …)
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you think of dial-up modems as something that went out with leisure suits and 8-tracks
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you’re no longer surprised when your health club’s sound system spends most of its time playing slow love ballads
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you used to visit hidden ‘after-hours bars’ that secretly stayed open past the curfew
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you have seen 1-won coins in use
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even when meeting and shaking hands with non-Koreans you reflexively touch your elbow
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you go home and your friends look at you weird because you keep pouring everyone’s drinks
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you now cut up apples and remove the peel before eating them
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you go to SE Asia and think the Buddhist monks look weird in orange instead of grey
