Couldn't China be brought down too? Historically as bad as North Korea.

So you think those starving in the country side....Those with relatives in concentration camps are strong supporters of the North Korea regime?

Rather simplistically Kermy....If North Korea were strong outside of the capital....They wouldn't need concentration camps......It doesn't tend to be a place where you put your supporters.

Outside of Pyongyang......The will to fight or indeed.....the technology to fight isn't significant.

In a war with the west the North Koreans would quickly lose air superiority......They would be quickly running to China like last time.

Im confident we could but the cost would be astronomical, we would all be f***ed.

Edited by Ouzo Dan (22 Aug 2015 9.16pm)

I may have misunderstood what you mean but it seems to me that you have granted the U.S. too much credibility and influence with regards to developments on the Korean Peninsula. Cold War antics often require a more 'pericentric' understanding, to borrow Tony Smith's terminology. Unlike their campaigns around the Americas (Guatemala 1954, The Bay of Pigs etc.), which saw the U.S. obsession with the Monroe Doctrine and hemispheric security give birth to an aggressive policy which Chomsky has called the 'Mafia Doctrine', conflict in the Korean Peninsula in 1950 was more the result of peripheral leaders such as Syngman Rhee and Kim Il Sung dragging their superpower allies into a conflict no one wanted. Actually, given the U.S. obsession at the time with 'rolling back Communism', it's surprising they never pushed on into China once they had managed to force the conflict above the 38th parallel. Factor in the consideration that the U.S. were attempting to create a democratic state next door in Japan, which would have undoubtedly been threatened by an expansionist N. Korea, and I think U.S. action in Korea to be fair and understandable. I don't have blanket support for the U.S. but I'm intrigued to know why you see them as responsible for the state of North Korea, and not the various Soviet and Chinese leaders that have propped them up over the years.

Well I don't buy into the western propaganda which portrays the North Korean regime as a rogue nation and their leader as some sort of nutter.

We carry this belief that the West is good and other nations that don't subscribe to a western democratic society is somehow wrong and their leaders are maniacs who would bomb you and their only goal is to destroy our way of life. Complete nonsense. Our leaders and society is just as bad, if not worse. We arm ourselves with massive nukes and invade other countries and start wars, yet we have the temerity to accuse other nations of something they might do because they're a bit different to us and keep themselves to themselves.

WE are the aggressors in this world and OUR leaders are the despots.