While the leaders of North Korea have, without question, done a lot of horrible things, the anti-aircraft-gun story has appeared repeatedly in conjunction with numerous people, many of whom have reappeared alive afterwards, or who have been confirmed executed by other, more ordinary, methods. It's not clear if these anti-aircraft gun executions have ever been carried out, or if it's simply a recurrent rumor.
Feels like North Korea's magic ability to resurrect military commanders after they're allegedly executed by artillery cannon, etc., lies running laps before the truth puts on its shoes.
What you say is directly contradicted by the quoted words of a retired Major General in the article I previously cited. If you want to convince you me you are more knowledgeable or truthful than what was presented there, you'll need to cite some source. No offense, but when it comes to matters of military action, I'm going to take the word of someone with is or was relatively high in the military over a pseudo-anonymous internet persona unless evidence to the contrary is presented.
Here's the last paragraph: North Korean anti-aircraft weapons “are not all that impressive,” Scales said, “but there’s lots of them.” Could the North Korea guns be taken down? “Sure, over time,” he said. “But by the time we do that, the damage they’d inflict on Seoul would just be staggering.” They go into the reasons for that earlier.
Hopefully this will turn out to be true, and something detrimental to the NK regime, and not one of the many false, ridiculous stories about North Korea we've been hearing over the past few years -- everything from "he was fed to dogs" to "prisoners shot with anti-aircraft missiles!".
North Korea has killed or tortured over 1 million in death camps and threatens nukes at the whim of 1 man who recently used anti aircraft guns to kill his uncles. In my opinion this moron deserves life in jail
I wonder if the North Koreans who get killed for letting a device slip by them which then is used to mock their security will be told exactly why they're being tortured/murdered, or if it will just happen. :(
Hopefully someday we'll see hearings on Americans massacring South Korean civilians some day ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre ). We even have written orders and memoes showing it was U.S. policy to fire upon civilians.
Or maybe supporting the dictatorship in South Korea, and it's massacre against members of the democratization movement in 1980 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movemen... ). General Wickham sent troops from the DMZ so that the South Korean army could commit the massacre actually.
We could go on about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib torture, the NSA spying on all e-mails, phone calls and web site browsing and saving it forever etc.
But no, let's hear more about a US Senate hearing on human rights in North Korea - from 11 years ago...what a farce.
I have no knowledge of it, but I want to believe that since everyone, even common folk like you and I, are aware of that possibility, the militaries of South Korea and the US must have something in place to mitigate that, some sort of instant-reaction type airforce ready to take off at a second's notice to neutralize such artillery.
edit: I just read the article you linked to. I still want to believe the authors may not quite have all the information. After all, if such a way to neutralize them existed, but North Korea believed their position there untouchable, we wouldn't want to publicize our plan. Far from unprecedented.
Why would they even bother denying it then, in that case?
There's no advantage to North Korea of doing such an unnecessarily complicated and risky assassination in such a public and relatively secure place, when they could do it anywhere else, using any other weapon.
There is an obvious motivation for countries hostile to North Korea to so publicly frame them for this though, and bring up the issue of WMDs, particularly a week or so after their latest missle launch.
We'll probably never know what really happened, but just because North Korea is a bad place doesn't mean we should automatically accept everything they're accused of.
I count it as an abandoned armistice, which is what it started out as (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement), abandoned through the deeds and words of the North. Which, without another huge helping of "Chinese volunteers" simply lacks the military strength to do a whole lot more without retaliation they, or rather their nomenklatura, aren't willing to bear.
This sounds like propaganda looking to provoke NK leadership. No super secret coup is having articles posted on msn about them...or you know they'd all be dead...
It’s like every time they say some bug guy in North Korea got executed because South Korean intelligence said so and then reappears a few months later.
So they are drinking beer and some comments were passed around, and the guy just shoots him? The only people who buy this crap are the pro-North koreans in South Korea. Everybody else who live in a sane reality don't believe this ludicrous story made to make Park Chung Hee seem like a monster.
The rift between Park Jong Chul (President's head of security) and Kim Jae Kyu (KCIA director) well preceded that evening when the president was assassinated. He premeditated the assassination by having the security detail paralyzed by his own loyal followers (who were all executed and jailed). The bullshit about how Kim Jae Kyu, the mastermind behind all the torture and brutal political suppression did it for democracy is laughable at best. The motive was simple, Kim Jae Kyu thought he could usurp power, he falsely mistook the American CIA's approval and repeatedly sought CIA's help after assassination. He was foolish because US fully supported PCH's dictatorship as a strong buffer against North Korea. They continued to support president Chun and Noh, both military generals and it was only until Kim Young Sam finally was elected through a democratic vote.
Was Park Chung Hee a dictator? Was he brutal in some of his methods? Of course. But he is also the reason why South Korea was allowed to thrive economically. Without the political stability brought on by a military rule with the backdrop of a serious security threat like North Korea (they were richer than South in 1960s), you'd have to be a hopeless romantic and naive to think that someone could've done a better job by "democratic" means.
Anyways, I think I'm done being trolled here. I suggest you to not try to twist and distort the post-Korean war history of South Korea with inaccuracies and ignorant statements.
https://www.38north.org/2016/09/aabrahamian090216/
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