North Korea. Just, wow.

[ch1nchilla]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/world/asia/08north.html

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Monday sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontational stance toward the United States.


The Central Court, the highest court of North Korea, held the trial of the two Americans, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from Thursday to Monday and convicted them of “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry,” the North’s official news agency, KCNA, said in a report monitored in Seoul.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee have been held since they were detained by North Korean soldiers patrolling the border between China and North Korea on March 17.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the charges “baseless.”

The United States government had demanded that the North forgo the legal proceedings and release the two women.

The sentencing came amid rising tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. Earlier Monday, North Korea threatened to retaliate with “extreme” measures if the United Nations punished it for its nuclear test last month, and Washington warned that it might try to put the North back on its list of states that sponsor terrorism, a designation that could subject the impoverished state to more financial sanctions.

“Our response would be to consider sanctions against us as a declaration of war and answer it with extreme hard-line measures,” the North Korea’s state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a commentary.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president, when they were detained by the soldiers. The reporters were working on a report about North Korean refugees — women and children — who had fled their homeland in hopes of finding food in China.

The circumstances surrounding their capture remain unclear.

Analysts said they were a pawn in a rapidly deteriorating confrontation between the United States and North Korea — a potential bargaining chip for the Pyongyang regime and a handicap for Washington in its efforts to pressure the government over its recent missile and nuclear tests.

The sentence to North Korea’s infamous prison camps came despite repeated appeals for clemency from the journalists’ families.

Defying not only its traditional foes — the United States, Japan and South Korea — but also its longtime ideological allies, China and Russia, North Korea launched an intermediate-range rocket on April 5 and conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25.

[FatalT]

Nuke it.

[T-Short]

shoot the hostages

[duckman2000]

12 years is obviously harsh, but wasn't that an anticipated possible outcome of filming in the region?

[Veidt]

Nuke it.

[Phoenix Dark]

jack bauer will save them

[T234]

Fuck it.

[T-Short]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/peering_into_north_korea.html

[Veidt]

America doesn't see a need to intervene. Since N-korea doesn't pose a threat to them, and there's no money to be made what-so-ever having a war with N-korea . It's all just a publicity stunt. If America cared, Mr.ill wouldn't still be here.

[Brehvolution]

NK reminds me of the wastes in FO3. Is there a fucking tree left there?

[T-Short]

NK reminds me of the wastes in FO3. Is there a fucking tree left there?

a whole row here, seems so



Zero Hero owned

[Tauntaun]

^ 

[Brehvolution]

If they counted as real trees, they would have been cut down too.

[Rman]

Damn.  I hate North Korea. 

[recursivelyenumerable]

amazing photographs.

[Tauntaun]

What if they go on and kill those two poor women instead sentencing them to hard labor, would that insure giving them the Saddam treatment? They really need it.

(Image removed from quote.)

This picture is very depressing.

It looks like a scene from an anime. 

[Brehvolution]

NK reminds me of the wastes in FO3. Is there a fucking tree left there?

Owned on GAF, owned on The Bore, even owned in North Korea.

One can't be more owned.

Kill yourself.

You first

[Phoenix Dark]

What if they go on and kill those two poor women instead sentencing them to hard labor, would that insure giving them the Saddam treatment? They really need it.

(Image removed from quote.)

This picture is very depressing.

It looks like a scene from an anime. 

Or from The Scouring of the Shire

[Tauntaun]

Movie is so sad.  :'(

[Diunx]

If I where an evil dictator I would probably do the same thing plus rape them just because I can.

[Robo]

smh

[brawndolicious]

It seems that negotiations for their release will begin soon.  It sounds like if Al Gore (co-founder of Current TV) or other political figures go to negotiate, the journalists will probably be released.

For the journalists, this probably isn't that bad.  They do have to spend a few weeks in prison but they apparently do get to say that they were political prisoners so that should help their career.

[Flannel Boy]

If I where an evil dictator I would probably do the same thing plus rape them just because I can.

If I were a dictator, I'd rather be loved than feared. But I guess it's hard to be a benevolent dictator.

[Flannel Boy]

It sounds like if Al Gore (co-founder of Current TV)

  That's an interesting non-restrictive appositive.

[Positive Touch]

For the journalists, this probably isn't that bad. 

yeah, i'm sure that aside from all the beatings and rapes, it's wonderful!

[brawndolicious]

Why would North Korea beat and rape their bargaining chip?

And malek, I have no idea what you're saying.

[Flannel Boy]

And malek, I have no idea what you're saying.

Hey, now you know how I feel whenever I read your posts!

[recursivelyenumerable]

If I were a dictator, I'd rather be loved than feared. But I guess it's hard to be a benevolent dictator.

The problem is that women don't generally like being ordered to love you.

[Flannel Boy]

If I were a dictator, I'd rather be loved than feared. But I guess it's hard to be a benevolent dictator.

The problem is that women don't generally like being ordered to love you.

Power and status can be effective aphrodisiacs.

[brawndolicious]

I think asians actually used left goat testicles as aphrodisiacs.

I know that the chinese definitely collect deer ass pheremones though for perfumes.  It's a big industry apparently.

[ferrarimanf355]

Set 'em free, and N. Korea can have Al Gore and a ManBearPig, too.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm cereal, super cereal.

[close]

[recursivelyenumerable]

[Powerslave]

I love this picture

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I think NK gives good insight as to how brutal dictatorships by a hedonistic ruler worked in the past.  Kim = modern day Caligula?

I'd hate to consider them a Stalinist state because at least under Stalin, the USSR modernized.  North Korea has basically been spinning its wheels since the 1950s.  The only time they manage to advance is when someone else gives them the technology.

If I were a dictator, I'd rather be loved than feared. But I guess it's hard to be a benevolent dictator.

The problem is that women don't generally like being ordered to love you.

Power and status can be effective aphrodisiacs.

Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il supposedly have banged thousands of women.  As did Mao.

[Robo]

I love this picture.  I BREAK YOU!





Great photos.

[FlameOfCallandor]

Looks like a workers paradise.

[Veidt]

North Korea should make money out of turning their country into a huge movie set. For future WWII and holocaust themed movies. Or Sauron's vision of a kingdom subdued.

[Robo]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/recent_scenes_from_north_korea.html

[Great Rumbler]

(Image removed from quote.)

That would be so freaking awesome if those guys just fired off all of the rockets simultaneously.

[FlameOfCallandor]

If these pictures aren't proof that socialism/communism works than I don't know what is.

[Phoenix Dark]

Looks like a workers paradise.

Would the government (in the US) have any responsibility to address the horribly unhealthy environmental issues in that picture?

[Powerslave]

look at that road

[ManaByte]

[chronovore]

I'm so sick and tired of that trumped-up little shit. If the US was willing to commit our military ass to regime change in Iraq, why can't we send Chuck Norris with a blowgun in to N. Korea to whack this jerk?

[brawndolicious]

You know that if there's a power vacuum, somebody even worse could take over and then who knows what would happen?  Kim is "manageable" at least.

[chronovore]

Hell. Give it to S. Korea and pay for the 50 year reunion parties: "aluminum walkers and Depends for EVERYONE!" - or give it to China since they want to annex anything on their borders anyway, and let the N. Koreans have whatever it is that China does that allows a communist state to run factories producing for capitalist ones... oh, right: gulags. Well it wouldn't be much of a regime change, but maybe they'd have food to eat, and the nuke-capability would go to a more comprehendible enemy business partner.