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Sturgeon's House

North Korea, you so crazy!


Walter_Sobchak

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The one thing about War in the Korean Peninsula: Part 두 is that it's too often portrayed as the US being the sole decider of when the ball drops when - at this point in history - Worst Korea and Japanime are going to be doing a good bit - if not most - of the heavy lifting. 

 

(Assuming there isn't just a massive decapitation strike on our part that takes out Rocketman and his cohorts at one go)

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Fifteen to thirty thousand dead is a low level insurgency?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising

 

Coming back a little closer to the present, it's not the DPRK who persistently refuse to negotiate a peace treaty, the simple solution that's been staring the world in the face for sixty years.....Was 2016 the last time America refused to talk, I really do forget?

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5 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Fifteen to thirty thousand dead is a low level insurgency?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising

 

Coming back a little closer to the present, it's not the DPRK who persistently refuse to negotiate a peace treaty, the simple solution that's been staring the world in the face for sixty years.....Was 2016 the last time America refused to talk, I really do forget?

Compared to the Korean War, yeah. 

 

Yes, America should negotiate more with the North and could probably remove its forces from the Korean Peninsula without having to worry about the North taking Seoul. That doesn't mean the DPRK is actually the victim or is somehow not a terrible regime that starved its own population to death in the 90s. Also what was the last time America sunk a North Korean naval vessel or shelled a North Korean island? 

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12 minutes ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

Compared to the Korean War, yeah.

 

LOL!  That point I'll definitely grant you.  ;)

 

I'm not suggesting the DPRK is a victim (I don't believe the article was either, unless you are looking at it from a viewpoint pretty far to the right), but the US keeps doubling down on bad policy.....It's a story we've seen over & over again;  "US 'liberates' nation.  US ignores national aspirations & installs pro-US puppet government.  Popular resistance to regime leads to deeper US involvement.  External forces viewing apparent weakness and likely popular support choose to intervene.  Carnage!"  Grossly simplified I know, but does it sound familiar at all?

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8 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

Part of my issue there is that I really don't get what you are trying to say to refute the points made in the article, your comments to date seem rather more like bluster than any sort of meaningful counterargument.....My reason for bringing up Butler is simple, in his book he clearly points out that the primary aim of US foreign policy is to lay the groundwork for US corporate exploitation, it's the same story world over, you know it, I know it. (wow, what a bunch of simplistic bullshit.)

 

 

I posted a bunch of blatantly wrong shit from the article. If you can't see the bullshit and straight up wrong history in that article you don't know as much as you think you do on the subject. If you want to take that "article" as anything but trashy leftist propaganda and propagandized history, start with my qoutes and explain how I'm wrong.   You call my posts bluster and ridiculous, but they at least have quotes  that add to the discussion of the subject, all you've done is drop a shit article and act like a wanker when people didn't like it and pointed out why. 

 

And since I'm not on my phone on the way to work, I'll get into the Butler book a little more. I think it's a little naive or disingenuous to think Butler did't support the US actions in embargoing Japan over its invasion and genocidal campaign in China, the Rape of Nanking was a thing. As far as I know he didn't criticize Roosevelt's actions in the pacific leading up to the war.  His main complaint was the Marine Corps was being used as a corporate police force to control corrupt, or unstable, mostly South American governments. If you think that was the primary goal of US foreign policy post WWII,  your views on US foreign policy are to simplistic, and assume it wouldn't change post WWII, when the world was very different, and the role of the US was much larger.  Post was US foreign policy was far more concerned with communists than it was propping up fruit companies.  So no, I don't know the main goal of US foreign policy was or is to exploit other nations for US Corps, and I find that view simplistic and repugnant. Tell us, how did the Marshall Plan post WWII setup to make US corporations super rich while oppression the locals? 

 

I'm going to cease being polite if you continue to defend that pile of shit article with generic bullshit only extreme leftists and hollywood actually believe without addressing the specific quotes, and if you can explain away those I'll post more since just about the whole thing was trash. Dig into the article, post some sections you think are really interesting, or just concede you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and move on, you'd get more respect that either way. 

 

 

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“the U.S. and Japan had been on a collision course since the 1920s and by 1940, in the midst of the global depression, were locked in a mortal struggle over who would ultimately benefit most from the markets and resources of Greater China and East Asia.” If one had to explain what the cause of the Pacific War was, that one sentence would go a long way. Atwood continues, “The real reason the U.S. opposed the Japanese in Asia is never discussed and is a forbidden subject in the establishment media as are the real motives of American foreign policy writ large.”

 

Which part is 'wrong'?  You may not agree with the author's conclusion, nor his choice of where to place blame (incidentally I never believe there's just one cause for these things), but the fact that the US & Japan were placed on a collision course by their (mutually exclusive) foreign policies is surely not up for debate?

 

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Atwood’s brief but powerful article gives one the big picture of the Open Door Policy, while through Cumings’ work, one can learn about the particulars of how it was implemented in Korea during the American occupation of the country after the Pacific War, through the not-free and not-fair election of the first South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), and the civil war in Korea that followed. “Unimpeded access to the East Asian region” meant access to markets for the elite American business class, with successful domination of those markets an extra plus.

 

Once again, which part is 'wrong'?  You may not agree with the works in question, but you don't explain why they are incorrect, or supply any alternative argument.  To suggest that I or the article were defending the Japanese policy is ridiculous, hence my response.  This is not a zero-sum game, being critical of American policy does not in any way suggest that I (or the author) support the policy of the Japanese (or North Koreans for that matter).

 

As for picking out parts of the article that I found 'really interesting'.....Well I did link the whole article, as I thought that much of it might have relevance to the general discussion in this thread (please note the added disclaimer, I did not for one minute believe that the opinions expressed would be universally popular).  If you think I'm defending that pot-bellied loon in NK or attacking the US, you are way off the mark, what I'm interested in is a long term solution that doesn't involve mushroom clouds.  Frank and open discussion of the mistakes (crimes if you will) of the past (on both sides) is critical to achieving that end and nothing will improve if both sides bury their heads in the sand (once again I'm not taking sides here, just pointing out that there are more than one).

 

PS - Re: Smedley Butler.  Wonder what his thoughts would be on this:  https://www.ft.com/content/7f435f04-8c05-11e2-b001-00144feabdc0

 

PPS - On a positive note, this:  http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/11/01/u-s-quietly-pursuing-direct-diplomacy-north-korea/

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A:Which part is 'wrong'?  You may not agree with the author's conclusion, nor his choice of where to place blame (incidentally I never believe there's just one cause for these things), but the fact that the US & Japan were placed on a collision course by their (mutually exclusive) foreign policies is surely not up for debate?

 

Quote
 

“the U.S. and Japan had been on a collision course since the 1920s and by 1940, in the midst of the global depression, were locked in a mortal struggle over who would ultimately benefit most from the markets and resources of Greater China and East Asia.” If one had to explain what the cause of the Pacific War was, that one sentence would go a long way. Atwood continues, “The real reason the U.S. opposed the Japanese in Asia is never discussed and is a forbidden subject in the establishment media as are the real motives of American foreign policy writ large.”

 

Just to start, this is pretty basic, and true, but it leaves out a whole lot that sure makes the article sound better  with it missing. if you have an idealistic view of history and act like there was some evil corporate intent to what in many cases was just how things played out, it may make sense to you but that's just not a realistic view of history. It also implies the reason we're totally economic, and ignores the illegal invasion of China, and then the atrocities committed, caused even more tensions, and then a riverboat was attacked. The US was an Ally of the Nationalist Chinese, and had interest in China that do not seem particularly evil, and we supported them right up to their civil war. Where in this is A: the main goal of US foreign policy in China was to enrich corporate America, and I don't buy it was resources, because before the Japanese took them, most of the important resources were under the control of US Allies.  This point of this leftist whine fest is to show America didn't need or have to be there, but fails to point out how much worse off the pacific nations would have been under Japanese rule, or it's off i'm fairy land, the place were countries don't invade each other if they don't have a big army or big allies, and not on this planet in the 20 and 30s. We also didn't always oppose them, we were selling them steel and oil right up to the point they started slaughtering the chinese for fun.  So to summarize this point, it's a whiny leftist distortion of history or best and straight up stupidity from the originator at worst. Now, when I run into stuff so blatantly wrong, in such a blatantly political way, I normally write it off as shit on move on. But since you insist there is value in this, and actually think the whole thing is good, we can keep going. 

 

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A: Once again, which part is 'wrong'?  You may not agree with the works in question, but you don't explain why they are incorrect, or supply any alternative argument.  To suggest that I or the article were defending the Japanese policy is ridiculous, hence my response.  This is not a zero-sum game, being critical of American policy does not in any way suggest that I (or the author) support the policy of the Japanese (or North Koreans for that matter).

 

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Atwood’s brief but powerful article gives one the big picture of the Open Door Policy, while through Cumings’ work, one can learn about the particulars of how it was implemented in Korea during the American occupation of the country after the Pacific War, through the not-free and not-fair election of the first South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), and the civil war in Korea that followed. “Unimpeded access to the East Asian region” meant access to markets for the elite American business class, with successful domination of those markets an extra plus.

 

 

Ok, so, do you not see how this little bit implies the war started because of tensions, and a failed election, and not because with Russian approval and supplies massed and then invaded south Korea? Someone ignorant of the subject might think the country was not already split between the West and East on the 38th Parallel, and that the election "fraud" election caused the war.  Do you have some sources on this election problem, cause I am not going to take this shit article of proof it was true cause you know, we all know really, Leftist lie about history all the time, that's why their history articles are shit. 

 

We occupied the country at the same time the soviets occupied the north.  Had we not, the south would have been subjected under communism. This article really seems to be off in dream land, because there was zero chance the people of Korea could, or were going to get control of the country right when the war ended. Left to their own devices they probably would have starved. Since we live in the real world though,  it is clearly better to not be under communist control, so warts and all, the US occupation, and the blood they spilled to keep South Korea free outweighs in sick deals our mythical evil corporations got out of it. My god man, the last few lines are almost comical in how stereotypical it is of the Hate America first crowd. 

 

 

 

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As for picking out parts of the article that I found 'really interesting'.....Well I did link the whole article, as I thought that much of it might have relevance to the general discussion in this thread (please note the added disclaimer, I did not for one minute believe that the opinions expressed would be universally popular).  If you think I'm defending that pot-bellied loon in NK or attacking the US, you are way off the mark, what I'm interested in is a long term solution that doesn't involve mushroom clouds.  Frank and open discussion of the mistakes (crimes if you will) of the past (on both sides) is critical to achieving that end and nothing will improve if both sides bury their heads in the sand (once again I'm not taking sides here, just pointing out that there are more than one).

 

PS - Re: Smedley Butler.  Wonder what his thoughts would be on this:  https://www.ft.com/content/7f435f04-8c05-11e2-b001-00144feabdc0

 

PPS - On a positive note, this:  http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/11/01/u-s-quietly-pursuing-direct-diplomacy-north-korea/

 

So there it is again, you think the whole thing is interesting, but you don't want to cover specifics, while being snarky and not actually discussing anything.  Posting links without comment is considered bad form around here, and only one of those links is really relevant to the conversation or your simplistic view of world and US history.  In my world view, when you find several glaring errors in something that's supposed to be journalism, the rest is shit too, not just because might be factually incorrect, but because the thinking of the author will be bad, if his facts are all wrong, and that means it's shit that one shouldn't waste time on.

 

I'm not sure where you got the idea I thought you were defending best Korea, it's clear your defending a shit article you feel has merit, but aren't willing to point out specific parts that you think make it that way. Why are you on a discussion forum and defending an article you posted, while also refusing to discuss the actual content? Seems a little trolly. I'm surprised you're actually worried world about WWIII starting in Korea, well, less surprised now that I see the type of journalism you find interesting. The only way war is going to start again in Korea, is if Rocketman set it off. 

 

 

The first link is behind a paywall, and isn't really related anyway, jumping around like this is discouraged.  The second is something even the mainstream outlets quietly cover, when they are not spinning their own brand of bullshit.  I mean really, this is a surprise, Trump has the state department working on a diplomatic  solution? 

 

 

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The "America backing Nationalist China" isn't entirely true as many members of the US Govt really wanted to support Mao's communists in China over the rather ineffective and despotic government of Chaing and this essentially went along until Chinese communists started taking full advantage of America's wishy-washy support of the Nationalists by taking over most of the country after the Japanese surrender and killing a handful of Americans along the way to being one of the deadliest regimes in modern history. 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Priory_of_Sion said:

The "America backing Nationalist China" isn't entirely true as many members of the US Govt really wanted to support Mao's communists in China over the rather ineffective and despotic government of Chaing and this essentially went along until Chinese communists started taking full advantage of America's wishy-washy support of the Nationalists by taking over most of the country after the Japanese surrender and killing a handful of Americans along the way to being one of the deadliest regimes in modern history. 

 

 

 

Yeah, true, but I didn't think it had much relevance to my point, and I'd rather be playing Warthunder if you can believe that shit.  

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Apologies for the paywalled link, not getting that here.....It was to a FT article about corporate contracts in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, perhaps best left for another thread.

 

It's 4:00am here, so going through the article in detail is a rather more arduous task than I can honestly face, right now.....Can I get back to you on that?  Seriously, if you want to go through it I will, but don't for a moment think that I agree with it in its entirety, I merely view it as another useful perspective.  While I didn't think it would appeal to all here (it is from a left-oriented site after all), I'm somewhat surprised you have taken quite such issue with it.

 

13 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

Just to start, this is pretty basic, and true, but it leaves out a whole lot that sure makes the article sound better  with it missing. if you have an idealistic view of history and act like there was some evil corporate intent to what in many cases was just how things played out, it may make sense to you but that's just not a realistic view of history. It also implies the reason we're totally economic, and ignores the illegal invasion of China, and then the atrocities committed, caused even more tensions, and then a riverboat was attacked. The US was an Ally of the Nationalist Chinese, and had interest in China that do not seem particularly evil, and we supported them right up to their civil war. Where in this is A: the main goal of US foreign policy in China was to enrich corporate America, and I don't buy it was resources, because before the Japanese took them, most of the important resources were under the control of US Allies.

 

You seem to be suggesting that US involvement in China began after the Japanese invasion, that simply isn't the case, both parties had been there for a considerable time, variously on friendly terms and at loggerheads.  While no grand conspiracies may have been involved, you can be sure the various corporate bodies (again of both parties) had only one motivation, profit.  As each party had a policy of supporting their respective corporate interests by force it seems to me that conflict was pretty much inevitable at some point.

 

13 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

Ok, so, do you not see how this little bit implies the war started because of tensions, and a failed election, and not because with Russian approval and supplies massed and then invaded south Korea? Someone ignorant of the subject might think the country was not already split between the West and East on the 38th Parallel, and that the election "fraud" election caused the war.

 

You are perhaps overlooking my (somewhat glib) comments about outside parties becoming involved, sensing weakness and the potential for popular support, this is precisely what the USSR & China did (on a pretty bloody grand scale too) and I acknowledge it.  The US/UN responded in kind and we move directly on to the carnage!  Only by the grace of Truman did we avoid it going nuclear back then.

 

PS - IIRC McArthur was the guy that they got to do the job that Butler flat refused.

 

12 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

Yeah, true, but I didn't think it had much relevance to my point, and I'd rather be playing Warthunder if you can believe that shit.  

 

Combat Missions for me (in the editor) but you probably already knew that.  ;)

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Possibly worth adding this:

 

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After the war, since Rhee was the only Korean leader well known to Americans, he was returned to Korea ahead of the other members of the Provisional Government. He campaigned for a policy of immediate independence and unification of the country. He soon built up a mass political organization supported by strong-arm squads and a following among the police. With the assassination of the major moderate leaders, including Song Jin Woo and Chang Duk Soo, Rhee remained the most influential leader, and his new party won the elections in South Korea. In 1948 he became president of the Republic of Korea, a post to which he was reelected in 1952, 1956, and 1960.

 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Syngman-Rhee

 

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On July 20, 1948, Rhee was elected president of the Republic of Korea in the South Korean presidential election, 1948 with 92.3% of the vote; the second candidate, Kim Gu, received 6.7% of the vote. On August 15, the Republic of Korea was formally established in South Korea and Rhee was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Korea. Rhee himself had been an independence activist, and his relations with the chinilpa Korean elites who had collaborated with the Japanese were, in the words of the South Korean historian Kyung Moon Hwang, often "contentious," but in the end an understanding was reached in which, in exchange for their support, Rhee would not purge the elites. In particular, the Koreans who had served in the colonial-era National Police, whom the Americans had retained after August 1945, were promised by Rhee that their jobs would not be threatened by him. Upon independence in 1948, 53% of South Korean police officers were men who had served in the National Police during the Japanese occupation.

 

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Soon after taking office, Rhee enacted laws that severely curtailed political dissent. There was much controversy between Rhee and his leftist opponents. Allegedly, many of the leftist opponents were arrested and in some cases killed. The most controversial issue has been Kim Gu's assassination. On 26 June 1949, Kim Gu was assassinated by Ahn Doo-hee, who confessed that he assassinated Kim Gu by the order of Kim Chang-ryong. The assassin was described by the British historian Max Hastings as one of Rhee's "creatures". It soon became apparent that Rhee's governing was going to be authoritarian. He allowed the internal security force (headed by his right-hand man, Kim Chang-ryong) to detain and torture suspected communists and North Korean agents. His government also oversaw several massacres, including the suppression of the Jeju Uprising on Jeju island, where South Korea's Truth Commission reported 14,373 victims, 86% at the hands of the security forces and 13.9% at the hands of communist rebels, Mungyeong massacre.


By early 1950 Rhee had about 30,000 alleged communists in his jails, and had about 300,000 suspected sympathisers enrolled in an official "re-education" movement called the Bodo League. When the Communist army attacked from the North in June, retreating South Korean forces executed the prisoners, along with several tens of thousands of Bodo League members.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee

 

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After devastating invasions by the Japanese at the end of the sixteenth century and by the Manchus of Northeast Asia in the early seventeenth, Korea enforced a policy of strictly limited contact with all other countries. The main foreign contacts officially sanctioned by the Choson Dynasty were diplomatic missions to China three or four times a year and a small outpost of Japanese merchants in the southeastern part of Korea near the present-day city of Pusan. Few Koreans left the peninsula during the late Choson Dynasty, and even fewer foreigners entered. For some 250 years Korea was at peace and internally stable (despite growing peasant unrest from about 1800), but from the perspective of the Europeans and Americans who encountered Korea in the nineteenth century, Korea was an abnormally isolated country, a “hermit kingdom” as it came to be known to Westerners at the time.

 

Japanese Colonial Period During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Korea became the object of competing imperial interests as the Chinese empire declined and Western powers began to vie for ascendancy in East Asia. Britain, France, and the United States each attempted to “open up” Korea to trade and diplomatic relations in the 1860s, but the Korean kingdom steadfastly resisted. It took Japan, itself only recently opened to Western-style international relations by the United States, to impose a diplomatic treaty on Korea for the first time in 1876.

Japan, China, and Russia were the main rivals for influence on Korea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and after defeating China and Russia in war between 1895 and 1905, Japan became the predominant power on the Korean peninsula. In 1910 Japan annexed Korea outright as a colony, and for the next 35 years Japan ruled Korea in a manner that was strict and often brutal. Toward the end of the colonial period, the Japanese authorities tried to wipe out Korea’s language and cultural identity and make Koreans culturally Japanese, going so far in 1939 as to compel Koreans to change their names to Japanese ones. However, Japan also brought the beginnings of industrial development to Korea. Modern industries such as steel, cement, and chemical plants were set up in Korea during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the northern part of the peninsula where coal and hydroelectric power resources were abundant. By the time Japanese colonial rule ended in August 1945, Korea was the second most industrialized country in Asia after Japan itself.

 

Keep in mind that Japan was one of the Allies in WWI, at the same time they were brutally oppressing the Korean people and that after WWII the US was just so bothered by the Japanese' awful treatment of the Koreans that they kept their collaborators in many senior positions after the war ended. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/16324/crazy-video-of-north-korean-defectors-harrowing-escape-emerges

 

"Doctors performed a five hour operation that saved his life, but discovered a host of serious medical conditions, including chronic diseases and infestation of worms, and ultimately conducted a second surgery to fully stabilize him. He did not regain consciousness until Nov. 21, 2017."

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On 11/22/2017 at 3:01 AM, Belesarius said:

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/16324/crazy-video-of-north-korean-defectors-harrowing-escape-emerges

 

"Doctors performed a five hour operation that saved his life, but discovered a host of serious medical conditions, including chronic diseases and infestation of worms, and ultimately conducted a second surgery to fully stabilize him. He did not regain consciousness until Nov. 21, 2017."

 

Best Korea has the best parasites, of course: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/parasites-infections-north-korean-soldier-defected-reveal-countrys/story?id=51323674

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So who is the NORK Oppenheimer leading their atomic program? Who is the one leading their rocket program?

 

Is it all domestic or is Best Korea getting help from outsiders?

 

After failing for so long, it certainly seems they are getting things right remarkably fast.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Chinese Ships Spotted Selling Oil to N.Korea

 

2017122601111_0.jpg

 

Quote

   U.S. reconnaissance satellites have spotted Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean vessels on the West Sea around 30 times since October.

According to South Korean government sources, the satellites have pictured large Chinese and North Korean ships illegally trading in oil in a part of the West Sea closer to China than South Korea.

   The satellite pictures even show the names of the ships. A government source said, "We need to focus on the fact that the illicit trade started after a UN Security Council resolution in September drastically capped North Korea's imports of refined petroleum products."

   The U.S. Treasury Department placed six North Korean shipping and trading companies and 20 of their ships on sanctions list on Nov. 21, when it published spy satellite images taken on Oct. 19 showing a ship named Ryesonggang 1 connected to a Chinese vessel. 

   The department noted that the two ships appeared to be illegally trading in oil from ship to ship to bypass sanctions.

   Ship-to-ship trade with North Korea on the high seas is forbidden in UNSC Resolution 2375 adopted in September, but such violations are nearly impossible to detect unless China aggressively cracks down on smuggling. 

   The problem is that any oil embargo imposed on the North in the event of further provocations will probably be futile as long as illegal smuggling continues.

It is uncertain whether the Chinese government is deliberately looking the other way, but it seems unlikely that it is unaware given the sheer volume.

 

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