Kim Jong il dies of heart attack
 

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died of a heart attack at the age of 69, state media have announced.

Millions of North Koreans were "engulfed in indescribable sadness", the KCNA state news agency said, as people wept openly in Pyongyang.

KNCA described one of his sons, Kim Jong-un, as the "great successor" whom North Koreans should unite behind.

Pyongyang's neighbours are on alert amid fears of instability in the poor and isolated nuclear-armed nation.

Fears were compounded by unconfirmed reports from South Korean news agency Yonhap that the North had test-fired a missile off its eastern coast before the announcement of Kim Jong-il's death was made.

Unnamed government officials in Seoul were quoted as saying they did not believe the launch was linked to the announcement. The South Korean defence ministry has declined to comment.

Following news of Mr Kim's death, South Korea put its armed forces on high alert and said the country was on a crisis footing. Japan's government convened a special security meeting.

China - North Korea's closest ally and biggest trading partner - expressed shock at the news of his death and pledged to continue making "active contributions to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in this region".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16239693

http://deadfix.com/wp-content/upload...im-jong-il.jpg

it's about fucking time the world's oldest crybaby bit the big one.

One can only hope his "successor" isn't the proverbial chip-off-the-old-block.

There's still plenty of commies to go around.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...im_Jong_Un.jpg

That isn't looking good. But like I always say.... better dead than red...

honest question as I've never really followed North Korean politics or culture very carefully -- but what did he do that was so horrible? Did he invade any other countries, start wars and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Or was he just a dick to his own impoverished nation?

At least the new one has better hair.

he frequently televised his temper tantrums, that's all i was really talking about, there is that missile test thing too, from what i remember.

It wasn't really Il as much as his dad. His dad invaded South Korea. That got a lot of people killed, Americans included. At the time everybody thought it was the Soviets idea to invade South Korea, but it was actually Ung who was behind it.

The whole message of North Korea since the end of WWII has been "feed us or we'll start a war". The whole place is just a commie leftover of the cold war. Even the Chinese have more or less moved along.

That was 60 years ago. I heard John McCain make some asinine statement about him sharing a warm corner of Hell with Hitler. So his dad was involved in that mess called the Korean war, so he had a bad haircut and didn't play well with others. That's not to the level of Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. Still doesn't deserve all the hate, glad he's dead crap. I deserves some interest in what the immediate future holds for N. Korea. Maybe it'll open up and a whole new cheap labor source or building iPhones will emerge!!

It doesn't look like it. It'll be the same old story.... feed us or we'll blow the world up... 60 years later.... the DMZ in Korea is still the most heavily armed place on the planet.... like where both sides have artillery and tactical nukes pointed at each other.

You could literally blow the peninsula off the planet in 20 minutes. The leadership of NK has no interest in diplomacy. It doesn't even want trade. It just wants to get fed.

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that you'd come to the defense of an evil, commie, totalitarian despot, but I think it's enough of a reason to be a little glad the bastard is dead.

Next evil commie bastard at bat.... Kim Jong Un. May he meet a spectacular end... Actually, if I were him, I'd be freaking terrified. Commies play for keeps.

Dude, I'm not defending him. Just trying to understand the near hysterical hatred of a loser leader of a starving nation.

That war his dad started killed 50,000 Americans. Il earned a lot of hate just for being his own jackass.

It;'s more complex than that. ----- The Korean War (25 June 1950 – present; cease fire signed on 27 July 1953[7]) was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China (PRC), with military and material aid from the Soviet Union. The war was a result of the physical division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean peninsula was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th Parallel, with United States troops occupying the southern part and Soviet troops occupying the northern part.[8]
The failure to hold free elections throughout the Korean Peninsula in 1948 deepened the division between the two sides, and the North established a Communist government. The 38th Parallel increasingly became a political border between the two Koreas. Although reunification negotiations continued in the months preceding the war, tension intensified. Cross-border skirmishes and raids at the 38th Parallel persisted. The situation escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950.[9] It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War.[10] -------

And it was 60 years ago AND his father (if you want to be simplistic and put 100% blame for the conflict on one man). You're missing my point/question about why all the hatred for the son?

I know commies make you all weak in the knees:

The war was a result of Kim Il-Sung running amok and trying to take over South Korea. At the time, we thought this was largely a Chinese and Russian idea, but a modern perspective tells us it really wasn't. Nobody thought the Chinese would stand up an army to interfere. This was what made us think it was a broader commie plot, but the fact is, the Chinese just got scared and the Russians were just happy to sell some guns.

Those are essentially the facts.

I think you just have a fondness for commie oppressors.

Let's recap. We shouldn't be so happy that a commie oppressor is dead because he didn't actually start the Korean war. He was the leader of a regime so oppressive and a propaganda engine so entrenched that North Koreans don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. His regime killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of political dissidents.

I think you'd be less sympathetic if he was a right wing despot. I doubt when George Bush dies you'll be defending him. Bush isn't even a despot.

North Korea is the most aggressive, obnoxious despotate on the planet. Everyone should be happy the old commie bastard isn't sucking the same air as the rest of us. When his commie son dies, I think we should piss on his grave too.

I know commies make you all weak in the knees:<<<<

Oh stop it with the ad homin crap. Maybe someone else here might like to have a reasonable conversation. You obviously have no interest in that.

PS: your understanding of history is severely limited and biased. Facts are neither right or left, they are just facts.

You're the one defending commie despots.....

My school didn't teach liberal revisionist history. I am at a loss.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/312210/exp...de-north-korea

No internet. No cell phones. No medical care. Most North Koreans don't even know a man went to the moon.

From what I've gathered, the biggest knock against Il is that literally starved his people and country for the sake of nuclear weapons. He wanted them and has made his country and it's people pay dearly for that.

So the biggest gripe would be along your comment of he was a dick to his own impoverished nation, which he also made worse.

That's about an understatement. NK has proven so far that we will give them food. That is under the threat "Feed us or we'll start a war". To get over this Il bunch will take them decades, even if they were rid of them today.

It proves once again... there is nothing good that can come from being a bunch of commies.

His funeral is today apparently, koreans filling the streets to remember they're "amazing leader"

QFT

he is a californian, we can't really expect anything intelligent out of him though, unless it involves spray tanning, hair gel, or reality TV and honestly none those are intelligent.

also, i heard something second hand about missiles yesterday? another short dick threat or what? anyone else see anything?

In San Francisco to boot. I know some people that moved there. It does tend to melt your brain.

I don't think anything is gonna change because Mini-me is probably going to maintain the status quo. I think China will eventually put it's dog on a leash. Might have to smack it around a little.

With all due respect, you sir are a flyover state redneck, bitter mowroon.

I bet mini-me caves and opens up his impoverished nation to supply US businesses with a place to build more and cheaper Walmart crap for fat rednecks in the flyover. Those rednecks who still have enough on the ball to have a job (not many of them).

You say that like it's a bad thing. I'll remind you that in the last 10 years there are 200 million Chinese that are living above the poverty level who wouldn't be if it weren't for trade.

If we hadn't outsourced our country's production in the last 25/30 years our economy wouldn't be in the toilet, unemployment wouldn't be at 10%+, we'd still have a thriving middle class and all you unemployed hicks wouldn't be so angry and bitter.

Believe it or not watadoo, some of what has been outsourced is starting to be pulled back to the US; at least within the past 5 years or so. The *******eutical industry is nearly a poster child for this.

China screwed big pharma one too many times with their cheap and unethical shortcuts, which give big pharma too large of fines from the FDA. As a result, much of big pharma has killed operations over seas and brought it all back home.

edit:

I mean, I'm not suggesting you are wrong, because you sure are not. I'm just noting that it looks like it might start to come back.

That has nothing to do with it at all. Nice liberal parrot imitation.

Polly want some government cheese?

I'm going to have to agree with watadoo on this one. Labor costs in America are so damn expensive it's no wonder our businesses outsourced our jobs to other countries. Have you guys ever worked a payroll before? It's fucking insane all the government bullshit a business has to go through just to get a gawddamn check to a gawddamn employee. I don't blame the businesses at all. I blame our facko-commie controlled government for that. Watadoo is right, if our jobs were less outsourced, we'd all have more jobs here, duh!

It hasn't worked out that way. Some people got creamed, but overall it isn't illegal aliens, outsourced Indians or Chinese that have been the problem. Jobs have been created from the decreased price of consumer products. More than we lost.

We are in trouble because the bankers burned us. We are also in trouble because the American public couldn't recognize an ivy league suit when they saw one.

Its not a liberal or rightist issues. Our production base and middle class have vanished in the last 30 years. Vanished to China, Taiwan, South Korea, Bangalore, Mexico, Indonesia, India -- anywhere that there is cheap labor to exploit. It's why we have high unemployment.

When are you going to stop painting the world with your broad right/left brush. It's dumb, dude. I know you're smarter than that, at least I think you are.

But yes the Banksters and their pals in washington screwed us. But that is just the end of a long 30 years of corporate greed and deregulation run rampant.

LEt's hope so. the auto industry recovery has been impressive and has kept the upper mid west from a full fledge depression. Unemployment is down to 8% (down 1.4% this month) in California. So lets all hope it's a positive trend that will stick. That'll be good for all of us.

I will try to find it, but I read a massive article today that gives de facto credibility to watadoo's claims.

We've (America) have not been able to create jobs that can compete on a global scale in the past 30 years. Only jibs we can create are healthcare and construction, which are sheltered from global competition (good luck to China building a home for me in Michigan while in china.)

Fucking scary, sick, and wrong.

Well, the auto mechanic fixing a broken strut on my car so I can go on a road trip this weekend is local (har!). He's a vietnamese ex-patriot and damn he's great with a wrench.

Companies outsource to save a buck. If they didn't they'd be replaced by foreign companies. The computer you are using right now likely has Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Irish and American parts.

Your Toyota is 45% American made. A Ford is only 75%. If the Chinese can get er' done cheaper, then you go that way and find something else to do. If it's the Canadians, you go that way.

This is called business. Now hell... if it was 1996 and you were making $19 an hour in the cotton mill making towels and you didn't have a high school education to fall back on, you might be screwed.

Hell watadoo... you're starting to sound like the Tea Party....

They took my job!

implant of teeth
 

Excellent writing really appreciated & relevant!

This is called business.<<<


One word. Tariffs. That used to be the method of protecting industries and job in this and most countries. The trend toward deregulation and killing tarriffs that go along with globalization is why you don't have a job. I'd rather pay more for American made and not enable factory owners in China to pay 12-year-olds $.75 a day to make my consumer goods. I still have a 6 figure $$ job and would be happy to part with more moola for my iPhones and flat screen TV. I'd love to buy American and i do on the rare times I see something available.

Funny the teabaggers, progressives and even hicks and hippies do have things in common, it's true. The banksters are screwing all of us and are happy to keep us divided and fighting amongst ourselves while they by a second or third vacation villa in Italy.

That just screws everybody because you get them back tit for tat. I think tariffs are more a way for government to shave a little off the top, more than a trade tool.

The problem with the economy isn't all that commie drivel you've been programmed to parrot. Free trade is fine. De-regulation is fine.

What went wrong?

One word, FRAUD.

You can toss all the regulations you want on banks, but it doesn't matter if they don't follow the regulations and no one enforces the regulations. This is the case here. We now have an economy that has receded 20% since 2008. Bernie Madoffs ponzi scheme was at one point 9% of Wall Street volume. The rest is mostly Fannie and Freddie biting the dust.

The situation is completely politically agnostic. Pinkos and religious freak politicians agree here. We shouldn't prosecute their ultra rich friends for screwing us.

Something involving computers, a picket sign, chaps, soapy frogs and mazola ... no doubt..

IT depends on the cheap computers we have. No $100K a year IT jobs if computers were double or triple priced. No ipads for yuppies. It might be a good thing that people that don't make 6 figures can afford one? Aren't you driving that Prius? Make that in Detroit?

Toyotas are about 45% American made. Fords are only 75%. The Canadians make a bunch of stuff for both cars. Screw Canada! Tariff!

Sneaking up on us with Justin Bieber and the Syfy channel with insidious Canadian-ism. William Shatner. I'll tell ya, we'll all be brainwashed and saying "Aboot" before you can say Celine Dion.

On that note, the evil Japanese are hiring 7000 Americans to build Camrys for the South Koreans. They figure 20,000 extra jobs will be created from the plant:

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs...c-3cbee8825445

I think tariffs are more a way for government to shave a little off the top, more than a trade tool.<<<<

that and the rest of your post makes me happy to think that you will likely never be in any position of any level of power or decision making for anyone but yourself and your dog. You just don't have the education nor smarts for it.

While GM and Chrysler offed a bunch of people, the Japanese hired 7000.

Yep. But I did get rithmetic' 7,000 > minus what?

No computers = 1 unemployed liberal. Might have to get a real job. Probably starve.

I know your education taught you that 2+2=5, but the rest of us with just have to muddle through.