North Korea Kills Phone Line, 1953 Armistice; Kim Jong Un's Funds Found In China 330
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by
samzenpus
from the international-tantrum dept.
from the international-tantrum dept.
eldavojohn writes "Last week, North Korea promised a "preemptive nuclear strike" prior to a UN vote on new sanctions. Despite the threat, the sanctions were unanimously approved. North Korea has responded by killing a Red Cross hotline with Seoul and claims that it has canceled the 1953 Armistice although the UN notes this cannot be done unilaterally (North Korea attempted the same thing in 2003 and 2009). While everyone thought that Kim Jong Un would ride out the sanctions on slush funds, the United States claims to have found his funds in Shanghai and other parts of China totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Beijing has reportedly refused to confiscate these funds despite voting for the very UN resolutions sanctioning North Korea that read: 'More specifically, States are directed to prevent the provision of financial services or the transfer of any financial or other assets or resources, including 'bulk cash,' which might be used to evade the sanctions.'"
Re:Bark bark bark! Grrrrrrrrrr..! (Score:5, Informative)
China likes to have a client state as a buffer between them and South Korea.
Culturally it would be a problem for NK to be adsorbed into China - Korea and China have been hostile towards each other for thousands of years. Their cultures are quite different.
I spent a little time in South Korea a few years ago; one thing that my hosts were adamant on was the eventual re-unification of North and South, much like Germany was re-unified.
The depravity of conditions in NK are a great shame. This picture is the best illustration of it I have seen:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/12/new-highly-detailed-image-north-koreas-lack-electrical-infrastructure/4201/ [theatlanticcities.com]
Unfortunately that little dog is developing a nuclear bite. Combine that with conditions in NK and you have potential for great disaster.
Ah, the vaunted CueCat (Score:4, Informative)
What privacy invading issues might you be referring to?
Each CueCat has a unique identifier that is appended to the scanned encrypted data. The original software was designed to track you based on everything you scanned.
Unfortunately for Digital Innovations, their ub3r 1337 h4x0r engineers decided that "base64 encoding + constant XOR == encryption". Fail. [oilcan.org] So, alternate software was quickly created to decode CueCat output, and the CueCats were thus rendered simple, free barcode scanners.
In retrospect, this whole debacle may have been the first lolcat. Heh.
Re:This cannot be done unilaterally? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh? (Score:5, Informative)
There was a book, subsequently made into a move: "The Mouse that Roared". The only flaw in their plan was that their tiny little invasion force actually landed on the East Coast, managed to capture a Doomsday device the US had built, and thereby won the war. Hilarity ensued!
Re:Oh? (Score:4, Informative)
To put it in perspective, this is the 13th time North Korea has cut the phone line with the South and "broken" the Armistice Agreement since this crap all started.