this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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South Korea says it has detected preparations by North Korea to blow up its sections of inter-Korean roads. Tensions have been soaring between the two countries in recent weeks.

South Korean officials said on Monday that they had gathered intelligence indicating that the North was preparing to demolish its half of roads that connect the two countries.

"They have installed screens on the road and are working behind those screens, preparing to blow up the roads," Lee Sung Joon, a spokesperson for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

He said the operation could take place as soon as Monday.

The move follows weeks of soaring tensions on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has accused South Korea of using drones to drop propaganda leaflets over its territory three times, and threatened to respond with force if it happens again.

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[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're not wrong - Ignorance is, rather famously, bliss.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

My point is that this sort of thing has been regularly happening with North Korea for years. And far more aggressive acts too. This is not the end of it all.

Edit: Also, South Korea has no nuclear weapons, so this isn't between two nuclear powers.

Agreed - NK likes to saber rattle a lot. This is just more of the same.

One thing I have to begrudingly admit - they are really smart at approaching the edge of the line (to a nation ending war), without crossing it.

Also, it's true that South Korea is not a nuclear armed State, but I can see why NK might sometimes feel like the opposite. South Korea hosts nukes from the US (for the defense of Korea) and is under the nuclear umbrella of the US (where the US promises to use nuclear weapons to defend South Korea if it's attacked by a nuclear armed opponent).

More saliently, South Korea has successfully launched into outer space - this is the same rocket technology needed to launch an ICBM. So even if the US broke away, South Korea could go nuclear very quickly.

These are all part of NK's calculation when it considers how far it's willing to go in saber rattling.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Did I say somewhere I thought this was going to turn into WWIII, or that this would be the end of it all? No, I said it was yet another extremely stressful thing to heap onto the pile. You're inventing what I said and arguing against that.
(The united states was the 2nd nuclear power to which I was referring. There are ample US nuclear assets stationed in KR.)

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not really. As of 2023, the U.S. plan is to regularly one nuclear submarine to South Korea. Then it leaves again.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65404805

So, again, maybe this isn't worth getting so worried about.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

From your article:

Under the new deal, the US will make its defense commitments more visible by sending a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea for the first time in 40 years, along with other strategic assets, including nuclear-capable bombers.

Dude, squiddy, even a single Ohio class submarine could wipe out half the life on this planet. I get you think I haven't understood your message, and maybe you think this is somehow helpful instead of incredibly patronizing, but it's concerning that the moderator of a news community doesn't understand that news can be both important to read and at the same time deeply stressful.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

but it’s concerning that the moderator of a news community doesn’t understand that news can be both important to read and at the same time deeply stressful.

  1. My job as a moderator is to enforce the rules in the sidebar. Those rules do not involve such things.
  2. It's because I recognize this is stressful that I literally have said things like, "then I wouldn’t look into this issue too deeply or you will be eternally stressed" and "so, again, maybe this isn’t worth getting so worried about." I have no idea why you would think I would say those two things to you but not understand that it can be stressful.

I have been attempting to explain why this should not stress you out so much. I guess that makes me a bad moderator.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If indeed your job is to just enforce the rules in the sidebar (and assuming we somehow ignore that authority in a subject comes with responsibility over said subject), why are you commenting on the topic from a position of authority at all? Clearly that's an overstep of the premise you have put forward. But while I understand you think you were trying to be helpful, what you're actually saying is that I should just "not think about it". That doesn't, you know, actually help. If your advice is going to be "don't read the news" why do you moderate this group at all? That's literally a textbook example of acting in bad faith. Despite the fact you don't read the sources you throw out to support your point, you claim to be somehow knowledgeable enough in this topic to advise others on if they should/should not consume said media based of a single comment you repeatedly misrepresent.

And that's not kindness or understanding, squid. That's being a jerk.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What on Earth are you talking about? In what way am I commenting from a position of authority?

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You see that green 'M' next to your name?

Going to point something out to you btw: Whenever you receive criticism, you only ever address the aspect of that criticism you can argue against. Please, can you respond to the parts about you being extremely rude to people that have done nothing to deserve it? Or anything else I said, besides one minor point that was poorly clarified on my part?

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes I do. That doesn't mean everything I say makes me some sort of authority. It means I enforce the rules in the sidebar.

Look, get as stressed as you like. Go run through the streets screaming and tearing your clothes for all I care.

I was only trying to help.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

But that literally does make you an authority within this forum. Cops are not regarded as intelligent in pretty much any discipline (for good reason), but they still are a figure of authority whenever they are in uniform. Many of them, too, do not realize this, because it's not something that's particularly obvious when you're the person wielding that authority. (You're not a cop, for starters you're clearly too genuinely caring and intelligent to qualify to be a cop, that was just a convenient metaphor)

You have the authority to moderate so many communities, but if you don't understand that that is in itself authority it explains the reputation you're getting for how you approach conversations. No matter what you do, if you have the ability to casually end the conversation by banning a participant (something you have demonstrated many times before) that conversation is not between equals, it is between an authority figure and a modern plebeian.

Seriously, I still don't dislike you (despite you having accused me of that many times before), this is just something incredibly fundamental to any discourse that I think you may not have understood. I understand you were trying to help, but unless you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula it's sadly not going to salve the stress of an unhinged lunatic with nuclear weapons goading people into paying, or just paying attention, to him. It sucks, but sometimes you can't help, you can only offer sympathy and community.

The authority to exercise that discretion is perhaps the most important thing you are responsible for. (Especially in an international forum, where people (cough me) might have family in Seoul.)

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

(Deflecting uncomfortable truths with a .gif is both disappointingly insulting and pretty transparent. I haven't done anything that warrants that kind of rudeness, you know that.)

You can't invalidate what I'm saying with that, and you probably shouldn't ignore the many threads dedicated to just how poorly you treat the users in the communities you moderate. Some of them are legit assholes who I will happily watch get beaten with your Metaphorical Steel Chair, but so many of them aren't, and I think it's too easy for you to dismiss the commenters who have been hurt by a misunderstanding or rose to defend themselves when a topic was unreasonably escalated as all being those legit assholes, when most of them aren't. I'm not (I like to think, at least), but I just didn't want the kind of help you were offering.

I moderate several things that are orders of magnitude larger ~~and some of them so much shittier tbh, fuck I hate linux devs sometimes~~ than lemmy.world, so believe me I understand exactly how awful this job can be. Being subjected to only vitriol from nazis objecting to your "totally unreasonable" ban while any positive actions you take are entirely constrained to invisible behind the scenes actions is awful. But when every meta thread about the site is has people saying "hey, can the admins please talk to this moderator?" it's a sign that you should ask someone you trust to give you a real answer and see if those people are just assholes, or if maybe you need to reflect on how your behavior is being interpreted by an outside observer.

Edit: (Yo guys don't downvote them, they were just trying to help. Being kind of a jerk about it, but it doesn't help anything to downvote people for sincere if misguided attempts at kindness)