South Korea Lifts Ban on Military Games

South Korea Lifts Ban on Military Games

December 29, 2006
The Korea Times reports that the South Korean government has lifted a ban on certain military games.

In recent times, tites like Ghost Recon 2 and Mercenaries, which dealt with the tense political situation between North and South Korea, have been barred. But Kim Key-man of the Korea Media Rating Board said those restrictions will be relaxed in the interest of freedom of expression.

In the past, North Korea has seized on such game content for propaganda purposes. The Korea Times report cites one such diatribe:
"Through propaganda, entertainment and movies, Americans have shown everyone their hatred for us," North Korea's Tongil newspaper said about Ghost Recon 2. "This may be just a game to them now, but a war will not be a game for them later. In war, they will only face miserable defeat and gruesome deaths."

Source: GameSpot U.K.
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Comments

Submitted by DoggySpew - December 29, 2006 at 2:50 pm -0500
@Marshie

You are forgetting that a good army does not mean alot of soldiers alone. It also means equipment and deployment options, and of course weaponry. The US have way better equipment, deployment and weaponry.

Fighting a war is something the US is good at. Holding the peace when winning is another thing.

North Korea is not threat.
Submitted by robustyoungsoul - December 29, 2006 at 9:22 am -0500
That's the kind of trash talk you like to hear on XBox Live.
Submitted by Marshie - December 29, 2006 at 9:03 am -0500
“This may be just a game to them now, but a war will not be a game for them later. In war, they will only face miserable defeat and gruesome deaths.”

Holy inflammatory comments, Batman!
Submitted by agro - January 2, 2007 at 8:38 pm -0500
“This may be just a game to them now, but a war will not be a game for them later. In war, they will only face miserable defeat and gruesome deaths.”

Man that is the best thing ever said on the subject of games ever in history.
Submitted by Brokenscope - January 3, 2007 at 12:30 am -0500
It is immpossible to win a war when you put the lives of th enemy before the lives of your own soldiers. To try to minimize civilian deaths is a good thing. You want to be a liberator nor a concquoer. However if you hamstring yourself you are doomed to fight for a long time.
Submitted by Terminator44 - December 29, 2006 at 10:15 am -0500
"In war, they will only face miserable defeat and gruesome deaths.”

Sounds a lot like when Saddam predicted that the Americans would "swim in pools of their own blood" right before the 1991 Gulf War. Boy, he sure hit the nail on the head with that one, didn't he, folks?
Submitted by SpeedySwaf - December 29, 2006 at 10:22 am -0500
A campaign against North Korea would actually be tougher then it was against Saddam on both occassions. Primarily because NK has one of the largest armies in the world, though it's hampered by out-dated equipment and lack of suppies.
Submitted by Terminator44 - December 29, 2006 at 8:47 pm -0500
Whoops, I mean NK in the last sentence.
Submitted by Gray17 - December 29, 2006 at 7:34 pm -0500
Plus in case of a war with North Korea, there's a little matter of none of NK's neighbors liking the place, and the US being on fairly friendly terms with said neighbors. That tends to help in wars.
Submitted by Terminator44 - December 29, 2006 at 6:13 pm -0500
@Marshie and DoggySpew

Exactly. On top of all that, I seem to recall that Iraq previously held the positon of military strength that NK holds today (#4 or 5 in the world) when it went into the Gulf War. However, just like DoggySpew said, that numerical advantage was rendered useless against the U.S.'s superior tatics and technology. Would an operation against NK be tougher? Maybe, if the commanders were smart and the troops at peak form. However, from what I've heard, their soldiers (many of them conscripts) are not that well-trained or disciplined, and their commanding officers aren't much better. Even if that isn't true, America's more advanced air and sea power could easily take out most of the KPA's important positions on the ground, therby weakening and demoralizing them.

And Marshie is correct, we should worry more about China's military. Not only do they have overwhelming numbers, but they are developing modern warfare systems to compete with the rest. Compared to them, NZ is just a bug waiting the be squashed.
Submitted by Wookiee - December 30, 2006 at 5:42 pm -0500
I would like to point out that most American movies try to avoid portraying other countries as the "bad guys". In most of them, the villlian is an evil INDIVIDUAL within the country. (My fave is Braddock: Missing in Action3 with Chuck Norris)

In Ian Flemming's legendary novels, the bad guys were SMERSH and the KGB. In the movie adaptations, they were switched to evil secret societies and terrorist orginizations like SPECTER. This was done to avoid offending the Soviet Union. (One of John F. Kennedy's favorite books was reported to be On Her Majesty's Secret Service.)
Submitted by Marshie - December 29, 2006 at 1:43 pm -0500
@SpeedySwaf

Anybody's going to have a huge army when they have over 1 in 4 citizens in some service in the military. The United States, for reference, has roughly 1 in 100 citizens in some military service.

If anything, I'd be worried about China. They have a standing army of over two million soldiers and only 1 in 200 citizens are enlisted in some form of military service.
Submitted by Grahamr - December 30, 2006 at 12:13 pm -0500
"robustyoungsoul Says:
December 29th, 2006 at 10:22 am
That’s the kind of trash talk you like to hear on XBox Live."

LOL! Nice one.
Submitted by Sergeant S.W. Foster - March 20, 2007 at 1:15 am -0500
Great! Hopefully we can now have some joint training with them in S. Korea. It would be great training and give the North something to contemplate.

Sergeant S.W. Foster
US Army
www.DesertVets.org
www.IraqfromtheWindow.com
www.SgtScorpion.com
Submitted by Mike - December 3, 2007 at 11:19 am -0500
China has 2 million soldiers now (while not at war) - that is indeed impressive.

But remember that toward the end of World War II in 1945, Hitler still had many millions of soldiers in the field. Did not help/save him.

Also, the Russians lost literally 20 million soldiers against the Germans alone.

Numbers are less important in modern warfare (WWII - present).

Screw NK, they are a joke and if we can take out *truly* bad-ass armies (like Germany's and Japan's), they are fucking dreaming thinking they can hold their own with our military (or the UK's for that matter).

I mean, did they forget the Koren War? We are the reason their nation is divided into North & South. NK is fascist.
Submitted by Natasha Yi - December 13, 2007 at 4:41 am -0500
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Posted 07/04/09 at 09:24pm
PHX Corp: For those that want to know what i watching it's called man vs cartoon(a.k.a fixing Wile E. coyote's Mistakes one trap at a time by EMERTEC)
Posted 07/04/09 at 08:20pm
GoodRobotUs: Went out for my Mum's 65th Birthday, which is the only relevance 4/7 has in the UK for me ;)
Posted 07/04/09 at 08:18pm
Andrew Eisen: Beach + fireworks + root beer + strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, whipped topping, and pound cake = my Fourth of July!
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:58pm
GoodRobotUs: Which seems to be the only point Jack proved, that some people find some games offensive. i.e. Nothing.
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:57pm
GoodRobotUs: The discussion was supposed to be whether games were dangerous not 'Do you find some games offensive'...
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:55pm
GoodRobotUs: Some agreed, some didn't, but it was their choice to make, not the governments.
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:55pm
GoodRobotUs: By asking the audience their opinion, he more or less proved that it's a matter of personal choice
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:55pm
GoodRobotUs: Meh, he ended proving Mark's point for him
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:26pm
Erik: Jack if you are reading this you are a LIAR. There is no legal weight to the MPAA's ratings.
Posted 07/04/09 at 07:24pm
JDKJ: I still think my buddy the midget who rides a unicycle backwards while juggling four bowling pins would have been a much bigger hit with that crowd. And he can make up statistics and misinterpret studies, too.
Posted 07/04/09 at 06:33pm
Alyric: Of course, Mark falls into the common trap about Columbine, which had nothing to do with bullying, etc. See: http://slate.msn.com/id/2099203/?GT1=3256 for a more thorough explanation.
Posted 07/04/09 at 06:32pm
PHX Corp: Read this http://www.destructoid.com/sgc-09-liveblogging-the-jack-thompson-debate-138502.phtml#ext
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:54pm
PHX Corp: JT is afraid of such ban then advocates it That's what i call a total Hypocrite
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:50pm
PHX Corp: AE: JT is a -Bleeping- Jackass
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:07pm
Andrew Eisen: JT "knew it would be a good audience." Not what he said on Tuesday.
Posted 07/04/09 at 05:01pm
Andrew Eisen: VG cause violent behavior. VG companies influence behavior to get sales. Yeah, that makes sense. (To be fair, the Twitter feed makes deciphering JT's point pretty tough.)
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:52pm
Andrew Eisen: Yes, it's been proposed but as far as I know it has not been passed. Big difference.
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:50pm
Cheater87: http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/all-violent-video-games-be-banned-in-germany-$1301757.htm
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:49pm
Andrew Eisen: Far as I know, Germany has not banned all violent video games.
Posted 07/04/09 at 04:44pm
Cheater87: Jack wants the US to follow Germany's total video game ban.
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