“North Korea’s military vowed Monday to launch unspecified “special actions” soon meant to reduce South Korea’s conservative government and media companies “to ashes” in less that four minutes”
I would brush this off, but the idea of what might constitute “peculiar” means by NK standards is just too disturbing.
They’ve made threats so many times before, it is hard to take them seriously. They have to know that a serious attack on Seoul is suicide. Yes, they have the present capability to wipe the city out even limiting themselves to conventional weapons, but if they do it, the regime is toast.
Gosh, everybody better look out. Or not. Just North Korea being North Korea.
I’m reaching back in my memory for this, and bear in mind I used to work for the DoD so I spent a lot of time around folks in uniform. One was telling me a story about a war game where one individual was assigned to play North Korea. He did a lot of research on the govt and the leader in particular so he could make the game as true as possible.
The “good guys” played their parts assuming, I believe as most people would, that the NK leader was just talking tough. But the guy playing Kim ultimately launched a major attack, much to everyone’s surprise. In the debrief after the games, he stated that what he’d learned about the man led him to believe that he had nothing to lose by going out in a blaze of glory rather than being beaten down and living with the shame of defeat. It wasn’t what the game planners were expecting, and it gave everyone a lot to consider.
What that story reinforced to me was that you should *never *assume that your enemy thinks the way you do. History, culture, beliefs, personality, and perhaps even mental instability all shape leaders everywhere, and you ignore that at your peril. I seriously doubt that anyone in the NK regime thinks the same way as those raised in free and open societies. The leadership of the Kims has forced the entire country to live with a “history” that’s a huge fairy tale, getting most of their “news” and “education” directly from the regime. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Kims themselves believe their self-manufactured fictions.
They may be whackos, but I think they’re dangerous whackos.
Relax, it’s just more blustering by NK. The four minutes have long since passed.
“Unleash the cyborg kangaroo horde! We’ll send in the octopuses with jetpacks as air support.”
Even the (apparently) supernatural bits?
I have to wonder if this means the NK leadership will simply *declare *South Korea to be reduced to ashes and the NK masses will go along with it, attributing the apparently intact buildings and glowing lights at night south of their border to be either lingering hot-spots in the ashpiles or simply state they can not see them - sort of an inverted Emperor’s New Clothes.
It would certainly be both unprecedented and peculiar…