I had an image of a dinosaur in a space helmet ready to go in case it was necessary.
Dejin
3185
You can see Kim Jung Un watching stony faced in this video:
KevinC
3186
So creepy. That makes my skin crawl.
Skipper
3187
The KCTV broadcast Thursday afternoon cut to soldiers in the crowd as she warned the “little South Korean authorities” of a “strong revenge response” if they continue “dangerous shit that could introduce the virus into our country,” and showed the crowd cheering after the remarks
Meanwhile, not a single mask. None. Not in either video of the speaker those on the risers or those in the crowd. Also not in a single picture from that article at all. ZERO. MASKS.
North Korea in general is creepy as hell, at least from an outside perspective.
RichVR
3189
The real creepy is that republicans want the US to get creepy.
jpinard
3192
That’s one less missile they have to shoot.
I wonder if NK is anything like Russia and basically everything they roll out at the parades is everything they have ie the one missile they shoot is the one missile they have.
At this point I fear that North Korea would perform a lot better in a war than Russia. At least for a while. Pyongyang’s control over their society is far greater than Moscow’s, and there isn’t as far as I can tell any equivalent of the social contract sort of relationship that we see unraveling in Russia right now. Russians might be able to separate the government and state from their daily lives, but the North Koreans really can’t.
Houngan
3195
I’d say they’re more competent fighters, but I’d also say as soon as they were well away from NK territory there would be a mass fragging and defection to SK. Well, I guess you might be right though, the brainwashing might be that thorough. It’s so weird to think that an entire country can be well and truly disconnected from the global net these days.
I’m doubtful that NK would do very well in a war. They may have men, missiles and artillery but the reality is that US and South Korea would have air supremacy in the first 2 hours. Once that happens, nothing moves on the ground without express consent.
Timex
3197
In an actual war, NK would cease to exist, probably hours after the war started.
The big reason that doesn’t happen is that their proximity to major population centers in SK means that a lot of South Koreans would likely die to artillery before NK could be obliterated.
Note I didn’t say they’d do well, only better than Russia. And only initially; no doubt they could launch a war, but very many doubts on their ability to continue it very long.
And their problems would be different. While mass desertions might well happen, that would be probably after massive destruction of their command system and the establishment of a reasonable expectation of being able to get away safely. I don’t see them having the sort of disciplinary issues or morale issues Russia has, at least immediately. After all, the regime in Pyongyang has been shaping their entire country at least in public as an instrument of war for decades.
But yeah, the Kims are probably more rational than Putin because they do know that war = eradication of the regime, and thus them. But as we have seen this year, there is always the chance that we are misreading things.
vyshka
3199
Hopefully this isn’t true
This air base is literally right on the coast. It looks like they keep the fighters in hardened shelters.
Djscman
3201
If it was a general attack by North Korea on South Korea, I would think they’d kick it off by using all those assets trained on Seoul. This could be a disastrous mishandling of munitions, though.
vyshka
3202
During the Cold War they loved to send commandos into the South to do shit, but they haven’t don’t that in ages I think except maybe a couple cases.
NK has been firing missiles of late trying to get attention. Only thing is that there are a ton of other problems overshadowing NK, and the missile thing is sorta old hat.
