Kim Jong Number UN

The Kim dynasty has been going strong since September 1948 (that’s 65 years for anyone that’s counting) and every iteration from Kim Il-sung to our most recent Kim Jong Un, have done everything possible to piss off the world.  What’s truly amazing is despite the fact that in any other nation we’d probably call these guys royal fuck ups, they somehow still get called 위대한 수령 or “Great Leader”.  How have they pissed off the world?  Let me count the ways.

Kim Il-sung, thinking Russia and Stalin, not to mention Mao Zedong totally had his back, he invaded the lightly defended southern part of Korea, that everyone thought would certainly never become a separate country (the 38^th parallel being only important in 1945 as to who the Japanese troops would surrender to somehow the commies turned that into a freaking war).  The US freaked the fuck out and sent troops from the 24^th 25^th infantry divisions as well as 1^st Cav to stop them, and amazingly these poorly trained and ill-equipped troops . . . didn’t manage to stop them at all.  They pushed them all the way back to the fabled Pusan perimeter, which was a bit like the Korean version of Bastogne.  MacArthur arrives on the scene and pulling a rabbit out of his corn cob pipe decides to invade the Commie’s rear.  Realizing there were a bunch of Marines at their rear the North Koreans hauled ass (no pun intended) out of there and were captured in record numbers.

Seems like the war’s won right?  Nah, let’s go North and liberate the shit out of these commie bastards.  It’s at this point that MacArthur, showing yet again that his balls were too big for the army he actually had at his disposal, completely discounts the idea that the freaking Chinese will get involved.  The result is one of the worst retreats/defeats in US history (but of course the Marines somehow spin thins into a “we won while running for our lives” and really won’t shut up about how freaking awesome they did.  Actually that’s Marines in general).  The Chinese and the North Koreans manage to push UN forces past Seoul, and the damn city has to be fought for a third time (by this point it was more “collection of building frames” than a “city”) and everybody sets in for a long and bloody stalemate that lasts 2 years and manages to fire off more artillery shells than all of WWII.  In the end everybody agreed to stop shooting, and that was the end of the Korean War. . . Sort of. 

See the Korean War never actually ended.  The Great Leader spun it as a victory, the US spun it as a not-defeat, and everybody but the poor souls that actually had to be stationed along the DMZ forgot about it.  That was until January 23^rd 1968 (for anyone looking at the dates that’s one week before Tet ’68) when the spy ship USS Pueblo was shot at and captured.  The crew was held and treated pretty severely for over 11 months, seeing as the US was involved in killing commies somewhere else, Americas couldn’t really afford to wipe the floor with these buggers.  It fell to State and the diplomats to settle everything while the Republic of Korea (ROK) and US forces continued to glare pointedly across the DMZ at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).  I mentioned that the crew was held for 11 months right?  Did I forget to mention the USS Pueblo which is still technically a US Navy ship is still in Pyongyang? Those Kim’s love reminding the world of that. 

Thankfully they’re a dynasty, not immortal (despite having titles to that effect) and in 1994 we got a new Kim, Kim Jong Il.  Despite some rousing renditions of “I’m so ronry” he was even more bat shit crazy than his dad.  He developed submarines that would routinely try to sneak into ROK and steal stuff (in the process get caught on reefs and sink) launch artillery in the general direction of ROK, and generally starve the shit out of the DPRK so he could maintain his million man army.  Realizing that his people were getting shorter than their southern cousins, he wondered “how can I get food for my army without actually growing it?”  Why develop nukes of course!  We’re not sure if he got help from Pakistan, stole the technology from America or just downloaded plans off the internet, but it’s pretty clear that despite assurances that he wasn’t developing Nukes, he really did.  

 I’m not going to go into all of Kim Jong Il’s eccentricities, but if even half the shit that is rumored is true, the guy was pure bug house crazy.   A fetish for Swedish Models, fast cars, musicals featuring him to name a few . . . it was all pretty nutty.  He loved starting trouble every couple of years, just to remind people that in fact DPRK was still there, and still a “threat”.  The boldest thing he did (once he had nukes) and once he was declared part of the “axis of evil” was to actually help one of the other countries in said axis with their nuke program in exchange for some decent rockets that might actually make an ICBM.  Most people at this point would be shitting themselves because they hate us almost as much as Iran does, they have nukes, and they really want the world to take them seriously. 
Then another Glorious Leader dies and we’re left with his third son, Kim Jong Un running things (apparently the eldest son was disgraced after trying to go to Disney land on a fake passport). Kim Jong Un apparently went to school in the West, his classmates completely unaware that “Lee” was destined to become the tyrannical dictator of a country, and head of the fourth largest standing army in the world.  He’s only been in office since December 2011, but in that time he’s managed to, in no particular order; piss off ROK by firing artillery shells at one of their islands, knock up his wife, given a rousing speech about “final victory”, managed to “disappear” all the leaders close to his father that were supposed to groom him for leadership, meet Denis Rodman, and tell Obama to call him (or piss off we’re not sure which). 

Oh, did I mention the student film quality propaganda films showing the White House being Nuked?  Apparently they have an ICBM that can reach Washington.  Now Kim Jong Un is pissed off at the United States, because of the UN sanctions.  He’s launched cyber-attacks on ROK, and has threatened to launch attacks on Guam and Okinawa.  He’s really sure that the DPRK can take on the world, and some policy makers are sweating a little bit.  It probably doesn’t help that the new movie Olympus has Fallen seems to show a successful attack on the White House forcing America to withdraw all troops from the DMZ.  Knowing our luck he’ll think that it really happened, or worse try to pull it off in real life.  

So here’s what we all need to do.  Calm Down.  DPRK can’t keep up the rhetoric, and keep up the “super army” it thinks it has, because they literally can’t feed their people.  Yes they do have a million man army.  The Korean DMZ has ten times that many land mines.  They may be able to cause a lot of damage to Seoul with their tens of thousands of artillery tubes, but they would just as quickly find very accurate and lethal counter-battery fire from ROK and US forces.  Sure they have an impressive Air Force, but all their Jets are from the 70’s. The ROK Air Force has the latest and greatest America has to offer, and they know how to use it.  Their “Navy” amounts to a bunch of patrol boats that use old WWII tank turrets as their main gun.  ROK had all sorts of neat toys we helped them develop.   

Kim Jong Un can’t launch a war without potentially losing all of his power, and he can’t fight anyone without support from China, which they won’t give because they stand to lose a lot more than DPRK does. He will try (comically) to goad America and its allies into launching a war, so he can rally his people to the glorious victory, but we all know starving people aren’t going to be up for a serious war.  Kim DPRK’s whole economic plan was to leech off the world while threatening war.  If we’re not giving them anything they’re literally screwed because they have nothing to fall back on.  Let him spin in his hamster wheel.  If he tries anything we will wipe the floor with him.  He may be Kim Jong number Un in his book, but to us he’s just another fat kid who wants to play with the big boys.