Military vehicles carry missiles with characters reading 'Pukkuksong' during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj
Dennis Halpin, National Interest: Armageddon: The Devastating Consequences of a Second Korean War
The label of the North Korean state as a Marxist-Leninist regime, even of the particularly repressive Maoist Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution variety, is a misnomer. North Korea is a dynastic autocracy, ruled by a semidivine Kim family with absolute power over both the inner court and the general populace in a way comparable to a Henry Tudor or a Caesar. Even family members who fall into disrepute are not beyond bloody retribution. Just as a Korean king once sentenced his errant crown prince son to die in a rice box of starvation in the sweltering sun, so too Kim Jong-un recently struck down his own half brother with an internationally banned chemical weapon.
The fanaticism of the North Korean public, in its devotion to its leader, is not some Broadway-like drama of feigned affectation. A visit to North Korea and discussion with members of the public at large revealed a clear devotion to the Kims. Implied was a willingness to die in defense of the juche philosophy and the great leader and his bloodline. North Korea, for almost four decades a colony of imperial Japan, has seemingly absorbed the kamikaze-like death wish of those pilots who once made a last-ditch suicidal stand to die for the emperor.
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WNU Editor: If the U.S. was serious about launching a surgical strike against North Korea .... we would now be seeing 2 to 3 aircraft carrier strike groups in the region backed-up by a massive deployment of air assets not seen since the Vietnam war. But this is not happening .... hence no surgical strike. What I am more worried about is what will North Korea do, and how actions on their part can participate a conflict where everyone will then lose control.
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