Tag: North Korea

Where the hell did that come from?

North Korea’s alleged H-bomb test seems to have taken the world completely by surprise. Indeed, when it comes to constructing impossible devices with no resources, Big Kim and his boys would surely give the A-Team a run for their money.

There are two possibilities here. Firstly, that a nation instructing its soldiers to “steal corn from the fields” has somehow managed, in complete secrecy, to expedite such a rapid development in its nuclear program that the power of its weapons has increased fivefold in eighteen months.

The second possibility is that they’ve had outside help.

Given that Pyongyang’s gloating publicity pictures immediately made me think that Sean Connery was about to burst in and beat up the bad guys, I’m pretty confident that, as usual, China is the hidden director behind this latest international drama.

Either large swathes of the media class have lost their ability to reason clearly, or they are deliberately choosing to ignore the wealth of evidence that suggests North Korea is nowhere near as combat ready as it would have the world believe.

Now I’ll admit that’s a pretty bold statement, but that insular country’s latest missile launch is a perfect example of rhetoric leaving reality far behind. Let’s abandon the spin and consider the known facts for a moment.

We know that on Tuesday morning, North Korea launched what appears to be some kind of intercontinental ballistic missile. Given that country’s pathological propensity for pretentious self-aggrandisement, does anyone think it a little odd that the only record of that momentous, paradigm shifting event is a single series of still photographs? I do.

Let’s not forget that we’re talking about a country whose biggest export appears to be video footage of its seemingly endless parades celebrating this or that glorious revolutionary whatever. We’ve all seen those terrifying looking trucks trundling past the camera dozens of times now…trundling past mind, not actually performing in the field anywhere. For a nation that defines itself by its military might, its air force seems painfully shy at these bombastic occasions…funny that.