North Vs South Korea

[agit8dchop]

For decades we've gotten used to North Korea playing their games and occasionally throwing their toys out of the crib. Are we about to find out there's another side to North Korea?

4 months ago in June, Putin went to North Korea and gifted Kim Jong a luxury security vehicle - the same one Putin drives (symbolic). They made deals, shook hands and walked about Friends. It was Putin's first overseas trip in over 4years.
Putin gifts luxury Aurus car to North Korea's Kim (bbc.com)

[ex]Kim Jong Un declared his "full support and solidarity" for Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, while Putin thanked Kim for his "unwavering support".
Then, to top it off, the two signed a surprise military pact declaring each side would assist the other in the face of aggression.[/ex]
Vladimir Putin went to North Korea looking for friends, but he may have helped arm his enemy - ABC News

This doesn't feel like a baby throwing the rattles out of the crib moment anymore. North Korea could be the perfect vector for Russia to throw a jab at the west in the side of the Kidneys. How far will the west go to save South Korea? how much of a distraction and drain on resources and aid would it be? 

This is why this event today makes me wonder what's going on - why did North Korea just destroy roads and bridges linking them to South Korea?

North Korea blows up roads near South Korean border as tensions soar (youtube.com)
North Korea blows up parts of inter-Korean roads, Seoul says | AP News

[Maxmars]

I wonder if thinking about North Korea as just another nation may not be appropriate.
Unlike many (most, if not all) other countries, this leader acts as a totalitarian, with a government-mandated cult following.

Un's conduct is not typical, nor ultimately even recognizable as "leading his people," in fact, it is better to note that all that he does is usually because "he just wants to."
North Koreans have no say in anything that the "leader" decides...

If he decides he wants his people to behave as if there were going to be an invasion from the south... roads gone...
"I made you safe... I saved you again..." [set to glorious music, and pretty girls dancing and waving flags.]

[UltraBudgie]

It also seems like the one place on earth where the west has the best excuse of saying "we had no idea what was going on there".

Perhaps in the underground tunnel system that was recently revealed?

Secrets keep themselves, until they don't.

[Maxmars]

`That image of "we don't (or can't) know comes from a common misapprehension, you know?

We had always assumed, for generations, that we could ever know, without living there. 

We assumed that our principle means of knowing, the press and news services, was clear, honest, and unbiased - and beyond - that even if there was bias, it would be checked by academia.  But truthfully, the emergence of the North Korean nation coincided with the utter decimation of journalism that held to the aforementioned principle.  It was a slow decline, which ends where we are today.  Almost nothing reported can be rightly trusted to be free of bias... and that's on both sides, even if we might accept such a thing as North Korean "journalism."  Academia has done nothing, over the same last generations, but manifest just how biased they can be...

Like the hint of a blessing, enter the internet, where we find that 'information' is now quantized, metricized, monetized, and weaponized, instead of freely given.

It does seem that North Korea "can't really hide" from anyone but themselves now.  I'm only afraid that it is all too easy for the people we trust to get us to the same place...
... and we'll go there waving flags, loyal to the party, and virtue signaling our way towards an abyss.