North Korea Trollololol

This daily hubbub about North Korea is getting kind of ridiculous. Is there really nothing else to sensationalize in the world? No circus trials? No elections? Nothing?

News media seems to think that war from North Korea is inevitable, if one is to believe the continually-escalating scary reports we’ve been subjected to of the escalations happening there.

In this NBC News story they say, “North Korea’s standing military, according to the best U.S. and U.N. intelligence assessments, is the fourth largest in the world, at 1.1 million members.” I’m assuming this is supposed to scare us into thinking they could actually do some serious damage in an invasion. We’re to imagine wave after wave of men pouring over hills, screaming, shooting, blowing up everything in their path, perhaps like going “over the top” in a World War I charge.

I’m not a military expert, but I’m pretty sure wars aren’t fought that way any more. In fact I could easily imagine a U.S. commander looking at a field full of charging men with rifles and cackling gleefully about calling in airstrikes to wipe out the entire enemy army all in one afternoon.

I think nowadays the men in an army mostly serve to operate the vehicles and machinery of war. And given North Korea’s desperate poorness, I doubt they have much of that. If they do, it’s all old hardware, and we saw (twice) how Sadaam fared with old military hardware against a modern military.

Speaking of which, does anyone else remember similar statements about Iraq’s military before the Gulf War? I’d swear I remember we were told they had a frightening million-man army back then, too. Let’s just say it didn’t really work out for them.