I mean, IRL he made multiple decisions that made zero sense given Germany's strategic position and was hopped up on meth, so his FOM decision to invade Italy is sadly believable.
Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
Oh I guess I should have specified it, but I thought it was clear from the context that this description is that of FOM's Hitler, not OTL Hitler.
Agree to disagree. There's a big gulf between making a strategic decision based on pride/hubris/ideology and one that comes from a place of insane rage or as the author puts it literal 'stupidity.'
My thought was that since the Holocaust was the act of absolute irrationality, to literally speed up his own downfall for no other reason than to kill Jews, my writing Hitler's invasion of Italy to kill Jews was entirely of the same mental construct.
Speaking of Hitler and Nazism even though it doesn't matter much I wonder how the white nationalist movement will react to a war at least partly justified on the basis of protecting Jews.
We did hear about the Christian Right and the Counter Jihad movement after all.
We did hear about the Christian Right and the Counter Jihad movement after all.
White nationalist movements still think Israel is in a global conspiracy to destroy whites, that 9/11 was a Jewish plot to get the US to take out opposition to 'ZOG', and there is no evidence, reason or logic that will convince them otherwise.
That's not true at all, because it assumes that there's a single objective 'rationality.' Rationality is not an objective system based on universal truths. It's a method of thinking.
That's one of the true horrors of the Holocaust - it was completely internally rational. The logical thinking and efficiencies of modernism were aligned by state forces for the sole purpose of obliterating human life. To Hitler the Holocaust made sense, it wasn't irrational.
Fascism is a movement rooted strongly in the decadent movement, the intellectual undercurrent of the Fin de Siècle, scientific racism, and mass politics. Hitler was a kind of culmination of an intellectual and political movement dating back well over half a century. He, and his contemporaries, were not stupid, were not 'lucky idiots' or off the wall crazy - psychopaths can be completely logical in how they go about their grisly business.
Like, Hitler didn't invade the Soviet Union just because he was an angry guy who hated Jews. Particularly, the shift from the original 'Hunger plan' which anticipated utilizing Jews as slave labor and starving untermenschen to death, to the more outright Final Solution of obliteration and state organized murder was made *after* the downfall had already begun, and it was not carried out on the basis of deluded irrationality nor did Hitler do it because he was a crazy man who acted on a whim.
I really don't know what to tell you here. You're perfectly within your right to write as you please and contrive methods by which historical figures act in order to make the plot fit your preconceived plan, even if I find it unrealistic. But your perspective on how dictators and authoritarians operate, especially in re: Hitler, is off the mark imo.
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The Holocaust was a process that had deep roots in German and European history, not the product of Hitler being insane. Hitler didn't invade Bulgaria just to kill Jews, or Albania, Sweden, or Switzerland. The purpose of killing Jews in eastern Europe was obviously hatred of the Jews, but Hitler presented it as being an immediate concern by blaming Jews for partisan activity that was hindering Barbarosa and Lebensruam. No dictatorship is a one man show, it's always always result of a lot of people having buy-in to the system.
I completely understand and have no issue with anything you're telling me. I've never made any secret that my writing process prioritises narrative and arcs over conservative realism. I intend to interest rather than to educate, and would disuade anyone from trying to find education in my work - my knowledge may be broad but it's not very deep.
Which, to be fair, is pretty much the case for anyone who writes alternate history. That's the nature of the beast.
The scenario of the PRC getting rid of the Kims and installing a more moderate and pro-PRC leader would be a blessing in disguise to the PRC and also to Japan, the US, and the ROK. Would any potential leader also engage with the West and the ROK and also do the 'De-Kimilsungization" process (getting rid of all those monuments and statues for a start).
Yep. It makes writing great alternate history such a challenge. You want to make the story good but have to make sure it is grounded in reality, which needs a crap ton of research to make sure everything is lined up well. And there's always the risk of one key detail not working and thus risking making the whole timeline unworkable.
Sorairo has already done the exact same thing in The Death of Russia, so I do not think that he will repeat the same trope in his new timeline, that said however, this does really seems to be the most likely scenario if the North Korean government was to collapse, or if it used nuclear/chemical weapons, China will just simply never accept American troops on its border.
At the same time however, do not think that I am whining about this, is this scenario really "cliché "if it has been used in literally only one timeline on this entire site (that I am aware of)?, I actually like this less-used scenario, rather the the wish fulfillment of Korea being united under an utopian pro-Western-Liberal-Democratic-Capitalist government just because, as even in South Korea, reunification with the North is now distant (it was not as much as it was back in 2002, but still).
Overall, I am very curious to see how Sorairo will portray a Second Korean War in this century, and what the fate of the North Korean government will be.
That's not surprising. History shows that the crazies will remain crazy even after their ramblings have been debunked.
The U.S. would probably do precision strikes on North Korea's weapon facilities as well as supply depots. The KPA would be paralyzed without their much needed supplies, since the KPA still use Cold War-era equipment. Their only counterbalance to the joint U.S.-ROK force would be their numbers.
You can't have an effective army if there are no munitions, food for soldiers, and fuel for their vehicles. Once that dries up, the KPA would have their tanks and jets grounded. You would probably see hungry North Korean soldiers resort to cannibalism (just like in The Death of Russia) or surrender en masse with bowls on their hands (as Northern Storm showed).
I've always wondered how a provisional North Korean government under the thumb of Beijing would look like. My guess it would be more free than the actual North Korean society looks like. Perhaps in the future, this Beijing-installed ruler would seek relations with the ROK and the West.
Keep in mind OTL Vietnam tried to seek diplomatic relations and reconciliation with the U.S. immediately after the Vietnam War. Backdoor meetings lead to an American team being allowed by Vietnam to inspect a B-52 crashsite in 1985 to retrieve the remains of American personnel. Diplomatic relations were officially established in 1995 under the Clinton Administration, the same year Vietnam was admitted into ASEAN. It's not impossible.
'I Can’t Believe in Anything Anymore'
'I Can’t Believe in Anything Anymore'
Extract from 'The Summoned Generation' by Heihachi Edajima (Minmei Publishing)
Extract from 'The Summoned Generation' by Heihachi Edajima (Minmei Publishing)
‘The Lost Generation’ - that’s what our youth considered themselves in the early 2000s. To them the glories and comforts of the Bubble Era of the 1980s was a distant dream - now only the long, grueling stagnation of a fallen behemoth awaited them.Though its pop culture was beginning to catch on in ways in the West unprecedented since the glory days of the Kaiju films, the Japanese seemed to have no future to look forward to. The early sprouts of a new phenomenon were beginning to spread, of the shut-in (Hikikomori). Many men, crushed by the immense weight of competition at school and work, often simply surrendered and retreated to the world of their rooms. A nation already averse to social spontaneity spiraled further down this trend. Dating, marriages and births all began to plummet. A mood of listless hopelessness consumed millions of young souls. For one Summer in 2002, however, they could forget about it again. They could watch Japan compete in the World Cup. The Japanese were very happy to get to the knockout stages, and while their South Korean co-hosts got further than them, given the 'likely method' of South Korea's advance then there’s no shame in coming behind them.
The Japanese watched the South Korea-Turkey game much like any other nation on that fateful day on June 29th 2002. It was a game few cared about - some more nationalistically inclined sided with the Turks to spite Korea, some supported Korea to see a fellow East-Asian country score success at an event that East Asia had never truly shined in before. From the izakayas in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, millions of Japanese and foreign citizens watched the game with the same detached trance like they had for any other of the hundreds of games they watched before. The first goal got laughs, the second goal got murmurs of surprise and respect, by the third the game had come to life and all the bars in Japan had come alive with it. When the screen went black, countless bar staff scrambled to see if something was wrong with the set while the customers complained like this would be the biggest inconvenience of their day. Ten minutes later the first texts, phone calls and message board posts started filtering through. Roughly fifteen minutes after the screens went black, the screens turned on not at the football commentary desk, but at the breaking news station. The unthinkable had happened - North Korea had invaded the South, with three quarters of a million men flinging themselves against the ramparts of civilization to bring about its subjugation. Distant videos showed a sea of fire and carnage near the DMZ, flames and smoke already reaching to the sky, and a confirmation that an explosion had occurred in the game’s stadium with casualties. Those who used 2channel, soon to further explode in popularity, would quickly see the uncensored photos of the bodies from the game and know what and who they were fighting.
Millions immediately ran back to their homes to find their loved ones and plan their next moves. Unfortunately, hundreds would not. The trains of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka were by now even more crowded than at their peak rush hours. They were the perfect target for Kim’s sleeper agents in Japan. A suitcase left behind on the train and bus here and there, and it was almost impossible to track anyone in the chaos. Within the first hours of the invasion, the sounds of explosions already began to fill the cities of Japan. The death toll quickly surpassed even the 1995 Sarin attacks, with its appallingly indiscriminate nature -or potentially discriminate in that it seemed to deliberately target civilians - leading to a death count that day reaching 268 after dozens of bombs exploded across the major cities, bringing transport and life in Japan to a halt. The same thing was happening in South Korea, of course, on an even larger scale, with Seoulites recalling the horror of feeling the explosions beneath them from the underground system. Some who escaped the game at the stadium would die in an attack in the Daegu station that night from sleeper agents. Whereas 268 would die in the train and bus bombings in Japan that night, 452 would die in South Korea. Among the two casualties counts were sixty-seven foreigners, mostly World Cup fans from various nations around the world, although very luckily for Kim no Chinese were involved, with conspiracy theories floating around Korea and Japan even today that Chinese tourists were warned of the attack beforehand and didn’t tell anyone.
In addition to the purely indiscriminate transport bombings, the terror refused to stop. A handful of conventional missiles were launched from North Korea to Japan, leading to more panic while the missile warning system blared on television. While shorter range SCUD missiles fell on South Korea, No-Dong Missiles [1] were sent to Japan. While it was not the wave of annihilation that many had feared in either country, not the saturation of conventional and chemical artillery fire, the terror it produced was more than effective. The missiles were not aimed at US bases near Yokohama or Kadena or Misawa. Likely knowing the missiles were inaccurate, Kim simply ordered them to be fired at the major cities in Japan just to prove that he could. Ten No-Dongs successfully reached Japan of the fifteen that launched - eight had a trajectory targeting the major cities while the other two exploded harmlessly in the countryside. Lastly, only five would actually land and explode successfully, as the US navy managed to intercept the missiles aimed at Fukuoka and Tokyo, preserving both cities while two missiles landed in Osaka and Kyoto (a particular emotional blow to the Japanese given how the city had been spared bombing during World War Two) and a further one landed in Niigata.
Of course, this was a pittance compared to the wave of nationwide devastation that South Korea suffered that night, with SCUD missiles raining down indiscriminately against the whole country, and the death toll among civilians already surpassing the 3,000 killed on 9/11 that very night. Very nearly among that count was South Korean President Kim Dae-Jong, who was in Japan at the time and almost killed by his bodyguard who was actually a North Korean agent - while two other members of his entourage were killed, the South Korean President got away with only a bullet in the arm, meaning his first few televised addresses would be in a sling. Taking inspiration from Theodore Roosevelt’s run in with an assassin, the President would give a nationwide address over television from Japan only one hour after getting shot. As if to underscore the seriousness of the situation on the Japanese side, the Emperor himself would deliver an announcement at the same time announcing that a state of war now existed between Japan and North Korea. By midnight, both Japan and South Korea were under martial law.
Kim made a number of bizarre assumptions in his invasion. Infamously, he had assumed that since Americans didn’t care about football that they would therefore not care about an attack happening in the middle of a World Cup game. He also assumed any anger felt by the South Koreans would be irrelevant since they would just grovel at America’s feet and do whatever they wanted. But perhaps his worst prediction was that he could do whatever he wanted to Japan since not only were the Japanese going to be unable to land troops in the Korean Peninsula due to history - even going so far as to supposedly add the indiscriminate attacks to Japan since he assumed the average South Korean would support them, but that the Japanese themselves had grown too weak and pacifistic as a society. But just as the America of September 11th and 12th were very different worlds, so was the Japan of June 29th and June 30th. 6/29 is a day whose very mention tightens fists even today across Asia, much as 9/11 is in New York. It was a day that forged a new destiny for our people, and a return of the long-sought for Yamato Damashii. These were no longer ‘The Lost Generation’ - these were ‘The Summoned Generation’.
Transcript from Kim Dae-Jong’s June 29th Address
“My fellow Koreans, before I begin this speech I would like to confirm and dispel some rumors that have begun to circulate about me. Yes, it is true I have been shot, but as you can tell by my voice I am evidently alive. I am healthy, in stable condition, and ready to fulfill my duties as President of the Republic of Korea on this most solemn hour.
“Two years ago, I became the first President of this Republic to visit Pyongyang, under the auspices of Chairman Kim. I did this not out of fear, not out of delusion as to his sadism, but for the very simple reason to avoid another war on this peninsula as devastating as the last. You can imagine how devastating it is to me, to know that all my efforts have been for naught, and that consequently, this peninsula is once more at war. Once more in a state of war begun by the Kim Dynasty, in defiance of all laws of legality, morality and sanity itself. A Dynasty that has spent the last half a century that truce has held in this peninsula, of provocation, terrorism, and descent into the most abominable Totalitarianism ever witnessed in the annals of human civilisation. A Dynasty who was wounded merely by turning our eyes upon our Republic, and seeing what men and women of the same stock, same hands, same souls had produced, all without them. A Republic of free men and women that even amidst the toil below could look up at the starlight and knew in its beauty that the fate of mankind was not to be the serf of kings, emperors or even chairmen. A Republic of people that never ceased their unending yearning for freedom, democracy, the free press, free speech and finally achieved it. Freedoms that they fought to gain, they must now fight to defend.
"With the emergency powers granted to me by the constitution, I proclaim this country is at war. Curfew is from 11:00PM to 5:00AM, nationwide. All outgoing civilian planes without express government approval shall cease. The army and conscription services have been activated and are operating as expected. Already I have received assurances from President Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan of their commitment to stand by us in this moment of crisis, and to work together to hurl back the forces of despotism. As I speak now, American troops fire alongside ours along the DMZ. As I speak right now, the same terrorists that have so dastardly attacked us on a day that was supposed to be a celebratory one for all Koreans, are being arrested in Japan after launching their own dastardly series of bombings across the East Sea. He attacked when he knew the nations of the world, in all their thousands would be gathered here to compete in peace, to bring togetherness and harmony to the world, where politics and ideology would be forgotten. This was not merely a declaration of war upon the Republic of Korea, or Japan or the United States, but a declaration of war upon the human species itself. And with the strength of all humanity behind us, we will make one thing clear: Seoul will never fall again.
"My government had done all it could to bring North Korea among the nations of the world, to keep the peace on this peninsula. Today, we can fight in clean conscience, and say before God and our ancestors that there was no fault on our end, that all the evil rests solely upon that detestable tyrant in Pyongyang. June 29th was supposed to be the happiest day in the history of Korea, and now it shall be the saddest. My fellow Koreans, we may not have chosen this destiny, but destiny has chosen us, in this final conflict with evil. More than any other day or night in my lifetime, I am proud to be a Korean.”
Excerpt from ‘Broken Dreams: How the War on Terror Changed America’ by Linda Reins
With the stoicism that he had developed during his term in office, President Bush would announce on June 30th from the Oval Office that due to the impossibility of sending more troops to North Korea, there was only one thing to do: the draft would have to begin. “This administration, against the demands from top generals, did everything it could to avoid resorting to this, until our enemies resorted to this.” That July 4th, expected to be the biggest and most confident display in decades, fell flat. Attendance was significantly below expectations almost nationwide at fireworks displays - the nation had entered a cold shock. Even the Boomer generation, mainstay of the Republican Party, had gone through the mental scarring of the Vietnam experience. Even those who felt Vietnam a just war could more than understand why someone would have dodged the draft if given the chance. At the same time, there weren’t even that much in the way of protests of the decision - people were just too depressed. The ‘Blue Summer of 2002’ was characterized by surges in suicides, depression and religious apocalypticism. In an episode of the Sopranos, where the protagonist’s son AJ falls into depression upon hearing the news of the draft and worries he’ll eventually be called up to fight and die in Iran or North Korea, he summarized the mood of millions of young men and boys in particular by saying, “It’s like I’m just tied to a train track and can see the train running towards me’.
Soon college applications became a matter of life or death, as the college students would gain deferrals and others would not. Others beat the draft by simply eating themselves to morbid obesity, and of course, many simply left the country. The Bush Administration, extremely wary of being too forceful on the draft considering how much they insisted it would not happen and Bush’s own murky history on his Vietnam service. In the month of July, 100,000 young American men left the country, a total equal to the entire Vietnam War draft dodger count. Given the increased ease of transport the figure was much higher than the 1960s. The Administration would gently admonish them in public, saying “No one is happy about this situation, but these were not situations of our choosing but situations inflicted upon ourselves and our allies.” At the same time, visceral condemnations of the draft dodgers were absent outside the embarrassing partisans on the American Right, the world of Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys. Bush had increasingly turned against Rumsfeld and Cheney and started talking more with Powell and Rice about ways to move forward, feeling he’d been misled by the neocons and now simply trying to save the situation as best he could, in keeping with his optimism in the American project. The ‘Nudge’ strategy became critical to the Bush Administration's attempts to try and stop anti-war protests from forcing the White House’s hand. They would call people up, and they would then have the chance to dodge without serious penalty or find themselves ‘nudged’ into the war, hence the draft often being colloquially referred to in the population simply as ‘the Nudge’. It was joked that anyone who was drafted would always try and make sure they were going to Korea instead of Iran or Iraq. The actual reason was that the Korean conflict seemed more morally certain than Iran or Iraq, but it was often joked that the real reason GIs wanted to go to Korea instead was a perception that the local women were more ‘liberal’.
But while some people could get away quite easily due to college deferments and with rich parents, obvious inconsistencies and disparities emerged among those who did not have the money to easily support themselves abroad. The poor felt the greatest burden simply by being a bigger part of the remaining pool, leading to the budding sprouts of class division in America after the long period of unity after 9/11. It would not be until Eminem’s iconic ‘Fuck the Draft’ track that Autumn that resistance to the draft was crystallized and became a potent societal force just as campus was coming back to life. In the song, Eminem would accuse the Bush Administration of attempting world conquest for the benefit of oil companies and the military industrial complex - Eminem even briefly hinted at running for President in 2004 despite not being 35 at the time. It proved a lightning rod to young men in America who were furious at the sputtering economy, possibility of being sent to war and the sense of societal neglect. The draft also was an accelerant to misogynistic groups on the internet angry that they could be drafted to war while women were safe despite women soldiers already existing, as well as an accelerant to 9/11 Conspiracy Theories that the Bush Administration or Israel had actually been behind the attack. America also naturally suffered from the loss of so many young men in the economy to dodge the draft itself, many now showing up across Western Europe and Canada to supplement these economies instead. A surprising amount of American Jews performed aliyah to Israel despite Israel’s own conflict at the time (which it was trying to dress up as an extension of the War on Terror while Arafat and did everything to disassociate himself from Iran.
In addition to the draft, war bonds started to be sold, often simply reusing the old Warner Brothers and Disney war bond cartoons from World War Two for nostalgic reasons. The arms industry went all out, and the Administration now planned expenditure in 2003 on defence of some 5% of US GDP, at roughly $600 billion. A War Production Board similar to what FDR had in WW2 was created and became a bidding war factory between Raytheon, Dyncorp and the other members of the defence industry. Despite this, the Bush Administration refused to countenance rationing, believing the free market would be sufficient and that it would badly impact morale. The factory shifts in the defence industry went from morning to night and then to morning again. This was nearly twice what the budget was before 9/11. To the anger of many Democrats, Bush refused to countenance removing his prior tax cuts from 2001. Instead, he forged ahead with entitlement reform - in a time of economic stagnation, this meant the most vulnerable would be targeted. However, in the run-up to the midterms, the Democrats (in what many of the party faithful will remember with bemused embarrassment at both the incident and the party’s tendency to repeat these incidents itself) fell into a period of infighting.
On one hand moderates like Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman had tried to put forward as much of a united front with the President as they could, having voted and approved of both the Iran and Iraq operations while supporting reinforcing South Korea - they had both approved of the draft “with conditions”. On the other hand the party’s left flank that had been dormant since 9/11 roared back to life with the return of the draft, with two of the major leaders of this movement being Howard Dean and Denis Kuccinich, who both became heroes to the left in this time period. Dean would stir massive controversy by saying that “If we can’t convince enough young Americans to fight this war and have to rely on sending them off to be killed, then this isn’t a war we deserve to win”. While Dean supported ‘finishing what’s been started’ he did not want the draft to do it, though his words were taken sometimes honestly, sometimes maliciously to say that he wanted America to lose. The war of words inside the Democrat Party would become increasingly bitter and increasingly public, while the infighting in the Administration between the ‘Neocons’ and ‘Realists’ (or as they saw themselves, ‘Reaganites’) would likewise be bitter, albeit with the tact of keeping it in private. Infamously after John Bolton teased the possibility of American military action in Venezuela and Cuba once the current conflagration was done, Powell would tell an aide, “John Bolton is about as welcome in my office as Yasser Arafat at a goddamned Bar Mitzvah.”
Extract from ‘The Last Days of Saddam’ by Briar Forger
Qasay’s ascension from de facto to now de jure successor following Uday’s death brought him no happiness. Saddam’s mental state had noticeably deteriorated and put everyone in his immediate circle at notable risk. The arrival of North Korean into the war only strengthened Saddam’s conviction that the War on Terror was destined to be the Third World War that overthrew American hegemony and would result in Iraq’s resurrection as a great power. Saddam had often invoked Sunni Islamic symbols in his propaganda for sectarian political purposes, but now his advisors saw something much more disturbing. Saddam began referring to himself in private settings as ‘Marduk’, the Protector God of Babylon, and that he had come to “Sweep the American tanks into the Arabian Gulf with nothing but a brush of my hand.” Saddam’s megalomania, his constant movement from place to place within what was left of his Iraq with the US troops practically in walking distance from Baghdad, coupled with the brutal death of his son and the apocalyptic world stage made Saddam convinced that there was a divine purpose to his mission on Earth. And naturally, he had to be the good guy.
Qasay didn’t think so, and in early July began to put the final stages of an assassination plan into effect. Sympathetic members of the Revolutionary Guard agreed to plant a car bomb beneath the dictator’s car just as he moved to his next redoubt in the desert. On July 5th, Saddam entered his car, car bomb placed and primed to detonate the moment the door closed, closed the door … and nothing happened. The device was spotted after Saddam had arrived at the site, with Saddam’s delusions only growing as he considered it divine intervention to spare him. Saddam’s actions in the coming days were less than divine, of course, with the entirety of staff at the previous location tortured until, after losing four fingers, one of the conspirators finally confessed to both his role and Qasay’s. Qasay himself was already on the run, but had nowhere to go since he was a wanted man to the Americans, Kurds, Syrians, even Jordanians. Pretending to be a Christian refugee, he almost made it over the Jordanian border until he was pulled back practically one step before stepping over the border. Qasay was now a prisoner of his father, as had so many thousands of before had been.
On July 14th, Republic Day in Iraq, the people of Baghdad got a sight they would remember for the rest of their lives. In April, a new statue of Saddam was erected in Firdos Square to mark Saddam’s birthday. It would now prove the execution site of Saddam’s own son. Saddam, eager to prove his readiness to sacrifice in the name of preserving his rule, came up with a monstrously public way of dealing with his surviving son. From the extended arm of the statue, a tied and bounded Qasay from a lift would see one end of a rope tied around it and the other end around his neck. As the lift lowered, Qasay would soon endure a brutal death by strangulation in broad daylight with hundreds of thousands of Baghdad citizens watching on who had been ordered to attend, thousands screaming, “Glory to Saddam!” to avoid joining in his son’s fate, though many were happy to see a member of the hated Saddam clan getting what he deserved anyway. Qasay’s body was ordered to be left hanging in public under guard day and night, where it would be eaten by flies in the Summer heat. Parts of the dictator’s son’s flesh would occasionally peel loose and fall to the ground where wild cats would eat it. It would hang until finally taken down by Coalition forces many months later. Saddam was now devoid of an heir to his throne, but was fine with the situation, telling President Putin in a phone call that, “There is no need for a successor - the world will end in my lifetime.”
Extract from ‘The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Iran’ by Zoreh Rahimi
On June 25th 2002, a press release would be given on Iranian state television. In it, a video package celebrating and heralding a twelve year old boy’s suicide bombing of an American checkpoint in just outside of Tabriz. In said package, the boy’s ‘martyrdom’ had been praised by the regime’s most notoriously weasley spokesmen, Mahmoud Amadinejad, a politician turned teacher who returned to the fold to become a regime spokesman who was somehow the most sane among the likes of Baghdad Bob (who said, “The Americans are bombing the Iranian people, and while the Iranian people have done much to deserve it, it is unacceptable that this action should be taken by the Cowboy Bush regime”) and Pyongyang Penelope (named after the Wacky Races character of Penelope Pitstop, and declared that when the North Korean invasion of the South began, “The birds and rabbits stop before our troops and sing to them in the blessed Korean tongue in thanks of the Great Marshall Kim Jong-Il and how he liberates the world!”). [2]
It would later turn out that the boy’s father had been arrested by the IRGC for drunkenly (his first offense) telling an IRGC member to his face that if God had foreseen Iran’s victory, “If he could fucking hurry up just a little bit and maybe send that shithead Khamenei to Hell while he’s at it.” Now knowing the scrutiny falling upon the family and the near certain death of his father, the son of the family with two younger sisters, himself not particularly religious, decided that a suicide bombing could help save his father, mother and younger sisters from the eyes of the IRGC. The boy with a maturity beyond his years negotiated the attack with his father’s captors, ensuring his father’s release with ‘a stern warning’. As if perfectly illustrating the entirely separate existence that the Iranian people had to the regime, the regime actually considered the story (minus the details about the father) to be an inspiring tale of self-sacrifice and patriotism. Indeed, many didn’t see what the difference was between what was going on now and what they’d always done in the Iran-Iraq War. Many on the Counter-Jihad movement in America would initially use the story to rally for civilisational conflict with the Islamic world. Until something happened.
By June 25th, Tabriz had been the site of a vicious battle with the Americans and Turks being the primary footsoldiers. Inside the city were elements of both the Iranian army and the IRGC, determined the slow down the attackers as much as possible. The casualty-sensitive Americans had already suffered greatly, with 160 troops dead with 320 dead Turks with no signs of the battle being close to finishing. Then on the morning of June 26th, a strange thing happened. The Americans and Turks could hear pitched battles all around the city, but miraculously none of the shots appeared to be coming towards them. As they walked into areas that had just yesterday been the sites of some of the most ferocious battles ever experienced by the US army, they saw members of the Revolutionary Guard either riddled with bullets or hanging from lampposts - getting the Farsi translators, the Americans quickly realized the placards read: ‘Child murderer’. A few hours later, a member of the Iranian army approached Major General Matthis to declare that while the Iranian government sanctioned child suicide bombing, that it was “Currently a greater threat to our children than you,” and that the Iranian army had launched a nationwide mutiny. By sheer, albeit tragic luck, the Americans and Turks would help clear out the city of the remaining IRGC and take its most major city in Iran to date with horrific but still unexpectedly low casualties on June 26th. Matthis would attend a funeral service for the boy on June 28th in which almost the whole remaining population of Tabriz came out in solidarity
All across the country, elements of the Iranian army and IRGC began pitched battles, from Tehran to Bushher. The Iranian army was not ready to go through the same monstrosities that their leaders inflicted upon them during the Iran-Iraq war, and the rapidly secularizing Iran wanted nothing to do with child sacrifice. Many expected the regime to quickly collapse, and that the Iranian army would side with the Americans. Instead, a letter was delivered to Khamenei, reading the following: “We fight for Iran. Iran is our children. As long as we have children, there is an Iran. If our children die, there is no Iran. If there is no Iran to fight for, we will not fight. We die so our children may live, but we will never die so that our children may die.” Understanding the situation, on June 28th the Ayatollah would give a press release implying he had never heard about the child suicide bombing incident and that it would be expressly forbidden in future. Commander Safavi would be dumped from command of the IRGC and the head of the Quds Force, Soleimani, would become the new leader of the IRGC, the second most powerful man behind the Ayatollah himself. Soleimani had supported the child suicide bombing just as much as anyone else in the leadership but was strategic enough to know implementing it had been a colossal mistake. At the local level, the Ayatollah’s wrath was more severe. Amadinejad was forced to make a groveling apology on television before being deliberately run over by a taxi in Tehran on July 10th. Of the near two hundred witnesses, all swore to the police that Amadinejad had flung himself in front of the car. The police wrote it off as a suicide, though everyone knew what actually happened.
The Iranian Army Mutiny would ironically hurt the war effort for America, as the level of respect that the Americans had for the Iranian troops was reaching the point where they felt genuinely bad even fighting them. Bush would even comment in Iran that “We are at once fighting an evil enemy, and a noble one, whom we look forward to working with in future.” The Iranians still refused to generally accept surrender and submit to foreign occupation - they considered it a ‘people’s war’ with the Iranian government simply being a silly distraction they only tangentially paid interest to. Many suggested that if the Americans just left, the Iranians would use their guns to turn on their leaders. This argument became especially prominent after North Korea entered the war. But that was far from guaranteed, and the loss of face to the Americans would be too great for even the moderates like Rice or Powell to contemplate. Instead, the Americans now began to work their way down the road to Tehran, to the most anticipated but dreaded moment of the whole war. The Iranian army resumed fighting dutifully once the child suicide bombing policy was reversed.
Extract from ‘Date with Destiny: The War that brought Korea and Japan Together’ by Kaori Makimura
If you had been posted at the DMZ on the night of June 29th 2002, you would be forgiven for thinking the world was coming to an end. Citing ‘the dastardly attack on our patrol boats earlier in the morning’, an army of 750,000 threw themselves into the most heavily militarized zone on Earth. From land, sea, air, and even underground, North Korean forces threw all they could for the greatest gamble the Kim Jong-Il had ever initiated - to take Seoul before the Americans could send reinforcements. He remembered how easy the first war had been before intervention, and thought that taking Seoul itself remained achievable. The only mercy was that the much feared flattening of Seoul by artillery or its gassing didn’t happen, even though a bevy of SCUD missiles would occasionally fall for no other reason than to spread terror and kill indiscriminately. By dint of the significant Chinese presence in Seoul, North Korea did not do something Kim worried would force China’s hand.
Needless to say, the World Cup’s final game between Germany and Brazil was canceled. There was much debate about what to do for the final game and how to crown the ultimate winners. A suggestion came from South Korean representatives in FIFA for Brazil and Germany to simultaneously withdraw from the tournament to make South Korea the asterisked winner of the World Cup, a suggestion that even with the apocalyptic war on the peninsula raised ire from Italian and Spanish representatives. With both Korea and Japan both considered too dangerous, the final was hastily rearranged to be played in nearby Taiwan on July 30th at the National Stadium. South American and Europe were considered biased towards either team and America was seen as having had it too recently to deserve it coupled with residual anti-Americanism in FIFA, while the organizers wanted to keep the Asian theme and minimize logistical issues. This was naturally quite a controversial decision given Taiwan’s contested status, but was enthusiastically agreed to by China under the condition that the ‘Chinese Taipei’ naming convention be upheld. Taiwan enthusiastically greeted it too, though were quite annoyed with the final product given the large swathes of tourists from China who wanted to celebrate ‘China’s moment’ amidst a stadium with very few Brazilians and Germans, some of whom had been killed in the North Korean attacks. A one minute silence before the match (dutifully observed) and a dull 1-0 Brazilian victory brought the most controversial World Cup of all time to an end, along with years of anger over footage from the event being used by Chinese tourism boards.
A mostly successful evacuation of civilians down south would occur over the coming days as millions of South Korean women and children drove, ran and swam as far south as they could go, many fumbling to put their gas masks on in case Kim decided to cross the final rubicon. A hundred nationalities, most of whom were only in Korea to enjoy the coming together of the world in the name of friendly contest, now found themselves running for south for their lives while hundreds of thousands of Korean men found themselves running north to save lives. Even with a limited number of civilian casualties, however, the Korean health service that had expected to deal with a few drunks was utterly overwhelmed by the first day and quickly fell under the control of the military to do as it saw fit. Every country that had nationals in South Korea scrambled to send planes to get their people out, though for many it would be too late.
The war declarations poured in on North Korea in the coming days. From America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and most of Eastern Europe (with Germany conspicuously absent). A surprising declaration came from the Philippines. Brazil considered declaring war on North Korea after three figures worth of Brazilians civilians were killed in the coming days from the invasion, but never went ahead with it. Both Iraq and (with no concession to perhaps the greatest gulf in ruling ideologies in alliance history) Iran claimed North Korea to be an ally in the war in a way they never referred to each other. One surprising declaration of war on North Korea was Israel, technically irrelevant since the two had never established relations in the first place - Israel wanted to tie themselves to the Coalition in the War on Terror to undermine international support for the Palestinians, and correctly anticipated the Arabs shrugging at anything involving a war beyond their region, certainly initiated by Communists. Russia would condemn the invasion, but would only ‘cut’ supplies to North Korea, continuing to sell fuel to the North Koreans at inflated prices. Similarly China would condemn the invasion but would, with the pretext of negotiations ongoing with the Kim regime, would continue sending fuel to the Kim war machine, something which the average Korean to this day refuses to forgive Beijing for. While America was too stretched to afford publicly criticizing Moscow or Beijing, phone calls began taking a noticeably harsher tone.
As a result of the War on Terror in Iran and Iraq, there were only 15,000 US military personnel in South Korea at the time, less than what the Americans claimed to South Korean officials (20,000). The undermanned, underequipped American units fought the toughest fight of their lives and would play a pivotal role in the Battle of Seoul. Needless to say, no Japanese troops would be allowed, meaning the initial stages of the battle were overwhelmingly of the same Korean blood. But while the South Koreans were of the same stock of the North Koreans, they both soon saw each other as different species altogether. One of the first things that shocked South Koreans was seeing North Korean troops simply run across minefields and continue without stopping, sometimes until entire formations had ceased to exist, until commanders would finally send in a mine clearance vehicle. On the other hand, the first thing that shocked younger North Koreans troops was simply the height of the South Koreans and Americans, given that North Koreans had gone through a devastating famine that stunted their growth.
By means of subterfuge, a North Korean detachment in South Korean uniform was able to successfully capture a bridge over the Han River, and breaking into the city of Paju. Apart from tearing down the monument to the Korean Axe Murder Incident, it was Paju where the dehumanized nature of the North Korean troops would rear its horrifying reality. The troops were eager to execute and humiliate ‘Capitalists’ to liberate the ‘proletariat’, often to get official favor since a lot of them were from the countryside due to their ancestors being considered disloyal and banished from Pyongyang in the Songbun caste system. Proving their revolutionary ferver was considered the only way to ascend the North Korean social hierarchy. As a result, they would ransack through suburban homes, into children’s rooms and the bomb shelters to get at the families within. The problem was that the North Koreans could not fathom that in all these houses with plentiful food, magazines, cars, televisions, radios and computers were not the exclusive domain of the elite like in North Korea, but simply the standard reality of even poorer Koreans, a lifetime of indoctrination’s worth. There were several accounts of North Korean soldiers, broken by a lifetime of famine, leaping into the garbage cans of South Korean homes to devour the contents.
Maddened on revolutionary zeal and thinking this standard town was an abode of the bourgeoise arrogant enough to take house at the border, houses were burned with sheltering families still inside them, rape on the institutionalised level of Nanking was employed against ‘exploiters of the workers’ (assuming their victims were anything but the lower-middle class innocents they were), and everything not nailed down getting stolen - the realisation that this was generally standard for South Koreans had yet to come. Many of the victims were still wearing their World Cup shirts, or even custom made Korean-unity shirts in celebration of what was supposed to be South Korea’s proudest day. Others cursed their victims for 'betraying the Korean race' - a very un-Marxist but very Jucheist understanding of trying to keep Korea pure from foreign influence, once posters of Western singers were found on the walls of the victims' rooms. Many civilians were simply gang-pressed north to concentration camps for ‘re-education’, often simply with the children stolen from their parents arms before the parents were put against the wall and shot. One survivor recalled, ‘It was as if Genghis Khan had rode out into the 21st Century, marching his army through peaceful suburbs and leaving only ashes and bodies behind him’. Of course, North Korean commanders knew better but believed that the South, based on army presentations showing footage of South Korean boybands, had grown degenerate and soft, so that therefore a show of terror would simply have the South Koreans grovelling in fear. The two or so thousand that had already been slaughtered in the suburbs of Paju (with the hundreds taken over the DMZ of which 80% were under the age of 13), were seen as the tools that would be used to force the surrender of what they imagined to be cowardly degenerates.
Photos and videos of the assault were recorded and uploaded to the South Korean internet before reaching the wider world in mere hours, the vast majority of the citizens recording this footage found from their hiding places and killed by the North Koreans. Home video footage was also eventually recovered from the rubble, of families recording their last moments alive. To say South Korea was galvanized as a result of the conflict was an understatement. The ‘Rape of Paju’ on July 1st would lead to a sea change in North and South Korean relations forever. It would instantly annihilate any lingering affinity among Southerners towards the North. Now, in the dehumanizing context of war, the North Korean was seen as not simply a separate nation but separate species, one they saw no brotherhood nor even humanity in. The men of South Korea felt the time had come to prove they had all the manhood of their grandfathers. Through gunsmoke and artillery fire, many vowed they would do one better than grandpa - that they would not simply save Seoul, but eradicate the Kims from existence. To hell with the Americans, they didn’t need them to defend their capital, but maybe Kim was going to need the Americans to save him from the holy rain of fire that was going to work its way up north. They weren’t just ready, they were angry.
The Battle of Seoul was on.
[1] A name that became popular among Americans.
[2] That animals began singing is a part of the official narrative of Kim Jong-Il's birth in North Korea so this is only an extention.
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This is quite bad. North Korea will be dismantled, but will there even be a reunification in the true sense of the word, given what happened in Paju?
