As though paraphrasing Alfonso Bedoya’s “We don’t need no stinking badges!” in the Humphrey Bogart film The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) North Korea retorted with “We don’t need flashy lights!” upon hearing the NASA satellite-report that the nation-state appeared as a “darkened land” from space and “as if it were a patch of water joining the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan.” said NASA experts.
This revelation that Kim Jong Un’s kingdom is a dim one comes at the same time as most of the international comunity seemed to offer a bemused yawn at North Korea’s latest saber-rattling.
Exhibiting a new prototype ship which utilized radar-cloaking and air-cushioned (hovercraft) technology, North Korea launched “stealth” missiles in the East Sea off the Korean coast.
Critics downplay the display as the mere chest-thumping of a dying state while other analysts noted the very real danger of “cloaking” technology allowing for the North Korean Navy to come troublesomely close to South Korean shores and United States interests.
The missiles have a range of 124 miles and can be fitted with nuclear warheads and appear to be of Russian design. It’s been said that Kim Jong Un may be stupid but he is not suicidal while the U.S. has no desire to spark another flame in already incendiary world ripe with conflict.
Is Korea a truly dangerous rogue nation lead by a lunatic or is the U.S. merely fulfilling Orwellian prophecy and creating a bogeyman where lies none?
