North Korea Is Preparing For War?

[Dill]

(03-18-2023, 07:14 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: North Korea says it has had 800,000 citizens join the army to fight against us.

My first thought was "what are these people signing up for?"

I get it that they're joining the military, but do they think we're going to invade them or they're going to invade us?

That's why it makes no sense to me because, if we would happen to go to war, it would be an air war and they used to have a strong navy but I heard most of their boats and submarines are old?

Even if they do still have a strong navy and try to fight us with that and their outdated air force full of old planes.

Are they just making up that big number to make it sound like they're ready to fight us because they know our planes, ships, and submarines would wipe their off the face of the earth?

Bels pretty much got it right, I think.

That announcement doesn't really mean that 800,000 North Koreans have actually enlisted and are eager to "defend" against the U.S. etc.
(I doubt the already too large NK military could effectively absorb and support that many new volunteers, nor could NK's
agriculture and manufacturing support the loss of labor.)

The real audience of the announcement is probably the North Korean populace itself, not us. It is a possible cue as to what people are supposed
to say and how they are to behave in public. It accompanies a missile launch and a 75 year anniversary, whipping up the morale and 
enthusiasm needed to keep people focused on an external enemy, framing that as the cause of their daily misery and not their subjection to the most totalitarian state in existence. 

Hard to say what a war with NK would look like. Might depend on how it started. 

But I doubt it would be just the U.S. and N.K. S.K. would also be involved, and it is against them that the NK Army
would be a serious threat. 

"Wiping them off the face of the earth" would bring great risk of damage/war expanding to China and Russia.

Another danger is that if they invade the South, we can't just rake an ally with missiles. U.S. ground forces would likely
have to be committed to protect the South.