Without Warning

by Darrell Maloney

  He’s still unlikely to get invited to the party.

  The party, of course, would be a meeting of legitimate world leaders.

  Nobody wants to dance with Mr. Kim. Nobody wants to party with him. Nobody wants to carry on a conversation with him. And they sure don’t want his recommendation for a good barber.

  The rest of the world considers him something akin to the coach’s kid. You remember, from middle school. The kid who had absolutely no athletic ability at all, but who got to play in a key position merely because he was the coach’s son.

  Ah, now it rings a bell, doesn’t it?

  Back in those days the coach put him in only until he gave up a couple of scores and the other team had a good chance of winning. Then the coach would take him out “to rest.” So that he was fresh for later in the game, when he’d have to work his magic some more.

  Kim Jong-un, the bloated little toad, did absolutely nothing to earn his place as Supreme Leader of North Korea.

  He only got the position because another fat toad, his father, died in 2011.

  Being the Supreme Leader of North Korea is a ridiculously easy job.

  The people have already been trained to worship you like a god.

  Every government employee kisses your… well, they bend over backwards to accommodate you.

  To be a good Supreme Leader of North Korea, all you have to do is talk tough and execute anyone who pisses you off or gets out of line.

  Even your uncle, who you have tied to a wooden stake in front of a stadium full of spectators and torn to shreds by anti-aircraft guns.

  How cool is that?

  North Korea seldom lets Americans wander freely around their country, but if they did we’d think Kim Jong-un was stronger and more powerful than every superhero who ever graced the pages of comic books, combined.

  Statues, posters and murals depict him stopping runaway trains with his bare hands. Catching incoming ballistic missiles with his teeth. Batting away bullets like they’re nerf balls.

  No wonder the people call him their glorious leader, a man among men, a god among gods.

  Of course, most of them talk bad about him behind his back, but they’re careful not to talk too loudly. North Korea has as many spies as it has citizens, you see. And nobody likes being shot with anti-aircraft guns. That can ruin your whole day.

  Fat little leaders with bad haircuts like Kim claim to have lots of friends.

  And to be sure, retired athletes and washed up entertainers sometimes visit him and pose for pictures with him.

  But rest assured those people have their own agendas.

  So do the occasional world leaders who treat him not as the toady little punk he is but as the super dude he pictures himself to be.

  For a very long time the United States has been pressuring North Korea to give up its desire for a nuclear weapons program and to stop threatening to overrun their good neighbors to the south.

  We’ve tried threatening them. We’ve tried applying economic sanctions. We’ve even tried being nice to them. Nothing has worked.

  They’ve gone and done it in recent years. They’ve finally developed the capability of delivering a ballistic missile to anywhere in South Korea, Japan, or the western United States.

  Of course they will never use it for real. If they were to drop just one missile on any of those places North Korea would simply cease to exist. There would be a big smoking hole in the ground where Kim once sat on his throne eating his chocolate pies and kimchi.

  We know that, Kim knows that, and even his benefactor to the north, China, knows that.

  Kim will never be taken seriously on his own. Everybody also knows that. But in his mind he is the leader of all leaders, the best the world has to offer.

  And he’s desperate to get up from the kids’ table in the corner of the kitchen and to join the adults in the dining room.

  That’s why, when he was invited to participate in top secret discussions with Russia and China in March of 2015, he was overjoyed.

  When offered the chance to join the two nations in a planned attack on the United States, he wet his pants.

  And he’s been clapping his fat little hands ever since.

  -11-

  March 10 1317 Hours Local

  Calle Hally No. 12 Colonia Anzures

  Mexico City, Mexico

  The North Korean Embassy in Mexico

  Pak Chung was one of a hundred North Korean soldiers who were carefully chosen for the glorious mission.

  Pak was from the tiny village of Hongson, just eighty miles north of Pyongyang, the capitol of the rogue state. Since his village was so close, it was one constantly used for propaganda purposes.

  He was thirty now. And one of his earliest memories was of three shiny buses pulling into the village square. He was five years old then, and it was quite an event. The sight of buses… big and shiny and noisy, painted Army green, all lined up in a village which had no automobiles of its own… well, of course something like that is going to sear itself into a five year-old’s memory.

  He also vividly remembered what happened next as well.

  Soldiers with rifles stepped down from the buses and herded the villagers together.

  They shouted words which the young boy didn’t understand at the time, but the event became part of village lore and he certainly understood them now.

  At gunpoint, every villager who was capable of walking was forced onto the buses. He remembered his father protesting. He was protesting that his wife, young Chung’s mother, was very ill. He was tending to her, he said, and couldn’t leave her side.

  He was knocked to the ground with the butt of a rifle, opening a deep gash in his forehead.

  The crimson blood which flowed freely as the man rolled around in the dirt was the most vivid part of the memory.

  Ultimately young Chung’s father was left behind that day, but it wasn’t an act of mercy. Rather, it was because the villagers were to serve as spectators at a military parade in Pyongyang. There would be television cameras everywhere, for footage would be played over and over again on state television.

  It just wouldn’t do for the cameras to catch a glimpse of a man in the crowd with a fresh head wound.

  He was given a reprieve that day.

  But he paid a heavy price for his insolence.

  Young Chung’s father, Pak Han-jai, was branded a traitor to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK (That’s what they call themselves, though they’re as far from a democratic country as could possibly be).

  Pak Han-jai was arrested a few days later and was never seen again.

  At the time of his arrest word was spread among the villagers that members of the Pak family were traitors and anyone who aided them in any way would get the stench of treason on them as well.

  None of the villagers dared tend to Chung’s ailing mother, who died mere days later.

  Chung became an orphan of the streets, learning to eat scraps from the garbage and stealing from gardens to survive.

  It was a hard life, but it made him tough as nails.

  It also gave him a deep-rooted hatred of Kim Jong-il, whose birthday celebration was the reason that parade was held so many years before.

  He hid his hatred well.

  He knew that to survive in a nation as brutally unbending as the DPRK one had to follow the herd. “Go along to get along” was the order of the day.

  By the time he was fifteen he was living in an abandoned hut on the edge of the village and still living on garbage scraps. By that time, though, the villagers had learned how to watch out for him.

  Certain families had by then developed a habit of preparing more food than they needed on certain nights. That wasn’t easy to do in a country where the only people who get enough to eat are the “glorious leader” and his ilk. Everyone else is rail thin.

  Still, several families managed to prepare a bit extra on certain nights each week, and were therefore able to put a bit more out with the ga
rbage on those nights. Chung would never be able to fill his belly completely, but he was able to stave off starvation.

  On his sixteenth birthday he walked to Pyongyang and into the offices of the Korean People’s Army. He wanted to sign up, he said. He wanted to wear the same uniform as the men who beat his father and branded him a traitor.

  On the face of it, it seemed a very odd choice for Pak Chung to make. But to Pak Chung, it made perfect sense. He knew he couldn’t fix his country or change the way it treated its citizens from the outside. He’d have been labeled a dissident and imprisoned.

  Or maybe even worse.

  He figured the best he could do was to join the government in some capacity. Then he might be able to advance to a position of power someday. Perhaps a position where he might be able to make some positive changes from within.

  It was a rather odd position to take, but then again he was rather limited in his options.

  And if his grand scheme took many years to actually do some good, then so be it. One thing living as a peasant in North Korea does for people is to teach them patience. Every time someone asks when the food situation will get better they’re told to be patient.

  Any time someone asks when they can expect to get the free cars the government is always promising them, they’re told to be patient. The same is true when they ask about improvements to health care. Easing of travel restrictions. Better schools for their children.

  And on and on and on.

  Meanwhile the government has plenty of money for expanding its military and pursuing its missile program. But no one dare ask about that.

  Pak Chung was plenty patient and would wait as long as it took to try to make his country better. But his options of getting a government job were very limited. None of the civil service agencies would hire him, because this was a nation where corruption ruled. And he had nothing with which to bribe them.

  As an orphan he had no parents to offer up anything of value either.

  That left the army. The Army would take anybody. And while it certainly wasn’t his first preference, at least he’d get enough to eat.

  -12-

  Flash forward fourteen years.

  Pak Chung wasn’t a dirty teenage boy scavenging for food scraps anymore.

  Now he was a proud soldier, a member of the Korean People’s Army’s Special Operations Force.

  Sometimes called the “Sniper Brigade,” the 17th Special Forces Brigade was made up of highly trained soldiers with the gifts of a steady hand and superior eyesight.

  It turned out the dirty teenager who once spent winter nights huddling with livestock to keep warm had a talent highly sought after in the Army.

  He was a crack shot. Good enough to rank in the top two percent of all the army’s soldiers and to earn a sharpshooters badge.

  Now, after fourteen years in service of his country, he proudly wore the rank of senior corporal.

  Some might think he succeeded, and he’d certainly come a very long way. And it had been a bumpy road.

  The mayor of his village, a man named Ri Myong-Guk, tried to stop the army from taking him.

  “He’s a beggar and a thief,” Ri told them. “He’ll be a disgrace to the country. He stole eggs from my chicken coup and a lamb from my pen.”

  In fact, neither was true. Ri hated the boy for the shame the boy’s father had brought upon the village that day when he begged out of the parade for their glorious leader.

  “We’ll straighten him out,” the army enlistments officer decreed. “We’ll find some good in him and squeeze it out of him if we have to.”

  For fourteen years Pak fumed, waiting for the opportunity to get even with Ri Myong-Guk.

  A few years later, after Pak had proved himself and was an accepted member of the army, he married a local girl named Chong Yun.

  He didn’t find out until months later she only did so to stoke the jealousy in a man she really wanted: a fellow soldier in Pak’s own battalion.

  Her scheme worked like a charm. She flirted with the soldier at a battalion function and soon started a torrid affair with him, leaving poor Pak out in the cold.

  Divorce was a career-killer in the People’s Army. Again, Pak was furious but did not act. Instead he accepted the ongoing affair as something he’d deal with later, when the time was right.

  He learned his lesson in patience quite well.

  Just a year before he was called into his commanding colonel’s office and told that what was said there was not to reach anyone else’s ears.

  He’d proven himself as a man who could follow orders faithfully and earnestly.

  And he could keep a secret.

  Pyongyang was looking for men to send to a faraway land to overthrow a foreign government which had always been a thorn in the Kim family’s side.

  This nation was North Korea’s number one threat, and the Kims had coveted a victory over it for generations.

  The problem was, the nation was very powerful. The only way she could be brought to her knees was by a surprise attack, by crack soldiers who were highly trained and highly efficient.

  The words “United States” or “America” were never spoken by either Pak or the colonel.

  But they weren’t necessary.

  The implication was clear.

  “I cannot assign you outright,” the colonel was quick to caution. “All I can do is submit your name as a volunteer. There are very strict requirements which must be met, and representatives from Pyongyang will select the team members.”

  That was good enough for Pak. He readily volunteered and hoped for the best.

  North Korea had never sent their troops to foreign soil before.

  It wasn’t because they didn’t want to get involved in others’ conflicts.

  They wanted to help Russia in Afghanistan and in Syria, so they could gain the prestige an Army gets when they fight in combat.

  They volunteered but were rebuffed by the Soviets, who assured them they could handle their affairs on their own.

  Kim was a bit peeved at the slap-down, but even more than that he was relieved. For the real reason North Korea had always shied away from other countries’ wars was because they feared mass defections of their troops.

  They’d suffered defections in the past, mostly by trusted pilots in the Peoples Army Air Force who flew their airplanes to neutral lands.

  Each defection caused an international incident and futile efforts to retrieve the defectors and their airplanes. And each time the defectors gave their de facto “enemies” further insight into the secretive nation.

  Kim Jong-un wanted to bring down the United States. And he saw his opportunity as now, since he considered the great nation at its weakest point since the Korean War armistice.

  China and Russia would do the bulk of the work. They’d take most of the risks and suffer many casualties.

  North Korea’s role was tiny by comparison, and in fact the two nations only offered Kim a role because they were afraid word of the invasion would leak and North Korean officers might get wind of it. And that Kim, furious he wasn’t invited to the party, would spoil their plans by tipping off the United States.

  Though he hated the United States with his very soul, he was a very spiteful and petty man. And he hated being left out in the cold even more.

  “Your role will be limited but very symbolic,” Chinese Premier Xi Jinping told him in their secret talks.

  Russian President Vladimir Putin added, “In exchange for your assistance you will be given a piece of the prize.”

  In reality, Putin planned to have his army roll over the contingent of Kim’s troops as soon as Washington surrendered. They were unneeded and unwanted, and there was absolutely no reason to give them a piece of the pie.

  As for Kim Jong-un, he was all in.

  Surely he could find a hundred of his troops who wouldn’t betray him.

  Couldn’t he?

  -13-

  For many years North Korea has employed methods t
hey learned from the Chinese when vetting their diplomats.

  One of the biggest threats in any communist country, you see, are the defections of the citizens it sends abroad on diplomatic missions or official state business.

  Tourists also defect in great numbers as well, but the damage they can do to their home country is limited, as they know no state secrets.

  Diplomats and government employees who decide they’re tired of living under the thumb of a communist regime can do far more damage if they defect than an average citizen.

  That’s why China has had certain safeguards in place for generations. And why North Korea, which typically behaves as China’s bratty little brother, has followed suit since 1953.

  First and foremost, a candidate for an overseas assignment must have the highest recommendations of his or her superiors.

  They must have earned the trust of their superiors since day one of their government service. There can be no reports of dissatisfaction with the government or its policies.

  They must be an ever-faithful, card-carrying lover of their country and its ways, and be willing to die for Mother Russia, the Chinese Homeland or North Korea’s Glorious Leader.

  Second, they must have at least twelve years of faithful government service. No malingering, no slacking, no shirking of responsibilities.

  The twelve year rule is important because government employees, including members of the People’s Army, are given much more indoctrination than the average citizen.

  It’s far more hardcore, too.

  For example, the mayor of a village or town in North Korea is required to provide a video briefing twice a year.

  The briefing comes from Pyongyang, and extols the virtues of the communist way of life. It drones on for an hour or so, beating it into the heads of all watching, and tells over and over again how non-communist countries are out to destroy the world by spreading their ludicrous doctrine.

  They also go on and on about how the United States will invade them someday and destroy them. And that’s why they must build their armies and their navy and their missile systems. So they can repel the United States and turn the tables on her, destroying her and ending her threat once and for all.