By: Leah Devorak | Layout Editor
North Korea is a strange, strange place.
A state-run girl pop band, government-recommended hairstyles, the country’s very own hangover-free liquor – with all the outlandishness, it’s no wonder the regime only gets laughter.
Even when it tries to be serious, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea still somehow always ends up funny. Not only did the DPRK claim to detonate a hydrogen bomb, but it also said the bomb can be used in order to take out the entire continental United States in just one hit.
Yeah. Sure. Uh-huh.
Scientists officially proved these thermonuclear (H-bomb) claims false, but even so, there’s no reason to just dismiss the incident entirely. The fact that the DPRK yet again broke nuclear sanctions with no remorse whatsoever should serve as a stark warning for the true danger the regime can one day be.
Just because it wasn’t an H-bomb a few weeks ago, it doesn’t mean the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal is empty. It isn’t. As ZME science points out, its latest bomb definitely wasn’t just TNT if it caused a 5.1 earthquake on the richter scale.
Of course, no one can be sure what specific nuclear weapons the DPRK has, for it does all its bomb testing underground. However, the type does not matter. With nuclear weaponry, simply possessing is enough to warrant concern.
This concern comes from North Korea’s incredibly erratic nature. People trust a country like the U.S. with nuclear weaponry because they know the nation is stable and would never disrespect the world by blowing it to smithereens.
But North Korea? Well, that’s a whole different story.
The DPRK only cares about personal agendas as its willingness to ignore nuclear sanctions shows. It wants success, glory and power, and it doesn’t care how it gets it.
This disregard makes the nation incredibly unpredictable. One day it may announce that its supreme leader saved the lives of a thousand kittens in danger of drowning in a nearby stream. But the next, it may run a nuclear test and fly drones over its southern neighbor.
The DPRK doesn’t care about what is humane and what is not; everything is just another method to gain respect, and that’s what makes it so dangerous. It would gladly launch a nuclear attack on one of its enemies so long as it advanced its image in the world.
The bottom line is that because the DPRK is so willing to repeatedly break nuclear sanctions, it definitely isn’t just making and testing weapons to have something in the shed for a sunny day. The regime is planning on eventually using its nuclear weaponry no matter what the rest of the world thinks.
It’s the DPRK’s way of achieving success, however dark and twisted. Because no one takes it seriously in any other aspect of its existence, it feels the need to use violence in order to earn respect.
Now world leaders must try to figure out when such violence could occur and then subsequently stop it.
Doing so is no easy task, mostly because world leaders don’t understand just how dire the situation is. However, simply dismissing every North Korean nuclear incident as “not as severe as it could be” and then moving on is no longer acceptable. Every time the world “just moves on,” another advancement is made that puts the DPRK one step closer to the big shebang of its dreams.
For the well-being of humanity, North Korea’s nuclear rampage must be stopped. But in order for that to occur, the world needs to stop underestimating how far the regime’s craziness can go and start believing that a nuclear rampage is actually possible.
