Strategypage notes this development which clearly shows that the people of North Korea are losing their fear of the regime:
The anti-government graffiti and jokes are out of control in the north. The problem is that it's no longer cool to tell the secret police about who is doing this stuff. This is a fundamental shift in the north.
I wrote about the signs of defiance that Strategypage reported a few months ago.
And just how loyal is the army these days, when the troops see the starvation at home and don't even get benefits from being the bully boy for the pampered regime?
So the question we have to ask is, how lucky is President Obama? North Korea will become more than an indirect threat (by its ability to attack our allies South Korea and Japan--not to discount the direct ability to hit Americans in Alaska and Guam, mind you, with existing missiles) to us if nothing changes:
North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the United States and could develop an inter-continental ballistic missile within five years, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Tuesday.
While a collapse would surely bring on a dangerous crisis, the chance of ending the North Korean regime before they are a direct nuclear threat to our homeland is an opportunity and not something to be dreaded, I think. If President Obama gets the credit for it, who am I to complain about a good result? If his supporters want a crisis that won't go to waste, may that be it. And may they handle it well.
The way that anger seems to be simmering in the North (and I must say, Strategypage is fairly unique in reporting on these developments), I'm guessing it will make the Romanian regime collapse look pretty tame. Once the people, long starved and abused and now increasingly aware that this isn't the price they pay for being a worker's paradise in a sea of poverty around the world, get the chance to physically take their revenge on the pampered people in charge, I'm guessing they take it with gusto.
UPDATE: Thanks to Mad Minerva for the link.
