North Korea’s involvement in this war is astounding. How is the globe just okay with it?
I don't think that the Norks have shown anything astounding (yet).
You've only have to look at their beaches full of artillery propaganda videos that they have a lot of guns and so probably shells.
They have been selling weapons and munitions to third world countries for decades and several shipments of Nork weapons have been intercepted. So we knew they had a lot of artilery and they are willing to sell their weapons despite arms embargos.
The Norks have also been hiring out their workers as basically slave labour for years as well.
It is certainly an escalation of what they have already been doing. But it isn't anything new.
That brings me as how the world is "okay" with this.
The third world doesn't care and the countries that do care have already done pretty much everything they can do short of bombing them. And that would trigger retaliation against S. Korea on a scale that simply doesn't make it worth it.
the Astonishing part is just how little grip China had on them or how they don't mind the Norks getting in so close with the russians. Now I douth the Chinese could make them stop even if they wanted to. The Nirks have pretty much gotten their wishlist from russia. Cash, bullion, techtransfer, help in sanctions busting, energy ect.
The Nork are unironicaly the ones winning this war.
They where already so heavily sanctioned that they could eascalate and no one could do anything about it since there simply wheren't any more scantions you could place on them. And in return for escalating they can get all lot of the stuff sanctions where maent to keep form them.
it being an opportunity to see just how capable their forces and hardware are in a shooting war, even though I suspect they're not sending their best.
The Norks have shelled some S. Korean islands.
From what open source info there is on those shellings it didn't hint at their guns and/or shells being all that great.
they may not be sending their best but I'd doubth their best being all that much better. Most of their artilery park is still early cold war stuff. Some of their more heavy guns have been sold to russia and from the little I can find about their contribution to the war I can't find any glowing revieuws.
As for the shells they may be getting rid of their oldest / worst conditon ones first. But from what we have seen the problem isn't that they are old or that they have some readily visable defect. But all that their production standards are pretty shit with inconsistent powder charges, weight ect. So unless they have a line crancking out shells that are shit just so they can have some shit shells to sell I think it's a decent indication as to the quality of the rest of their shells.
But I don't think the Norks mind that their artilery isn't all that great. Again a large part of why they have so much of it so they can shell S. Korea if they where to be attacked. You don't have to be very accurate when your goal is to flatten, villages/towns/cities, you just need a lot of it.
Their goal isn't to stop whomever is attacking them. IF they where to be attacked that would involved the US and they know damn well they can't defeat the US. It's just to be able to inflict so much death and destruction on the South that it simply isn't worth attacking them.
I'll owe you boys one.
