George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 76

< Episode 75 >

Kim Jong-il watched the powerful explosion on the surveillance camera feed, dumbfounded, as a mushroom cloud billowed into the sky. His initial shock quickly morphed into incandescent rage, the blood rushing to his head. His face flushed crimson, making him fear a stroke, he unleashed a torrent of abuse on the military officers and officials around him, who stood paralyzed, unsure how to react.

“What are you doing! Find out what happened immediately!”

His words, carrying the implicit threat of death, spurred everyone in the room into action. Kim Jong-il was instinctively wielding one of the few advantages afforded by a fear-based dictatorship.

“Comrade General Kim Jong-il!”

“Have you discovered the cause of the explosion? What in the world is going on?”

To be honest, a nagging worry gnawed at him: had some fool tried to siphon fuel from the heavy equipment and triggered a catastrophic accident?

‘A complete purge. A complete purge! When I find the culprit, they’ll wish they’d never been born!’

But why was the official who had summoned him standing there like a statue, lips pursed and hesitant?

His lips twitched, as if he were meticulously choosing his words, carefully calibrating his response to protect himself. While caution was understandable, in a situation screaming for immediate information, such reticence was infuriating.

“What are you waiting for? Speak! Now!”

Finally, Kim Jong-il, consumed by fury, slammed his fist on the desk. The official, jolted by the display, seemed to fully grasp the gravity of the situation and the man he was dealing with. He realized he had to say something, anything, to save his own skin.

“The Americans have issued a unilateral announcement.”

“The Yankee bastards made an announcement?”

Unable to bring himself to deliver the message directly, the official squeezed his eyes shut. He abandoned the carefully constructed phrases he had been mentally rehearsing and decided to simply relay the original words, entrusting his fate to them.

“They say they will occupy the light-water reactor construction site and begin an investigation, effective immediately.”

“Don’t talk nonsense! On what grounds! Are you sure you translated correctly?”

“They claim it’s to protect their citizens.”

“Don’t give me that crap!”

Kim Jong-il, completely losing control, erupted. His body moved of its own accord, sweeping everything off the desk in a violent cascade. Documents became a swirling storm of paper, scattering across the office floor. Unsatisfied even with the cleared desk, he kicked it aside with a roar.

High-ranking party officials were caught in the chaos, struck by flying glass shards and the toppling desk, falling like dominoes.

“The American bastards say they can’t entrust the construction site to a military that opens the gates to protesters and deliberately destroys the construction site.”

The justification was so infuriatingly reasonable that he was left speechless, grinding his teeth in impotent rage. It was hard to imagine a clearer, more airtight excuse.

Except for the fact that the Americans were the ones who caused the destruction in the first place!

“You, you sons of bitches! I wouldn’t have enough even if I pulled out all your teeth and ground them into powder!”

Kim Jong-il was consumed by outrage and fury.

The reasons were twofold: first, the Americans had reacted with astonishing speed; second, they had completely undermined his carefully laid plans.

Kim Jong-il’s intention with the protesters had been to exploit the conflict with the United States and South Korea. His dictatorial regime, by its very nature, couldn’t risk a full-scale war with the United States. His strategy was to harass the United States in a way that appeared legal and reasonable, but the United States had seized upon this minor pretext to completely dominate the situation.

A mere flick on the forehead had escalated into a deep stab wound. How could he not be furious?

Was it irrational? Of course. But anger rarely is rational. It was a stark reminder that the world often defies logic because humans themselves are often illogical.

“No matter what, it’s absurd for the Yankee bastards to enter our Republic indiscriminately! Respond immediately!”

“How should we respond?”

Kim Jong-il’s eyes twitched violently at the question. Normally, such a challenge would have resulted in the speaker being used as target practice for anti-aircraft guns or being sent to enjoy an exciting adventure with a pickaxe in the Republic’s underground mines. But this wasn’t a typical challenge; it was a desperate plea for a policy decision.

He had spoken with fiery conviction, but that didn’t mean he could simply order his troops to open fire on the U.S. military, shouting, ‘Merciless firestorm to the American imperialists, the sworn enemies of our people!’ as North Korea often did. He might gain a temporary advantage in firepower through sheer numbers, but if bombers and fighters took off from the U.S. forces in South Korea, North Korea would be utterly destroyed.

To be precise, it was the North Korean regime that would be finished, but as Louis XIV famously declared, Kim Jong-il was North Korea, and North Korea was Kim Jong-il.

“Don’t use guns! Try to block them with your bodies as much as possible! Build a revolutionary ideological fortress of a thousand miles with anti-American determination, and become human bullets that repel the Yankee bastards in one blow!”

“Understood perfectly! I will quickly and accurately convey Comrade General Kim Jong-il’s firm will to crush the American imperialists, our century-old enemy, to the officers and soldiers under my command!”

As the saying goes, even a dog gets a share of the spoils in its own territory. The U.S. military quickly seized the construction site but soon clashed with North Korean soldiers who arrived on the scene. However, the North Korean soldiers, fundamentally weakened by malnutrition and significantly smaller than the U.S. soldiers, stood little chance. Forbidden from using their trusty AK-47 assault rifles to compensate for the physical disparity, their expulsion from the construction site was inevitable.

Even if they could have used them, the outcome likely wouldn’t have changed, but it still felt profoundly unfair.

“Single-hearted unity with the Songun [Military-First] ideology! Defend the leader to the death! For our one and only fatherland!”

“Death to the American invaders! Let’s thoroughly arm ourselves with revolutionary ideology against the capitalist exploiters! Let’s wipe out our century-old enemies forever! Let’s actively fight against the source of misfortune and suffering and establish a sovereign and powerful nation!”

The U.S. military established makeshift fortifications inside the construction site. Since their objective wasn’t war, they didn’t dig trenches, but they did construct machine gun posts for minimal defense.

“Damn commies. They even set off a bomb at the construction site? It’s a blessing in disguise that the heavy equipment wasn’t damaged.”

The incident was conveniently blamed on North Korea without any further investigation. The military was mobilized to recover and destroy all evidence at the scene, ensuring the truth remained buried.

“Site secured.”

「Good work. Stand by until further orders.」

Thus began a tense confrontation between U.S. and North Korean forces, a scenario that seemed unthinkable after the Korean War.

* * *

“Chairman Hu Jintao?”

“I’m listening. I’m listening.”

Hu Jintao felt a wave of dizziness wash over him upon hearing the news that U.S. troops were stationed in North Hamgyong Province. The task of nurturing a tree that thrived on human flesh and blood was one he couldn’t stomach in his right mind.

Was the Chinese species such a difficult tree to cultivate? Hu Jintao suddenly felt a grudging respect for Jiang Zemin, who had consistently opposed him. But then he remembered that he was the architect of this very situation and barely managed to suppress the anger that surged from his solar plexus and threatened to overwhelm his brain.

Hu Jintao’s sharp intellect knew better than anyone that succumbing to anger would only harm him. Only the bleak uncertainty of China’s future, as hazy as his own failing vision, remained to torment him.

‘Damn it, my eyes hurt when I wear glasses. My heart hurts when I take them off.’

Then, inexplicably, the gold double-bridged glasses he was holding in his hand began to tremble violently. It was because Hu Jintao’s hand was shaking uncontrollably. He had heard that extreme stress could manifest as hair loss or tremors, and unfortunately, he was experiencing both.

“That’s strange. I thought I took my medicine.”

“I will order the health checkup schedule to be adjusted and the prescription changed.”

‘Damn it!’

Hu Jintao nervously dropped his glasses on the desk and forcibly gripped his trembling hand, attempting to regain control. He felt a profound sense of despair at the realization that even his own body was rebelling against him, requiring forceful suppression.

“Consider North Korea a non-existent country for the time being.”

He was too preoccupied with internal issues within China to concern himself with external affairs, especially when dealing with a nation that had incurred the wrath of its creditors!

Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry. How could he not be furious when he was on the verge of a showdown with the world’s most powerful military in his own backyard? But China was powerless to intervene at this moment.

They would issue a formal protest, but that was the extent of their options.

‘If this continues, China will revert to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period [a period of political fragmentation in Chinese history]! We have to secure money somehow!’

“So, has our financial situation improved at all?”

“We have secured approximately 544.5 tons of gold by targeting anti-government figures in various regions, but it seems unlikely we can acquire much more than that.”

“Is that all the gold there is in this vast land?”

Hu Jintao pressed him as if he were conducting an interrogation, but the aide defended himself with gestures, appearing genuinely aggrieved.

“Doesn’t Chairman know? Unlike other countries, there aren’t many people in China who possess substantial wealth and are also openly anti-government. This list has been compiled over many years, dating back to the Mao Zedong era. Anything beyond this…”

“Damn it. I understand. I understand. You can stop now.”

While listening to the aide’s feeble excuses, Hu Jintao’s hand began to tremble uncontrollably again, and he became increasingly irritable. Even pressing his forehead offered only fleeting relief from the tension in his facial muscles.

That only exacerbated his frustration. As the vicious cycle of actions intended to alleviate irritability only amplified it, the anger in Hu Jintao’s voice remained constant.

“What industries have we abandoned?”

“As you know, many national industries have been scrapped.”

“Who doesn’t know that? Tell me in detail. In detail!”

“First of all, attempts to join the WTO have become uncertain. Most of the industries that rely on technology rather than raw materials have collapsed, led by the IT sector. The space development project, for example, has been scrapped, resulting in a plummet in investment value. As we abandoned development projects in various regions and recovered investments, the investment attractiveness declined precipitously…”

“Stop!”

Hu Jintao let out a scream, bordering on a roar, overwhelmed by the grim reality.

“…I will submit the rest as a report with figures and graphs.”

The administration was teetering on the brink of paralysis. The fact that it was only ‘almost’ paralyzed, and not completely, was due to the continued functioning of the most basic and fundamental system: ‘collecting taxes.’

It was the politicians within the Party who were maintaining the system, prioritizing their own survival rather than expecting Hu Jintao to miraculously resolve the crisis.

‘Still, to drastically increase the autonomy of each region… Are we truly regressing to the Spring and Autumn Warring States period?’

But what choice did he have? The People’s Republic of China was on the verge of collapse if he didn’t take drastic measures.

“It seems that the One China policy is faltering. We must somehow inspire the patriotism of the Chinese people.”

“How will you do that?”

Hu Jintao hesitated for a moment, then uttered a word with awkwardness, as if he couldn’t conceive of a better solution.

“We need to start a gold collection campaign.”