George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 229

< 228 >

“What kind of blame-shifting is this now! I clearly told you! It’s not too late, so let’s naturalize [defect to another country] before the situation gets worse! I even prepared a helicopter knowing this would happen!”

“Weren’t you the one who disrupted the consensus every time with that damn helicopter! You clouded the party members’ judgment with sweet temptations!”

The Communist Party was now fighting more fiercely than ever, even when they desperately needed to unify their opinions. The guarantee that they would ‘never die’ no matter what was instead driving them into a living hell.

If this were a typical invasion, they might have ended up as prisoners or dead. Frankly, the idea of worrying about their lives when dozens of shells or missiles would be targeting the Mansudae Assembly Hall [North Korea’s parliament building] from the moment the war started was ridiculous.

In any case, the important thing was that the thought of ‘Since things have gone wrong, let’s go all the way!’ had unconsciously taken over their minds. To put it extremely, what happened inside was only known to them.

And human society is established on ‘responsibility.’ Citizens have the responsibility and duty of taxes and laws, and politicians have the responsibility and duty to create just laws and set an example. Therefore, it was not strange to see them desperately searching for a ‘scapegoat to take responsibility’ from ancient times until the moment of impending doom when cornered.

In simple terms, they were using the fact that ‘they wouldn’t die in the worst-case scenario’ as a shield, constantly talking to find a scapegoat and looking for someone who seemed easy to pick on.

At this moment, hierarchy, factions, and everything else were all mixed up.

Of course, if you gather a hundred people in one place, there will always be one eccentric among them. And since they had gathered more than a thousand people, there was no way there wouldn’t be eccentrics. Moreover, it wasn’t just Mansudae Assembly Hall officials here. All the key figures of North Korea were gathered.

So, it was very natural for such a person to appear.

“It’s a catastrophe, ain’t it?”

All the plans they had prepared were now useless, and their dreams of easy wealth and glory had turned into mere bubbles.

He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. It was probably the first time in history that cigarette smoke had risen during a meeting at the Mansudae Assembly Hall. Well, it was questionable whether this should even be called a meeting, but in any case, normally, even the smell of smoke would have been enough to get someone’s head chopped off.

Kim Il-sung [North Korea’s founder] would have brushed it off, but at least his son would have gone wild at the mere smell of cigarette smoke. Of course, he told others not to smoke, but he smoked so much himself that he probably wouldn’t notice if others smoked because of the smell of tobacco on his own body.

“Isn’t that what all the smart guys do?”

He chuckled, whether he was calm or had lost his mind. Or perhaps he was calm because he had lost his mind. He had also worked quite hard to create a proper negotiation table, so he was very frustrated with the situation he was now facing.

“I never intended to rely on this side from the beginning. I was just planning to build connections. Looks like I’ve become a dog chasing after a bird? I was stupid too.”

After muttering that, he put out his cigarette on the floor and stomped on it with his military boots. Thanks to this, the red woolen floor was damaged and would need to be completely repaired, but once the South Korean army pushed in and completed reunification, it was a building that would either be completely torn down and remodeled or demolished.

So, to put it extremely, it didn’t matter if he poured gasoline on it and set it on fire instead of smoking. Now that everything was over, who cared if the building collapsed or burned down?

“What are you planning to do from now on?”

Of course, such conspicuous behavior could be dangerous, but even though he was a key figure in the Republic, he didn’t have anything that could be held accountable. Whether it was status or power. They were barely on the fringes of the reorganized military’s key figures.

“I’m second to none when it comes to resourcefulness, you know?”

He was a person who had secretly accumulated wealth by making the most of his given status and capital. In the military, this behavior had a significant impact on promotions and provided ample opportunities to build connections with central party members.

He was confident that it would work similarly in the new world he would face. Moreover, he had a knack for business and was one of the people who welcomed the democratic capitalism he would have to adapt to in the future.

“So, a man who was so loyal to communism has now become a dog of capitalism?”

“Hey, I’m saying this now that things have come to this. Were we ever communist? What communism are you talking about when we’ve been running on capitalism from start to finish?”

Not from the very beginning. There was a time when it really did run like communism when the Soviet Union was still strong. However, from his perspective, it was true that it had been running on capitalism from the beginning. He was one of the younger people gathered here.

There were quite a few older people who had lived since the days when Korea was a Japanese colony, and there were even people who had lived since the founding of the Republic.

But the important thing was that, unlike the older generation, he was born in the Republic.

Frankly, the people of this generation didn’t even know what proper ‘communism’ was. The closest thing they learned to an ideal and perfect form of communism was Juche ideology [North Korea’s state ideology], but was Juche ideology communism? It was a Kim family dictatorship indoctrination ideology disguised as communism.

Among the younger generation, the people who realized this were either those who had escaped the indoctrination that started from prenatal education and could barely see reality, or those who were inherently eccentric, like this soldier.

“And if that great general wants to refute it, he can break out of his coffin and come out. I’ll gladly accept divine punishment then!”

He said that and laughed heartily, like someone who had never laughed before. Where did the man who could travel with lightning and storms and use teleportation go, leaving only a emaciated corpse suffering from illness? The sun eventually sets after it rises, and the moon hangs in the sky in place of the sun. There is repetition in the world, but no eternity.

“What do you think will happen from now on? Do you think a conclusion will be reached soon? I mean, before the South Korean army storms in here.”

“I don’t know about anything else, but I know the guy who commanded the defense forces is going to die.”

That was true. There was talk of executing the defense forces commander right away, so it was a brutal conversation. Of course, the possibility of actually executing him was extremely close to zero, but it was clearly a form of public opinion manipulation to shift the blame onto the defense forces commander.

Of course, if this information leaked out, the defense forces might come in and smash their skulls with rifle butts even before the South Korean army. It wasn’t like Yi Seong-gye’s Weihua Island Retreat [a historical event where a general turned his army back to overthrow the king]. Maybe that would be better. As they say, put new wine in new bottles. It was an opportunity to get rid of them all.

Some marginalized people, centered around him, got up from their seats with the lame excuse that their backs hurt from the folding chairs. No one stopped them, and no one could stop them.

These people, who would later become the seeds of discord on the Korean Peninsula, leisurely left the Mansudae Assembly Hall.

On the other hand, the South Korean government was not in a good situation either. In some ways, it was more chaotic than North Korea.

“Damn it! Why isn’t there any response? No, more than that, it’s completely baffling. They open the border but don’t open Pyongyang? Isn’t it usually the opposite?”

The ministers were as anxious as the frustrated president. Among them, the most anxious person was undoubtedly the Minister of National Defense. But at the same time, he was also the most calmly dealing with the situation. Being anxious was one thing. It would be a big problem if the person moving the troops, and furthermore, the person sitting in a high position, appeared outwardly anxious.

“Your Excellency, I think it is right to deploy the military even now. If they use biochemical weapons…”

“What? Are you trying to provoke them? What happens if we provoke them and they release biochemical weapons? Who will take responsibility for the people who are affected?”

It was a dilemma that led to another. If they attacked, it might explode, and if they didn’t attack, it could still explode. They couldn’t easily decide on a course of action in this unprecedented situation where the risks were the same no matter which option they chose. But it wasn’t just the problem of biochemical weapons.

“If we stay still, the scattered rioters will turn into partisans [guerilla fighters]. As I said before, in all likelihood, they must have raided the armories in Pyongyang. If we don’t completely seize North Korea before they regroup, then hell will unfold.”

‘Partisans. Partisans, huh.’

Partisans that they thought would never exist, at least not on the Korean Peninsula, since the 21st century?

“Aren’t we going to face the partisans anyway?”

They were bound to clash from the moment South Korea occupied North Korea.

“Before they completely hide in the deep valleys of the mountains or in the crowds of the city, we can sufficiently identify them, figure out their identities, and take preemptive measures.”

“We can’t allow a biochemical terror attack to happen to prevent that.”

“By neglecting the partisans, that biochemical terror attack might happen.”

In the end, the commander-in-chief was not the Minister of National Defense but the President. In other words, the Minister of National Defense could offer advice until his mouth was dry, but that was all he could do. The power to decide whether to accept that advice rested entirely with the President.

“It’s difficult. I wish we could at least get in touch.”

They still couldn’t reach the Communist Party. At this point, they suspected that it wasn’t intentional ignoring but that they were physically cut off. For example, the communication network in North Korea was damaged due to the aftermath of battles and bombings, or there was a problem with the communication satellite orbiting the Earth in low orbit, entrusting itself to the Earth’s gravity.

It wasn’t like they could send a messenger like in the Middle Ages. The Pyongyang defense forces were currently controlling all access. The aftermath of the civil war was so severe that they could occupy all major facilities and bases within an hour at most if they started advancing, but as expected, they were taking the highest level of alert, fearing that they might use biochemical weapons if they were provoked.

They had already issued MOPP [Mission Oriented Protective Posture] to all subordinate units before advancing into North Korea. So, the South Korean military was already considering large-scale chemical warfare. But there was a huge difference between considering it and actually doing it.

The scene then returned to Bush in the United States.

“Is that so?”

He presented a rather unique solution to this situation.