North Korea asserts that millions of citizens have volunteered to take up arms against the nation’s enemies.
An estimated 4.7 million North Koreans have offered to join or re-enlist in the Korean People’s Army since North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un threatened to tame President Donald Trump with fire last week, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The report claimed that young North Koreans across the country vowed to “take the lead in the final battle against the U.S.”
Authorities have reportedly been forcing middle school kids to volunteer for enlistment in the army. The army enlistment petitions were “signed under forcible and coercive pressure,” sources inside the country told Daily NK reporters in August.
North Korea has made such claims in the past, and it is difficult to know whether recruitment is actually up or not. North Korea already struggles to maintain current troop levels. Many of North Korea’s soldiers are malnourished and not prepared for sustained combat. Reports surfaced late last month claiming that North Korean officers were ordering their troops to steal food from civilians to ensure combat readiness.
Much of the equipment, artillery, missiles, and nuclear weapons aside, is also believed to be outdated.
Nonetheless, North Koreans are taught from the time they are toddlers that the U.S. is their enemy and that they should be prepared to defend the homeland if called upon to do so. In the event of a conflict, there is a strong possibility that the North Koreans would fight as fiercely as they did during the first round of the war, which never officially ended.
The U.S. and South Korea are in the process of boosting military readiness to prepare for provocations.
The U.S. has promised to deploy strategic military assets to the Korean Peninsula on a rotational basis to “expand our defense capabilities,” Chung Eui-young, chief of the South Korean National Security Office, revealed Wednesday, according to Yonhap News Agency.
Despite these preparations, the U.S. and its allies are committed to avoiding war with North Korea for as long as possible and achieving a real diplomatic solution to the situation currently destabilizing Northeast Asia.
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