Especially not extremely backward, stone-age commies led by a guy who looks and acts like an alien (a reference to my favorite Economist cover ever, below)

Did you see or hear the latest?

NKorea threatens ‘sacred’ nuclear war if attacked

By FOSTER KLUG and HYUNG-JIN KIM – Associated Press

POCHEON, South Korea — North and South Korea beat the drums of war Thursday, with each threatening the other with immediate retaliation if attacked.

Seoul has staged days of military drills in a show of force meant to deter North Korea, including live-fire exercises earlier this week on a front-line island shelled by the North last month. Angered by the exercises, North Korea threatened Thursday it would launch a “sacred” nuclear war if Seoul hit it and warned that even the smallest intrusion on its territory would bring a devastating response.

The two sides are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty, and a U.S. governor who recently made an unofficial diplomatic mission to the North has said the situation on the peninsula is a “tinderbox” and the worst he had ever seen it.

Still, the latest rhetoric seemed likely to be just that, words aimed at stirring pride at home and keeping the rival at bay.

Defense chief Kim Yong Chun said North Korea is “fully prepared to launch a sacred war” and would use its nuclear capabilities, calling Monday’s drills a “grave military provocation” that indicated South Korea and the U.S. are plotting to invade the North.

Kim told a national meeting in Pyongyang that the North’s military will deal “more devastating physical blows” to its enemies if they cross into the North’s territory even slightly. He also threatened to “wipe out” South Korea and the U.S. if they start a war, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch….

Here’s an interesting side topic for consideration by you lovers of language: Why is it that hyperbole seems to translate so badly from culture to culture? Or is it just a dictator thing? We’re all still having fun with Saddam Hussein’s “mother of all battles” — to which, after it was over, we could well have taunted “Maybe next time you ought to send the DADDY of all battles,” were George H.W. Bush given to trash talk. I certainly had a lot of fun with it back at the time — sending out memos to the newsroom, in connection with coordinating our war coverage, couched in Saddam style (I ran across one of those recently, and meant to post it — now I don’t know where I put it).

And now this — which frankly, I don’t think anybody’s going to be quoting 19 years from now. I mean, it just doesn’t work. Sorry, Kim, but you don’t get to have a “sacred war.” You’re a godless commie. Did you forget, or what? Stalin would have never slipped up like this. And another thing, Poindexter: If Stalin had threatened “devastating physical blows” — well, first of all, he would never have used a pantywaist construction like that, but if he said something LIKE it — you knew he’d have backed it up. You, not so much.

It’s just … embarrassing…

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