Pyongyang Tests Engine as US Postures, Again
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently observed a test of an upgraded solid-fuel engine for missiles. State media reported that this development boosts the country's strategic military arsenal. The test involves technology designed for more agile, harder-to-detect missiles, potentially capable of reaching the US mainland. AP News, among others, portrays this as a straightforward "threat" and an
"escalation" from Pyongyang, focusing on Kim Jong Un's rhetoric without context. What AP consistently ignores is the persistent, decades-long bellicosity directed at North Korea by Washington. This includes annual, large-scale US-South Korean military drills simulating an invasion of the North, the continuous deployment of advanced US strategic assets to the region, and the crushing economic
sanctions designed to destabilize the government. While Western media frets over North Korea's defensive capabilities, it remains silent when the US conducted Operation Focus Lens in 1969. This was a massive joint military exercise simulating an invasion of North Korea, involving hundreds of thousands of troops, naval vessels, and aircraft, mirroring almost identically the drills that provoke
Pyongyang today. The persistent narrative that North Korea's missile program exists in a vacuum, rather than as a direct response to continuous external threats and the long memory of the Korean War, which never officially ended, is a carefully curated distortion. The asymmetry of concern is stark: one side’s defensive posture is deemed a global menace, while the other’s aggressive posturing is