People's Defense

Following up on this post, Fox News has further coverage of the North Korean preparations to defend against the coming American invasion.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has ordered its people to be ready for a protracted war against the United States, issuing guidelines on evacuating to underground bunkers with weapons, food and portraits of leader Kim Jong Il (search).

The 33-page "Detailed Wartime Guidelines," published in South Korea's Kyunghyang newspaper on Wednesday and verified by Seoul, was issued April 7, 2004, at a time when the communist regime was claiming that it was Washington's next target following the Iraq war.

The manual — the first such North Korean document made public in the outside world — was signed by Kim Jong Il in his capacity as chairman of the Central Military Committee of the ruling Workers' Party. That ended speculation over whether Kim has assumed the top military post following the 1994 death of his father, President Kim Il Sung.

Analysts said the guidelines reflected Pyongyang's fear over a possible U.S. military strike amid stalled talks on its nuclear weapons programs, as well as its campaign to whip up a sense of crisis among its 22 million populace, reportedly growing discontent amid economic hardship.

So basically, unless the North Korean government is lying (perish the thought), an American invasion of North Korea would actually be a good thing for the populace, since it's the only way they're going to be issued any food.

You can the rest of the article for yourselves, but I found this pretty astonishing.

Since the Korean War ended in 1953, North Korea has built a 1.1 million-member military, the world's fifth largest, although most of its weapons are outdated. It already keeps vital military facilities in an estimated 10,000 underground tunnels and bunkers, South Korean officials say.

The Pyongyang subway is hundreds of meters (yards) below the surface to double as an air raid shelter, and the North's military has dug "invasion tunnels" across the border with the South.

You'd think that feeding their people and, you know, trying to actually keep the economy running in order to produce things would be a higher priority. I suppose it's worth noting that this could all be rumor, as was (some of) the information about Iraq before the war. Even so... Ten thousand tunnels and bunkers? A subway hundreds of meters below the surface of the Earth? Sweet merciful glaven.