Hiroshima Redux

North Korea's Breakout

By: Chris Knowles

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Ever since Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910, there has been an animosity between the Koreans and the Japanese. After World War II, the United States took on the responsibility for defending Japan, and following the Korean War the Americans defended South Korea while the Soviet Union and China allied with North Korea. And ever since before the Korean War, the Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea with an iron fist. With the assistance of the Soviets, the North Koreans entered the nuclear age with a power plant but ultimately went down the road of pursuing nuclear arms. In recent years, President Kim Jong-un and American President John Jefferson have been in intense negotiations over the “denuclearization” of North Korea. Kim has also developed a robust ICBM program and test fires missiles over Japan as an antagonistic gesture. In 2021, Kim fired an ICBM at Hokkaido, the Northernmost occupied island in Japan. Had it not been for a damaged guidance system and defective detonator fuze, Japan would have become the victim of the first atomic bomb since the Second World War. Japan’s Prime Minister Abe sought America’s assistance in responding to the North Korean threat and the President offered the full military resources of his country to eliminate it.