Battleland

Women in Combat? Old Hat, in North Korea

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AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and female North Korean soldiers March 25 at an undisclosed base on the country's east coast.

North Korea has spent the past week fulminating against recent U.S.-South Korean military exercises, including a B-52 flight Monday. But at the same time, the Korean Central News Agency was foaming at the keyboard over the greatness of leader Kim Jong Un (“Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and first chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK”) when it, ahem, pivoted to the fairer sex.

Kim, the dispatch reported

called the women soldiers of the 3rd artillery piece of the 1st Platoon of a battery under KPA Large Combined Unit 324 who had been involved in the artillery firing at the landing enemies to come close to him. He personally designated a firepower position beside him and set a target without any notice before giving an order to destroy it.

Upon receiving the order, members of the women’s multiple rocket system rapidly took the firepower position and accurately hit the target.

He shook their hands one by one, praising them as great soldiers and crack shots. They performed their duties well though he had set without any notice a target which was not envisaged in the drill program and assigned to them duty to destroy it, he said. He took them to his arms before having a photo taken with them.

“How praiseworthy Korean women are and a-match-for-a-hundred members of the women’s multiple rocket system can never be compared with nukes”, he noted, earnestly telling them to conduct training better and launch a dynamic campaign to become one-beats- a hundred crack shots at ordinary times and hero artillery women by sending enemy warships to the bottom of the sea in the decisive battles.

This could set the whole women-in-combat debate back to 1950 or so.