Taepo Jelly Dong-2

As Americans celebrated their Fourth of July holiday with the usual prerequisite of colorful explosives and kegs of light beer, North Korea shot off some of their own fireworks by test-firing four short-range missiles.

The ‘Taepo Dong-2’ rocket, that flies no one knows where, no one knows what for, and can fall onto anyone’s head, represents practically the entire North Korean political behavior— impetuous, unpredictable, defiantly juxtaposed to the rest of the world, and thus certainly dangerous. Of course, the choice of names for their latest military effort, however, exudes all the perpetrated fear of an old man performing Tai chi in the park.

Sure it is the largest ever North Korean ballistic missile exercise to date, and potentially represents a serious security threat from foreign soil – but ‘Taepo Dong-2’? Shit, it sounds like the prototype for some adult novelty toy.

Why not just call it the ‘Long Fat Wang’ instead? Doesn’t exactly strike fear in the hearts of men, does it? Well, not real manly men anyway. But then again, the United States had their ‘Fat Man and Little Boy’ back in the 40’s. So what do we know?

Is it a rule that all phallic-shaped weapons of mass destruction be given phallic-sounding names? Is this written into the Geneva Convention or something?

North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) conducted a series of ballistic missile tests, launching a total of six missiles during the early hours of 5 July to apparently restrict foreign intelligence-gathering capabilities as well as achieve some element of surprise. Initial reports indicate that these six systems consisted of one ‘Taepo Dong 2’ and five 'Scud'-class missiles. Another seventh, as yet unidentified missile was also fired at 0822 (GMT).

While the ‘Taepo Dong 2’ failed shortly after lift-off, it is likely to still have provided the North Koreans with valuable experience and some limited data collection. Both of these will obviously be funneled into future developments of the system. Additionally, the successful launching of six 'Scud'-class missiles demonstrates that Korean People's Army missile units have achieved a significant level of operational readiness and that the missile systems are developmentally mature.

"The Taepo Dong-2 in a two-stage ballistic missile configuration could deliver a several-hundred-kg payload up to 10,000 km – sufficient to strike Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of the continental United States with a light payload, namely California. If the North uses a third stage similar to the one used on the Taepo Dong-1 in 1998 in a ballistic missile configuration, then the Taepo Dong-2 could deliver a several-hundred-kg payload up to 15,000 km – sufficient to strike all of North America."

In its two-stage configuration, the ‘Taepo Dong-2’ missile is believed to use four ‘No Dong’ engines - *giggle* - clustered together as the first stage and a single ‘No Dong’ - *giggle* - as the second stage. Not only is such a missile at least five-times more likely to fail than a single-stage ‘No Dong’ missile (itself far from reliable) - *giggle* - but also sounds more like something Wil E. Coyote would think up in his ever futile quest to catch the Roadrunner. The fact that the ‘Taepo Dong-2’ missile test fired by the North Koreans failed 35 seconds after being launched seems to confirm its Wil E. Coyote status.

Does anyone still think we’re talking about missiles here?

Besides, offering a preverbal face slap to ‘ol Dubya on the world stage, I think the whole notion that North Korea intends to flex its military might on the States is preposterous. Besides, even if they really wanted to attack the US mainland and their ‘Taepo Dong-2’ missile still didn’t work, they could just wrap it in blue lyrca and California would just inevitably come to them.

In the past, the United States has deterred the likes of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mao Zedong. So they are no strangers to dealing with mutinous numbnuts with strange names. None of those leaders seriously contemplated attacking the United States. And the reason for their restraint was quite simple: they knew that such an attack would mean certain retaliation resulting in their own annihilation. So why would an erratic and unpredictable leader such as North Korea's Kim Jong-Il * not be similarly deterred? It cannot be because he is any more brutal than America's previous adversaries. Khrushchev and Brezhnev were thuggish, and Mao and Stalin were genocidal monsters. Likewise, a credible case cannot be made that Kim Jong-Il is more erratic and unpredictable than the tyrants the United States deterred in the past. Stalin epitomized paranoia, and Mao was the architect of China's utterly bizarre Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s – at the very time that China was acquiring a nuclear-weapons capability.

He’s just another dude with a bad haircut, over-sized sunglasses, a severe Napoleon complex and an inept sense of name. And is it just me, or does anybody else picture Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles whenever they see his picture in the news?

“Ohhh...no more yanky my wanky, the Donger need food!"

Go on…picture it. I’m right, aren’t I?

Like the other members of the Axis of Evil, the threat posed by North Korea is overrated. The U.S. economy is more than 600 times larger than North Korea's, and North Korean defense spending is less than 2 percent of current U.S. defense expenditures. Basically, North Korean spends as much on its entire military campaign as the United States military spends on powdered eggs. Moreover, the U.S. military is far and away the most modern and technologically advanced in the world. For example, the U.S. Air Force's F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon are considered the world's premier fighter aircraft, despite their designs dating back to the 1970s. Similarly, the U.S. Army's Abrams tank does not have an equal. No other country in the world has a Navy with large-deck aircraft carriers. And the U.S. military has a virtual monopoly on precision-guided or "smart" weapons, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS)-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition or JDAM. By comparison, North Korea has to make do with older weapons purchased from either the former Soviet Union or China. As a result, the United States possesses bone-crushing military dominance, so it is hard to imagine why a country like North Korea would cause a superpower to shake in its boots. That’d be like General Patton being intimidated by a one-legged rickshaw driver.

If I’m going to be made to live in fear, it’s not going to be over some stocky, rice-sucking dipshit. So lets deal with this appropriately. Let's just send a telegram threatening to kick the living kimchi out of him if he attempts to launch anything more than a beer fart into the atmospshere.

If that doesn't work - nuke the slanty-eyed bitch.

* The original predecessor to cool, hip vernacular, Kim Jong-Il has sparked other noted world leaders to change their names to something more proactive as well. For example, George Bush has contemplated renaming himself George Phat-Bush, and Tony Blair as Tony Blair-Sick.