The remake was originally going to feature a Chinese invasion, but they wanted it to still release and sell in China, so they made North Korea the bad guy instead.

It never did release in China.

a country that barely has a navy

North Korea has the largest submarine fleet of any nation. Of course most of those are old diesel subs, but the point still stands.

There's also the video game series, Homefront, where a unified Korea under northern rule invaded the US and occupies it.

At least the original version of the movie was against the Russians

You're forgetting the real beef behind that invasion: Nicaragua.

Every time this movie comes up, I feel obligated to point out that despite being under occupation by ~~China~~ North Korea - Subway is somehow still open with uniformed staff and a well stocked sandwich bar, all while having dine-in customers for convenient ad placement..

Ad placement that, get this: goes as far to even have the characters use the official 'Sandwich Artist' job title while robbing them ಠ_ಠ

I often times wonder if an extraterrestrial threat would be a unifying factor or if people would still be selfish unless it affected them. The pandemic was the closest we've seen to a world level threat recently and it just increased selfishness IMO (at least in the US)

On the other hand, the Simpsons did a not-so-funny-now with this:

https://youtu.be/z77JFw2D6f8

They did screw it up completely and needed to be saved though so that part was accurate.

The "they want to invade us" aspect feels more real than ever. The "they credibly threatened our independence" aspect feels less real than ever.

Russia under Putin is somehow both a worse neighbor and a less credible threat on the world stage.

I was in the Air Force in the late 70s. Worked in the flight surgeon's office, so if anything went down on the flight line, we were there.

If you wanna see Kegels In Action, watch what happens when many many gallons of JP-4 gets spilled on nukes inside a B-52D on the alert pad.

Fun times!

I was just thinking that as I was reading this post. Yeah, so they're not "right behind the US" in overall ability and preparedness, and NOW they're drained financially and their populations morale is at a low point with the drafts and the prisoner-units, who else do we have all these guns for then? Who will be the next boogeyman, and have we already laid the groundwork to say it's China?

Yeah, but isn't that American propaganda?

We needed a bbg to justify our actions. I'm not saying it was out of nowhere, but the scale of the thing certainly played well for certain politicians.

Yes. Yes it was. The USSR has very little in common with kleptocracy Russia. My wife was raised under their educational system and she was studying organic chemistry in the eight grade. Today she is one of the top people in her field (easily top ten) and she says that most of her career she's mostly leaned on her early education. Especially math and science.

It is wild to see this. It's amazing how quickly things change.

Yeah, Russia was incredibly powerful in its heyday, both in global influence and military power. Think about how people are worried about climate change now, then double it. That was the threat of nuclear war that kept people awake at night for decades.

After the time of the collapse we found out how empty a lot of their power was. How much of their achievements were less an unstoppable train and more of a rocket that couldn't be refueled. They had power but they never figured out how to make it sustainable.