Drill, baby, drill !

Sirens in the air, fighter jets in the sky, and drills underground, following seris or articles in the press about what to do "when" (and not "if") North Korea attacks... authorities obviously needed to display some activity following recent embarrassments on the national security front :

- when Kim Jong-un attacked Yeonpyeong-do the other day (see "We need to talk about KIM"), it took twelve minutes for the South to move their guns in the right direction and shoot. 12 mn !!! Holy Gimchi, with all this time, Kim's nukes can even watch Nanta on their way from Pyeongyang to Seoul.
- why in the first place none of the said guns was pointing in the direction of the enemy as ROK performed highly risky drills still puzzles me, but to add insult to injury (and death, for that matter), most shells missed their targets*
- defense ministers and army leaders keep resigning at a steady pace - when incompetence is not the issue, corruption scandals do the trick

The smartest answer local eggheads found to restore national pride was to cancel the planned reduction of military service in Korea (it went down from 24 to 21 months, and was to go all the way down to 17).

Maybe the right thing to do would be to go with the plan and reduce the average duration of the military service, but at the same time invest in a more compact, professional and motivated army.

Seoul Village 2010

* hopefully, NK intel was not that efficient either: among their targets, some army facilities had been for years converted into civil buildings