Post by redsycorax on Jan 17, 2024 23:36:58 GMT
In this third vignette from the era of North Korea's retrospectively labelled stable of 1950s metahumans, Yeong-gwangseuleoun Inmin-ui Seonbongdae, or the "Glorious People's Vanguard", we now come to the tale of "Red Vulture"/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli.
++
PYONGYANG, 1951:
"Your offer is unacceptable, Doctor Sivana! Even given your prodigious intellect, North Korea is recovering from the turmoil of thirty five years of repressive Japanese occupation and we have thus far fought almost another year of war against the American imperialists and their servile "United Nations" allies, with only our kindred peoples democracies in China and the Soviet Union for aid." Kim Il-Sung snapped at the diminutive black and white image of the Marvel Family's brilliant nemesis.
"You surely do not expect me to merely give you the secret behind my Venusian interplanetary rocket's propulsion system gratis, President Sung? Because I am not the chief executive of a charitable organisation! Sold on the open market, it would command millions of dollars!"
"Then any further conversation is pointless. Good morning, Doctor Sivana!" North Korean President Kim Il-Sung regretted losing his temper at the scientist on the other end of his visualiser link, but he had hoped that the savant would at least be reasonable when it came to the precious technological advance offered by his legendary Venusian interplanetary rocket and its advanced design. Unfortunately, Sivana had been as mercenary and avaricious as he had been warned beforehand. He turned to his Chinese 'scientific advisor", Professor Tong:
"Well, Professor? Did your mutant companion manage to secure any of Sivana's knowledge about the legendary vessel within which he travelled to Venus?"
"His mind was too staunchly shielded, Mister President. As I guessed it might be. No matter. Working independently on remote telepathic scans ranging far outside the borders of your people's democracy, our Geuleiteu Ledeu Beulein was able to secure sufficient details about your outstanding need for an orbital redoubt. If you can provide authorisation for the project, we can begin construction within days."
"Excellent, Professor! A toast! To Ledeu Seuta Jagjeon!"
Professor Tong nodded jubilantly: "Ae, Premier! To Ledeu Seua Jagjeon...or, as they would say in the land of our adversaries, "Operation Red Star!!!"
PYONGYANG, OCTOBER 1952:
Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was now known only as the "Red Vulture." Whatever his real name had once been, he had become legendary and infamous as a North Korean People's Army strategist and battlefield genius who had been responsible for massive loss of US Army, South Korean and allied lives in one arduous battle after another as the crushing, stalemated Korean War continued relentlessly and without respite. Somehow, though, with the assistance of their Soviet allies, Professor Tong had been able to assemble his Red Star space station, test its technological accoutrements and send it into Earth orbit, where its stellate configuration rotated silently and majestically in the void
[Additional Documentation: Isabelle Ramsey, Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia: December 1952:
FILE: MFBED/12/52: DOGSULI, BOLG-EUN/"RED VULTURE":
Unlike the others outlined in this file, Bolg-Eun Dogsuli/"Red Vulture" is largely a figure of mystery. His hideous personal appearance, however, belied a razor-sharp military mind, whatever the continued deficiency in hard data about his origins cannot give intelligence agencies. However, that aside, Bolg-Eun Dogsuli's presence was instrumental in the early capture of Seoul, Inchon and Taejon, early in the conflict (June/July 1950). The actual extent of his role as a strategist at that stage of the war is a matter of inter-agency debate. Certainly, as an army lieutenant, he won plaudits and praise for his flexible, sharp sense of interpersonal combat and tactical command of terrain, as well as his expert assessment of overall grand emplacement strategic oversight.
In 1951, however, Inchon and Seoul were recaptured by the US Army, South Korean and allied UN forces after US Marine Corps deployment. Active intelligence about Bolg-Eun Dogsuli's contemporary assignment is minimal, but it has been suggested by other analysts such as Leadbetter, Quon and Li-Cheng within this agency that his apparent absence from the active battlefield was due to a possible core role in negotiations with the Peoples Republic of China over logistical assistance and then, military intervention against the United States and UN forces elsewhere on the Korean peninsula.
In 1952, the US/UN allied advance went into reverse. At this point, photographic evidence discloses the presence of Bolg-Eun Dogsuli's distinctive figure as a liaison officer and strategic attache to the Chinese Army expeditionary force at Choisin and Chongchon River, resulting in substantial losses to the Eighth Army and 2nd Infantry forces. There is debatable evidence that Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was involved in the car accident that killed US Eighth Army chief General Walker north of Seoul.
Acclaimed by North Korean civilians and senior military personnel alike, General Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was then assigned to the North Korean "Red Star" space station in October 1952. It is here that psychological interpretation has produced some particularly salient surmise about the General's possible motivation. It may be the case that given the close contact between the "Great Red Brain" mutant which went missing from Pyongyang two months later, General Dogsuli had become acquainted with advance information about the future development of the North Korean Democratic People's Republic under the increasingly grotesque, idiosyncratic personality cult of the Kim dynasty and ensuing damage to the inhabitants of North Korea. Photographs from the Marvel Family incursion against the Red Star Space Station in December 1952 show possible "mass driver and impactor" devices loaded with medium scale meteorites, whose trajectories would lead them to bombard cities in South and North Korea alike. Could General Bolg-Eun Dogsuli have therefore intended the assassination of Kim Il-Sung and politbureau allies to circumvent this prospective development? Was he intending a coup d'etat? We shall never know. In December 1952, the Red Star space station was sighted on a high-altitude reconaissance military flight above the Korean peninsula and the Marvel Family was notified...
Lieutenant Isabella Ramsey
18 December 1952
Annotated: 4th April 1968
CIA, Langley, Virginia]
EPILOGUE: DECEMBER 1952
And when young WHIZ-TV anchor Billy Batson read out a news item about a 'second moon' high above the Earth, orbiting it at a thousand miles, his curiosity was piqued. Meeting his sister Mary and their friend Freddy Freeman at a blood donation drive, he told them about the news bulletin report and together, they spoke the words that transformed the three of them into the Marvel Family. In no time, the Worlds Mightiest Mortals crossed the vastness of the Pacific to tragic, wartorn Korea, in time to witness the battlefield bombardment of UN troops. To her horror, Mary witnessed a soldier stagger and fall to the ground. She broke from her brother and their friend to scoop the soldier up and accelerated toward a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital miles from the scene of military carnage. Halfway there, however, the valiant infantryman shakily breathed his last and closed his eyes, passing away in his arms. She alighted, lowering him gently to Earth and despite being the World's Mightiest Maiden, Mary Marvel's heart broke in that instant.
Her brother held her as she sobbed:
"How could anyone do this? Billy? H-he was just serving o-our country and the free world and his life was just snuffed out, like that."
"I hate it too, Mary. But we can do something to stop this. And I don't mean just intercepting those projectiles. Freddie?"
"Take a look at this, both of you. It's a leaflet from a character called the "Red Vulture." I suspect he's the architect of all this."
At that moment, Mary saw another projectile accelerating toward a USAF jet. She was determined that this time, she would not be too late and intercepted the object before it could claim another life:
"Mary Marvel?! T-thank you. But...but...how can you fight what you can't see?"
And high above them, the Red Vulture shook his hands angrily in his orbital command centre. He raged: "Die, Yankee dogs! Let your blood and bones splatter all over the landscape! Your dying screams are sweet music to my ears!" But if one looked more closely around the cabin that the Red Vulture occupied, one could witness a creased photograph featuring the facility's commander and an elderly woman. In Korean ideographs, the words read Eomeoni...Mother. The photograph was also burnt at the edges and obviously of some significance to the Red Vulture. And elsewhere, a more intact photograph of a graveyard, with a black marble tombstone. The photograph was shaky and ill-framed, but if one looked closely, one could make out the image of the same elderly woman in the older photograph. Brutality and carnage do not flow from only one direction during wartime. While the Red Vulture's diatribe might seem vicious and inhumane, it must be seen in context, even if its content cannot be excused.
Below, the Marvel Family were intercepting the bombardment from above. They then soared aloft to locate the source of the enemy assault against the United Nations. They reached sixty thousand feet, the highest known contemporary altitude that bombers could reach; fifty miles, higher than any zeppelin had ever reached; and finally, two hundred miles, at which wartime V weapons had reached their apex before hurtling back down to earth. Puzzled, they informed the military hierarchy about their poor luck in discovering the source, until Captain Marvel remembered Billy Batson's news bulletin about the 'second moon' at one thousand miles above them. Accordingly, the Marvel Family resumed pursuit, until they caught sight of a stellated red object orbiting at that height- the "Red Star" space station, as its orthography read on its side: "It's a space station! Scientists have predicted as possible for years and the commies finally built one!"
Inside the vehicle, the Red Vulture sneered at the incoming Marvel Family as he snarled: "Curses! How did those American morons figure it out? But what better time to test my new horror weapon... the giant fireball? It will sidetrack them from me?" To the Marvel Family's horror, a giant luminescent ball was disgorged from the orbital vehicle and despite their valiant attempts to intercept it, the flames and porousness of the object resisted their own assault on the accelerating projectile. Below them, United States and UN allied armed forces looked on in horror as the fireball grew larger and more blinding in the night time skies above South Korea.
Soaring toward the fireball, the Marvel Family provided some explosive obstacles to the final impact of the fireball as they appropriated some bombs from a local South Korean airfield and threw them together, vaporising the incoming threat. The consequence was not lost on the increasingly frustrated Red Vulture, who instructed his subordinates to operate the Red Star station's engines and changed orbits. Abandoning the station in a shuttlecraft, the Red Vulture returned to his homeland below, but the Marvel Family sighted him and stopped him as he was punishing a skeletal South Korean prisoner of war. They attacked the Red Vulture and then his North Korean subordinates, but then the Red Vulture motioned to a detonator cable: "That gave me just enough time to reach this! Halt, American vermin! That rocket is rigged to be blown to bits in case of capture... and remember... onboard right now are South Korean prisoners of war."
The Marvel Family were forced to retreat, but transforming themselves back to their civilian identities, they smuggled themselves onboard the shuttle rocket, only to be apprehended themselves by a North Korean soldier. Possibly because the loss of his beloved mother had driven him insane, the Red Vulture ordered the three unconscious American youths thrown out of a Red Star airlock, into the near-vacuum of space. He raved: "They won't even fall to the earth! Anything cast from an orbital body simply follows the same orbit. They will suffocate from the vacuum and then their corpses will orbit the Earth forever!"
Billy used his knowledge of the laws of motion to plummet downward, until he started to catch alight, but it was at a low enough altitude to speak his Shazam trigger word and transformed back into Captain Marvel. Retrieving his companions, the World's Mightiest Mortal travelled downward to enable Mary and Freddie to recover sufficiently and similarly transform. Meanwhile, however, the Red Vulture had used another specialised shuttle vehicle, grandiosely known as the "Red Grinder." As it started to tear into Chicago, Captain Marvel Junior interposed himself between local tenements and the device.
Its teeth blunted, the Red Vulture beat his own hasty retreat. Unfortunately, Captain Marvel had spotted the shuttle and destroyed the already evacuated space station through throwing meteor debris at the station. Mary Marvel knocked out their assailant as soon as he landed and her brother and their friend removed any potential threat from the North Korean Army personnel at the launch pad venue.
The Red Vulture was taken prisoner of war. One might wish that he was treated with the respect for his human rights and civil liberties that his status as a captured enemy combatant deserved. Unfortunately, South Korea was no democracy itself in December 1952 and paid little heed to such niceties of law. As soon as the Marvels were out of sight and earshot, even with their enhanced senses, the Red Vulture was unceremoniously hurled against a wall and shot in the head. Several minutes later, he was thrown in an anonymous collective grave.
Even today, Red Vulture/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli is treated as a "martyr" for the Yeong-gwangseuleoun Inmin-ui Seonbongdae ("Glorious People's Vanguard") and his wartime "sacrifice" is celebrated on July 27, when the dictatorship commemorates those who gave their lives to maintain its continued existence. Needless to say, there are some untold aspects of this story that may merit further attention. Why were there inadequate reinforcements at the Red Star launch site? This suggests that somewhere in the North Korean military hierarchy, perhaps even at the level of Kim Il-Sung's premiership, it was realised that Red Vulture/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was either not stable enough to reliably manage an orbital facility, or Kim feared the possibility that Bolg-Eun Dogsuli might target Pyongyang and overthrow and murder the premier and his inner politbureau circle. And so, while condemning the death of Bolg-Eun Dogsuli at the hands of the South Korean military, Kim Il-Sung did nothing to escalate the already stalemated war or drew attention to the Marvel Family incursion into their territory. Soon after, the Korean War entered an armistice and ended.
In Pyongyang, a weathered Red Vulture/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli memorial stands, copper now tarnished to a green patina, its legend below almost unreadable. And in a cemetery elsewhere, an unvisited elderly woman's grave still remains, but its last visitor died in December 1952 and no-one is left to tend it.
[THE END : 5.31 PM, 18 JANUARY, 2024]
Source: "The Marvel Family battles the Red Star of Death" Marvel Family 78 (December 1952).
++
PYONGYANG, 1951:
"Your offer is unacceptable, Doctor Sivana! Even given your prodigious intellect, North Korea is recovering from the turmoil of thirty five years of repressive Japanese occupation and we have thus far fought almost another year of war against the American imperialists and their servile "United Nations" allies, with only our kindred peoples democracies in China and the Soviet Union for aid." Kim Il-Sung snapped at the diminutive black and white image of the Marvel Family's brilliant nemesis.
"You surely do not expect me to merely give you the secret behind my Venusian interplanetary rocket's propulsion system gratis, President Sung? Because I am not the chief executive of a charitable organisation! Sold on the open market, it would command millions of dollars!"
"Then any further conversation is pointless. Good morning, Doctor Sivana!" North Korean President Kim Il-Sung regretted losing his temper at the scientist on the other end of his visualiser link, but he had hoped that the savant would at least be reasonable when it came to the precious technological advance offered by his legendary Venusian interplanetary rocket and its advanced design. Unfortunately, Sivana had been as mercenary and avaricious as he had been warned beforehand. He turned to his Chinese 'scientific advisor", Professor Tong:
"Well, Professor? Did your mutant companion manage to secure any of Sivana's knowledge about the legendary vessel within which he travelled to Venus?"
"His mind was too staunchly shielded, Mister President. As I guessed it might be. No matter. Working independently on remote telepathic scans ranging far outside the borders of your people's democracy, our Geuleiteu Ledeu Beulein was able to secure sufficient details about your outstanding need for an orbital redoubt. If you can provide authorisation for the project, we can begin construction within days."
"Excellent, Professor! A toast! To Ledeu Seuta Jagjeon!"
Professor Tong nodded jubilantly: "Ae, Premier! To Ledeu Seua Jagjeon...or, as they would say in the land of our adversaries, "Operation Red Star!!!"
PYONGYANG, OCTOBER 1952:
Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was now known only as the "Red Vulture." Whatever his real name had once been, he had become legendary and infamous as a North Korean People's Army strategist and battlefield genius who had been responsible for massive loss of US Army, South Korean and allied lives in one arduous battle after another as the crushing, stalemated Korean War continued relentlessly and without respite. Somehow, though, with the assistance of their Soviet allies, Professor Tong had been able to assemble his Red Star space station, test its technological accoutrements and send it into Earth orbit, where its stellate configuration rotated silently and majestically in the void
[Additional Documentation: Isabelle Ramsey, Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia: December 1952:
FILE: MFBED/12/52: DOGSULI, BOLG-EUN/"RED VULTURE":
Unlike the others outlined in this file, Bolg-Eun Dogsuli/"Red Vulture" is largely a figure of mystery. His hideous personal appearance, however, belied a razor-sharp military mind, whatever the continued deficiency in hard data about his origins cannot give intelligence agencies. However, that aside, Bolg-Eun Dogsuli's presence was instrumental in the early capture of Seoul, Inchon and Taejon, early in the conflict (June/July 1950). The actual extent of his role as a strategist at that stage of the war is a matter of inter-agency debate. Certainly, as an army lieutenant, he won plaudits and praise for his flexible, sharp sense of interpersonal combat and tactical command of terrain, as well as his expert assessment of overall grand emplacement strategic oversight.
In 1951, however, Inchon and Seoul were recaptured by the US Army, South Korean and allied UN forces after US Marine Corps deployment. Active intelligence about Bolg-Eun Dogsuli's contemporary assignment is minimal, but it has been suggested by other analysts such as Leadbetter, Quon and Li-Cheng within this agency that his apparent absence from the active battlefield was due to a possible core role in negotiations with the Peoples Republic of China over logistical assistance and then, military intervention against the United States and UN forces elsewhere on the Korean peninsula.
In 1952, the US/UN allied advance went into reverse. At this point, photographic evidence discloses the presence of Bolg-Eun Dogsuli's distinctive figure as a liaison officer and strategic attache to the Chinese Army expeditionary force at Choisin and Chongchon River, resulting in substantial losses to the Eighth Army and 2nd Infantry forces. There is debatable evidence that Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was involved in the car accident that killed US Eighth Army chief General Walker north of Seoul.
Acclaimed by North Korean civilians and senior military personnel alike, General Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was then assigned to the North Korean "Red Star" space station in October 1952. It is here that psychological interpretation has produced some particularly salient surmise about the General's possible motivation. It may be the case that given the close contact between the "Great Red Brain" mutant which went missing from Pyongyang two months later, General Dogsuli had become acquainted with advance information about the future development of the North Korean Democratic People's Republic under the increasingly grotesque, idiosyncratic personality cult of the Kim dynasty and ensuing damage to the inhabitants of North Korea. Photographs from the Marvel Family incursion against the Red Star Space Station in December 1952 show possible "mass driver and impactor" devices loaded with medium scale meteorites, whose trajectories would lead them to bombard cities in South and North Korea alike. Could General Bolg-Eun Dogsuli have therefore intended the assassination of Kim Il-Sung and politbureau allies to circumvent this prospective development? Was he intending a coup d'etat? We shall never know. In December 1952, the Red Star space station was sighted on a high-altitude reconaissance military flight above the Korean peninsula and the Marvel Family was notified...
Lieutenant Isabella Ramsey
18 December 1952
Annotated: 4th April 1968
CIA, Langley, Virginia]
EPILOGUE: DECEMBER 1952
And when young WHIZ-TV anchor Billy Batson read out a news item about a 'second moon' high above the Earth, orbiting it at a thousand miles, his curiosity was piqued. Meeting his sister Mary and their friend Freddy Freeman at a blood donation drive, he told them about the news bulletin report and together, they spoke the words that transformed the three of them into the Marvel Family. In no time, the Worlds Mightiest Mortals crossed the vastness of the Pacific to tragic, wartorn Korea, in time to witness the battlefield bombardment of UN troops. To her horror, Mary witnessed a soldier stagger and fall to the ground. She broke from her brother and their friend to scoop the soldier up and accelerated toward a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital miles from the scene of military carnage. Halfway there, however, the valiant infantryman shakily breathed his last and closed his eyes, passing away in his arms. She alighted, lowering him gently to Earth and despite being the World's Mightiest Maiden, Mary Marvel's heart broke in that instant.
Her brother held her as she sobbed:
"How could anyone do this? Billy? H-he was just serving o-our country and the free world and his life was just snuffed out, like that."
"I hate it too, Mary. But we can do something to stop this. And I don't mean just intercepting those projectiles. Freddie?"
"Take a look at this, both of you. It's a leaflet from a character called the "Red Vulture." I suspect he's the architect of all this."
At that moment, Mary saw another projectile accelerating toward a USAF jet. She was determined that this time, she would not be too late and intercepted the object before it could claim another life:
"Mary Marvel?! T-thank you. But...but...how can you fight what you can't see?"
And high above them, the Red Vulture shook his hands angrily in his orbital command centre. He raged: "Die, Yankee dogs! Let your blood and bones splatter all over the landscape! Your dying screams are sweet music to my ears!" But if one looked more closely around the cabin that the Red Vulture occupied, one could witness a creased photograph featuring the facility's commander and an elderly woman. In Korean ideographs, the words read Eomeoni...Mother. The photograph was also burnt at the edges and obviously of some significance to the Red Vulture. And elsewhere, a more intact photograph of a graveyard, with a black marble tombstone. The photograph was shaky and ill-framed, but if one looked closely, one could make out the image of the same elderly woman in the older photograph. Brutality and carnage do not flow from only one direction during wartime. While the Red Vulture's diatribe might seem vicious and inhumane, it must be seen in context, even if its content cannot be excused.
Below, the Marvel Family were intercepting the bombardment from above. They then soared aloft to locate the source of the enemy assault against the United Nations. They reached sixty thousand feet, the highest known contemporary altitude that bombers could reach; fifty miles, higher than any zeppelin had ever reached; and finally, two hundred miles, at which wartime V weapons had reached their apex before hurtling back down to earth. Puzzled, they informed the military hierarchy about their poor luck in discovering the source, until Captain Marvel remembered Billy Batson's news bulletin about the 'second moon' at one thousand miles above them. Accordingly, the Marvel Family resumed pursuit, until they caught sight of a stellated red object orbiting at that height- the "Red Star" space station, as its orthography read on its side: "It's a space station! Scientists have predicted as possible for years and the commies finally built one!"
Inside the vehicle, the Red Vulture sneered at the incoming Marvel Family as he snarled: "Curses! How did those American morons figure it out? But what better time to test my new horror weapon... the giant fireball? It will sidetrack them from me?" To the Marvel Family's horror, a giant luminescent ball was disgorged from the orbital vehicle and despite their valiant attempts to intercept it, the flames and porousness of the object resisted their own assault on the accelerating projectile. Below them, United States and UN allied armed forces looked on in horror as the fireball grew larger and more blinding in the night time skies above South Korea.
Soaring toward the fireball, the Marvel Family provided some explosive obstacles to the final impact of the fireball as they appropriated some bombs from a local South Korean airfield and threw them together, vaporising the incoming threat. The consequence was not lost on the increasingly frustrated Red Vulture, who instructed his subordinates to operate the Red Star station's engines and changed orbits. Abandoning the station in a shuttlecraft, the Red Vulture returned to his homeland below, but the Marvel Family sighted him and stopped him as he was punishing a skeletal South Korean prisoner of war. They attacked the Red Vulture and then his North Korean subordinates, but then the Red Vulture motioned to a detonator cable: "That gave me just enough time to reach this! Halt, American vermin! That rocket is rigged to be blown to bits in case of capture... and remember... onboard right now are South Korean prisoners of war."
The Marvel Family were forced to retreat, but transforming themselves back to their civilian identities, they smuggled themselves onboard the shuttle rocket, only to be apprehended themselves by a North Korean soldier. Possibly because the loss of his beloved mother had driven him insane, the Red Vulture ordered the three unconscious American youths thrown out of a Red Star airlock, into the near-vacuum of space. He raved: "They won't even fall to the earth! Anything cast from an orbital body simply follows the same orbit. They will suffocate from the vacuum and then their corpses will orbit the Earth forever!"
Billy used his knowledge of the laws of motion to plummet downward, until he started to catch alight, but it was at a low enough altitude to speak his Shazam trigger word and transformed back into Captain Marvel. Retrieving his companions, the World's Mightiest Mortal travelled downward to enable Mary and Freddie to recover sufficiently and similarly transform. Meanwhile, however, the Red Vulture had used another specialised shuttle vehicle, grandiosely known as the "Red Grinder." As it started to tear into Chicago, Captain Marvel Junior interposed himself between local tenements and the device.
Its teeth blunted, the Red Vulture beat his own hasty retreat. Unfortunately, Captain Marvel had spotted the shuttle and destroyed the already evacuated space station through throwing meteor debris at the station. Mary Marvel knocked out their assailant as soon as he landed and her brother and their friend removed any potential threat from the North Korean Army personnel at the launch pad venue.
The Red Vulture was taken prisoner of war. One might wish that he was treated with the respect for his human rights and civil liberties that his status as a captured enemy combatant deserved. Unfortunately, South Korea was no democracy itself in December 1952 and paid little heed to such niceties of law. As soon as the Marvels were out of sight and earshot, even with their enhanced senses, the Red Vulture was unceremoniously hurled against a wall and shot in the head. Several minutes later, he was thrown in an anonymous collective grave.
Even today, Red Vulture/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli is treated as a "martyr" for the Yeong-gwangseuleoun Inmin-ui Seonbongdae ("Glorious People's Vanguard") and his wartime "sacrifice" is celebrated on July 27, when the dictatorship commemorates those who gave their lives to maintain its continued existence. Needless to say, there are some untold aspects of this story that may merit further attention. Why were there inadequate reinforcements at the Red Star launch site? This suggests that somewhere in the North Korean military hierarchy, perhaps even at the level of Kim Il-Sung's premiership, it was realised that Red Vulture/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli was either not stable enough to reliably manage an orbital facility, or Kim feared the possibility that Bolg-Eun Dogsuli might target Pyongyang and overthrow and murder the premier and his inner politbureau circle. And so, while condemning the death of Bolg-Eun Dogsuli at the hands of the South Korean military, Kim Il-Sung did nothing to escalate the already stalemated war or drew attention to the Marvel Family incursion into their territory. Soon after, the Korean War entered an armistice and ended.
In Pyongyang, a weathered Red Vulture/Bolg-Eun Dogsuli memorial stands, copper now tarnished to a green patina, its legend below almost unreadable. And in a cemetery elsewhere, an unvisited elderly woman's grave still remains, but its last visitor died in December 1952 and no-one is left to tend it.
[THE END : 5.31 PM, 18 JANUARY, 2024]
Source: "The Marvel Family battles the Red Star of Death" Marvel Family 78 (December 1952).