It is, as always, projection. Reminder that more bombs were dropped on DPRK than during the entire World War II Pacific campaign. The US destroyed nearly every building in the entire country and killed around 282,000 people, 20% of the population. They literally ran out of targets to bomb.
June 25, 1951, General O’Donnell, Commander of the Far Eastern Air Force (FEAF) Bomber Command, testified (in answer to a question from Senator John C. Stennis, “North Korea has been virtually destroyed, hasn’t it?”): “Oh, yes; …I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name… Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea.”
During the Korean War, the United States dropped about 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea, essentially on North Korea, plus 32,557 tons of napalm, exceeding the 503,000 tons dropped in the entire World War II Pacific theater. The bombing destroyed North Korea’s major urban and industrial infrastructure: 18 of 22 major cities were at least half obliterated, and by fall 1952 every significant town, city, and industrial area had already been bombed. A Soviet/Razuvaev estimate put deaths from bombing raids at 282,000. Broader estimates of North Korean war deaths are higher: Armstrong estimates 12% to 15% of the North Korean population died in the war overall, while Curtis LeMay later gave a rough 20% figure for war deaths from direct casualties, starvation, and exposure. By 1952, US forces had effectively run out of targets where dropping more bombs would have made any military difference.
It is, as always, projection. Reminder that more bombs were dropped on DPRK than during the entire World War II Pacific campaign. The US destroyed nearly every building in the entire country and killed around 282,000 people, 20% of the population. They literally ran out of targets to bomb.