The Black Hands terrorist organization, the ones that killed Archduke Ferdinand, hoped that by doing so they would start a civil war that would result in a victory for Serbia, specifically creating a “Greater Serbia” from the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire where they had dominance over their regional neighbors.
Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Instead WW1 happened.
Which ended in the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of Yugoslavia, a constitutional monarchy with a Serbian royal family, capital in Serbia.
(And then they made everyone hate them because they were assholes both as a monarchy and a communist state)
Second, Bonus Fun History Fact:
Terroristic tactics have left Afghanistan as the only nation to have defeated occupations by the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and America, the three most powerful states since the collapse of the Mongol Empire.
The problem in that case is I absolutely can’t talk about the problems with it without spoiling the ending and quite a lot of the drama from the third book, but I will say I enjoyed the series quite a lot, teen drama and all, until #3.
I’ll also say if you loved the combat in the second book you’ll love some 40k Space Marine novels because it was basically just a typical Astartes drop pod assault, including the MC melting a guy’s face with definitely-not-a-Betcher-Gland.
I typed out a huge rant in response to this, absolutely hating that series for reasons I can’t get started on without spiraling into an unhinged rant again, and decided that was way too negative a response for some casual excitement about an upcoming series.
All I’ll say instead is I hope the show is better about staying on theme than the novels were.
And, hey, best case scenario?
We finally get a good Definitely-Not-Space-Marines show.
South Korea at the time was run by actual fascists, people often originally put in charge by the prior Japanese occupation who helped genocide their own people and kept by the “democratic” Allies because, being fascists, they really hated commies.
It’s also simply disingenuous to pretend North Korea’s economic problems aren’t mostly caused by the embargo they’ve been under for seventy years.
Does that make North Korea the victim?
Well, not really, but on the other hand, you can certainly understand the invasion.
Unlike some people, they actually were invading fascists. Ones that actually were their people’s oppressors, and even to this day most Koreans consider themselves a divided nation and support reunification, unlike Russia and Ukraine or Serbia and literally everyone else from the former Yugoslavia because the Serbs were dicks.
From that point of view it’s certainly easier to understand why they would portray themselves as victims compared to people who just want to conquer and genocide their neighbors.
But time is funny, you become what you hate, etc.
Can’t really say Marxist-> Feudal Monarchy is the typical trajectory though.