Chapter 159: The Korean Peninsula (2)

As for the various secret bases and warehouses of the Koreans, they knew little about them due to their hasty retreat into the mountainous regions, compounded by heavy personnel losses. They would only be able to search for records after the recovery of Pyongyang.

As the Special Committee's troops continued their advance southward down the Korean Peninsula, rivers did not pose a significant obstacle as they were completely frozen. Guided by the Post-Apocalyptic Korean People's Liberation Army and the Post-Apocalyptic Republic of Korea People's Liberation Army, their armored vehicles rolled along the winding mountain roads.

The surviving Koreans were evacuated to the vicinity of Shenyang, where the Special Committee had established a preliminary screening base. The plan was to screen all foreigners across Northeast Asia, including those from Eastern Siberia in Russia, before dispersing and reallocating them to various locations.

The Special Committee promised to try their best not to scatter them too widely. This promise was eventually kept: they were settled into two main groups, men and women. Generations later, a great harmony of society was achieved...

The firepower of the Special Committee far exceeded that of the Americans during the Korean War, with production facilities and resources vastly more abundant than in that era.

After all, this was a unilateral conventional war waged by humans against zombies, and no one spent their days plotting to disrupt transport lines or bomb logistical bases.

Roaring artillery drove the hordes of zombies southward all the way. Li Fengyi demanded that the troops strike the zombies as much as possible before the zombies could figure out an effective counterattack method, striving for strategic maneuvering space.

"By doing this, at the very least we'll have places to run for an extra couple of days if we have to retreat," Li Fengyi had told Li Qiang, and Li Qiang deeply agreed.

After the recapture of Pyongyang, a massive amount of data regarding North Korean secret warehouses and military supplies was obtained. The Special Committee dispatched personnel to verify them item by item and placed them under strict guard. A large portion of these supplies had been provided by China, the Soviet Union, and even Russia before the apocalypse. The Koreans had hoped to use them in operations to counter an American invasion, and had thus preserved them meticulously for decades.

In the future, the Korean Peninsula would serve as the Special Committee's ultimate fallback base just in case. This was why Li Fengyi and his comrades actively pushed to recover the Korean Peninsula; once things reached an irreversible state, holding the Yalu River to fight a single-front conventional defense would suffice.

***

Army Commander Liu raised a question: Under what banner should they enter the Korean Peninsula? This question left Li Fengyi and Li Qiang stunned. Before the apocalypse, both had been grassroots figures in society and the military, and had never considered such a matter. Their only thought had been to head straight for wherever the zombies were.

Looking back, the Ming and Qing dynasties were hardly relevant references, while back in the 1950s, the banner of the Volunteers had been used.

After discussion, it was decided to establish the Post-Apocalyptic Korean People's Liberation Army. It had a strong contemporary ring to it, and also served to remind all survivors: We are the armed forces that have come to rescue you from the apocalypse. You can all join your nation's armed forces and fight hard to recover your homeland. Those unwilling to join the military would be assigned to their respective nation's basic labor brigades, and the ones responsible for screening and escorting them would be the Liberation Army of their own country.

To improve efficiency, the basic labor brigades of these nations were uniformly dispatched and coordinated by advisors sent from the Post-Apocalyptic China Special Committee. Everything was done for the purpose of defeating the zombies and reclaiming lost territory. Slogans of the Special Committee, brimming with distinct Chinese characteristics, fluttered in a sea of red between heaven and earth.

The surviving Koreans were reorganized near Shenyang. The women were transported to the rear, while the men constituted the Post-Apocalyptic Korean People's Liberation Army. Equipped primarily with light infantry gear, they shouldered the task of liberating their own country, while the Post-Apocalyptic Chinese People's Liberation Army provided them with heavy firepower support.

The Special Committee explained that heavy firepower coordinated operations could not be mastered through training overnight. However, among the survivors from the bitterly cold Korean Peninsula, people were dying every day. Although it was spring during the apocalypse and food was manageable—with some warehouses dug deep into the mountains specifically to evade American air raids—clothing was a completely different story. They dared not return to the cities, and people froze to death daily.

Moreover, this was a prime opportunity to unify the Korean Peninsula. The various Asian bases established by the Americans were too preoccupied to care about themselves, and the survivors in the South Korean region had been utterly crushed; for the past month or so, no South Korean radio signals had been detected at all.

The surviving South Koreans in Beijing were unhappy and lodged protests, demanding the unification of the Korean Peninsula, or at the very least, the reciprocal establishment of a Post-Apocalyptic Republic of Korea People's Liberation Army. After Li Fengyi's repeated mediation proved ineffective, he simply used diplomacy and matters of state policy as an excuse, claiming the issue required review and approval by the National People's Congress.

The request was submitted to the Congress. One must say that Chinese people, on the one hand, had a high level of education before the apocalypse, and on the other hand, possessed strategic planning deeply engrained in their bones. They voted to approve the Post-Apocalyptic Republic of Korea People's Liberation Army. This time, it was the Koreans' turn to protest. Following Li Qiang's persuasion and education, the North Korean survivors, sharing the same ideological background, agreed to accept it.

Slapping the plate armor on their chests and rattling the AK family of rifles in their hands, the Koreans felt this made a lot of sense. The highly righteous conduct of China during the past War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea gave them an inexplicable trust in the Chinese military.

***

In the current situation, they had no other choice even if they didn't trust them. Watching the Chinese military, fully equipped with all sorts of light and heavy gear, hovering at a distance with ambiguous intent, they swallowed hard.

The Korean men poured out in full force, replacing the Chinese military in conducting search operations. Formed into straight lines—since the Korean Peninsula was only 360 kilometers wide at its broadest point—they utilized towering peaks, cities, and roads as strongpoints, easily stretching a human wall from the east coast to the west coast without leaving any gaps.

South Koreans who had settled in China before the apocalypse were also mobilized. Their men donned plate armor, machetes, and Type 81 rifles to take the field, and a considerable number of them were assigned as guides to their compatriots' army.

The Chinese military continued to advance along highways, railways, and frozen solid rivers. Artillery defense camps were strictly set up according to the ranges of the captured North Korean inventory artillery, striving to blanket every traversed area within artillery range.

Piles of shells were neatly stacked on the artillery positions. They did not waste excessive manpower, material resources, or energy on considering air defense; as long as giant mutant birds did not cause trouble, there was no threat from the sky. Moreover, giant mutant birds seemed utterly uninterested in unpalatable hunks of steel, while a 155-millimeter cannon barrel was far too hard for building nests. Once the advancing front exceeded three artillery-range intervals, the artillery in the rear would leapfrog forward to the very front, and so on.

The veteran artillerymen of the Chinese military mastered all techniques with ease, wielding various models of artillery with miraculous skill. Most importantly, they harbored little anxiety about accidental friendly fire this time, having repeatedly used artillery shells to blast walls of fire that swept evenly across the front like a broom made of iron and fire.

Wherever the wall of fire swept, everything from zombies to accumulated snow and withered trees and weeds was completely wiped out, leaving only churned earth mixed with shrapnel. The spectacular sight of walls of fire reaching the sky left the Koreans awe-struck and further bolstered their confidence in unifying the Korean Peninsula. Curiously, the South Koreans were similarly filled with confidence.

The apocalypse was indeed an era of development opportunity.