Setting and backstory[edit]
The video game is set in an alternate reality setting, where in the 2010s, there is high tensions between North Korea and the global powers due to the country's military aggression, including its successful nuclear weapons test and the sinking of a South Korean ship, which heightened those tensions.[8]
In the year 2013, two years after the death of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-il, his son and successor, Kim Jong-un, reunites North and South Korea to form the Greater Korean Republic (GKR), a technological and economic global power, using the military strength of the North and the economic strength of the South. By the year 2015, a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, both becoming nuclear-armed states, devastated the global oil supply, causing gas prices to skyrocket to $19.99 per gallon,[8] leaving many countries in debt and causing mass hysteria. This precipitates extreme economic turmoil and massive social unrest in the U.S. Subsequently, in 2017, the U.S. military recalls much of its overseas presence, particularly in the Pacific. A year later, Japan, significantly weakened due to the diminishment of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, is easily conquered by the GKR and joins the Greater Korean Republic as a satellite country.[8]
In 2022, conditions in the United States get worse, with the collapse of the financial system and an Asian bird flu epidemic that claims six million lives, forcing the Mexican government to quarantine the country by setting up immigration quotas as the Asian bird flu continues throughout North America. By 2024, Korea's annexation has continued throughout Southeast Asia, including its emerging economic powers, giving the GKR an empire reminiscent of Imperial Japan.[8] Finally, in 2025, the Greater Korean Republic launched a supposed advanced GPS satellite that would be a signal of peace, but is actually an orbital weapon, that detonated a high-altitude nuclear device over the U.S., creating an EMP burst that wipes out much of the nation's electrical infrastructure. In the ensuing chaos, the KPA launches an instant amphibious invasion that seizes control of Hawaii and much of the U.S. Pacific Coast. Korean paratroopers are deployed over the Midwest and, with the military severely crippled and scattered, launched a final offensive to take control of the remaining states. However, the Americans were able to counterattack, leaving the Eastern States free, and effectively dividing the nation at the irradiated Mississippi River, with the Western states under GKR occupation, which created the setting of the game.[8]
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