Frankly, we’re kind of surprised it didn’t happen.
Just a few months ago North Korea was firing missiles over Japan, putting Japan, South Korea, and all of the U.S. territories and bases in the Pacific on edge. But now, with the leaders of both North and South Korea crossing the border for the first time to meet each other and talk peace, people all over the world are letting out a long-held breath.
▼ The historic moment when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in surprised viewers by stepping over the border to North Korea, hand in hand. (the tweet’s text is inaccurate.)
Still, considering all of the chest-thumping North Korea has been doing until very recently, a lot of netizens couldn’t help but be suspicious as to why the nation would want peace all of a sudden. Could some sort of insidious plot be underway? After all, many still suspect that Kim Jong-un was behind the death of his half-brother, and in their eyes treachery and underhandedness may not be out of character for him.
Of course, when netizens speculate, they do it in their native language: memes. Reddit always has the answer, and that’s how this GIF was born. It’s a silly example of what we all worried would happen to Moon Jae-in as we watched him step over the border with his erstwhile enemy.
In this hilarious (and also slightly terrifying) GIF, instead of the two crossing over, having a nice chat, and then returning safely together like in the video above, the floor opens up beneath Moon Jae-in as he steps onto it, and he falls into a black chasm, where we can only assume hungry crocodiles are waiting to chomp him to bits.
A lone camera man looks around in shock, but no one else seems to have noticed. Then Kim Jong-un calmly walks back to the crowd, while the floor closes up behind him, and no one seems to mind that the South Korean President has disappeared into the secret sewers of North Korea.
Since the crossing of both leaders to the North side of the border was unscheduled and instigated by Kim, some feared it possibly could have been a plot to kidnap or assassinate the South Korean president. In fact, it is a great sign of trust between the two that it happened at all, but for spectators, it was probably a little nerve-wracking. This GIF probably reflects the anxiety that viewers felt as they watched this unexpected scene play out.
▼ To make it even funnier, a resourceful netizen has even put the GIF to music
Thankfully, no actual assassination or kidnapping attempts were made by either side, and talks are still progressing smoothly between the long-isolated Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and its capitalistic, democratic neighbor, the Republic of Korea.
Hopefully they can keep it up to really reunite as a single, peaceful Korean state. Just think about what the already beautiful North Korean capital of Pyongyang could become if North Korean and South Korean resources were combined!
Related: CNN, Reddit
Source: Imgur, Reddit/kleutscher via Twitter/@netgeek_0915 via Hachima Kiko
Featured images: Twitter/@netgeek_0915