The squirrels who beat two armies at the Goblin Korean DMZ have taken off their tails long enough to announce a state. They are the settlers of Goblin Korea: the colonists who were picked by a lottery that only drew goblins who owed the Council money, who read the Council's statement blaming the forest on squirrels, and who took it as an order.
The Most Serene Squirrel Empire, formerly the Democratic People's Republic of Goblin Korea, declared independence this week from a treetop capital of rope bridges and ziplines. Its founding proclamation, carved on bark, runs to one line: "Squirrels have never owed the World Bank a pebble."
Under the World Bank's terms, the Goblin Nation's "G"-rated debt is owed by every goblin under the Council's flag. The settlers' position is that there are no goblins here, only squirrels, and that the Goblin Council itself has said so on the record.
From nuts to nation
The tail-hats came from the Goblin Marketplace, 4,000 of them on the colony's account, which is also unpaid. The forest was the work of the colony's druids. The "guerrilla squirrels" who jammed the robot lumberjacks and humiliated the Canadians were goblins in boots. The empire's leader goes by Nutcracker and appears in public only in full costume.
The Squirrel Suppression Squad
North Korea's elite unit, sent in to eat the squirrels, crossed the DMZ hungry. The empire fed it fermented acorn stew, which turned out to be better than its own rations, and the entire squad defected by dinner. It now runs the empire's kitchens.
Pixie whispers
GNN sources report tiny winged figures advising on the empire's architecture. The empire denies it. "We have never met a pixie," a spokesquirrel said. "We are squirrels."
The Goblin Council of Elders has not recognized the empire. It cannot call the settlers goblins without admitting the acorns were goblin magic, and it cannot call them squirrels without losing the colony. For now its official position is that it is "monitoring the squirrel situation," which the settlers have framed and hung in their capital.
