Perhaps North Korea's strategic capabilities have improved since 1951. Then, they crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. They failed to secure their rear thus enabling General MacArthur to engineer a landing at Inchon behind their lines, drove them back across the 38th parallel so far that they approached the North Korean border with China, and were only saved from having to 'endure" democracy when 300,000+ Chinese volunteers counterattacked UN forces.
But, who knows? Maybe their new Supreme Leader is a strategical genius.
If I remember right, originally the RED DAWN remake had this "future" where Russia and China collude together which allows for China to invade the Pacific Northwest. (Nevermind this discounts the historic antagonism between both countries, but that's besides the point.)
Like the original 1980s RED DAWN, it's a fantasy that you can poke holes logically and in logistics but in fantasy "believability" is essential for your story to work and the Soviet Union invading America...why not? It was topical at the time, whether because this was the Cold War or we were in Reagan flag-waving time or because Afghanistan got invaded, it didn't seem that crazy.
Even the remake with a more impractical scenario, China makes sense. They're huge, a superpower on the rise, billion people, 100+ millions army, and they own alot of our debt (of course they "owe" us more than he other way around, but nevermind.)
But North Korea? Not much red in their flag. Shit they can't even feed themselves*, much less launch a rocket that always seem to blow up so yeah I don't believe they can invade America. (Why would China go into the trouble of helping North Korea to do this when they could do it themselves?)
I do think it's funny that China, North Korea's one ally in the world, has no qualms with showing movies with them as the villains.
*=before he died, Christopher Hitchens accurately dismissed NK as a nation of "racist dwarves" because of their lack of nutritional diets.
