I read an article some number of years ago that basically said that Pyongyang might be working on a nuclear warhead that might reach Anchorage if they had anyone who could figure out how to do it (and they probably didn’t).
Of course, Tokyo and Seoul are much closer to Pyongyang than Anchorage, and they stand to lose quite a bit more if things in North Korea go pear-shaped. But then again, they would also have a much more legitimate excuse for bombing THE FUCK out of NK if and when it came to it.
So what’s the scoop? Is it only a matter of time before someone starts lobbing nukes at Seoul, Tokyo and Anchorage? Or is it all the same posturing that’s been going on for as long as I can remember?
Japan has not much to fear. The US has almost nothing at all, physically.
South Korea has A LOT to fear. Most of South Korea lives within the Seoul Metropolitan Area, which is well within range of North Korean artillery, capable of launching huge amounts of all sorts of WMD.
The North Korean army would be squashed like a fly by South Korea, even if the US stayed out of it. But in the process MILLIONS of South Koreans would die.
The nukes are sort of irrelevant. N. Korea already has a fairly good MAD strategy in that it could level Seoul, whose metro area has something like 20 million people, with conventional artillery, which it has spent the last 50 years building up and hardening. This capability is far more likely to be devastating then N. Koreas nuclear weapon, which may or may not work, and which they may or may not have the ability to deliver.
Its the reason you’ll never see an Iraq War style invasion of N. Korea, there isn’t really anything they can do short of reinvading the South that would make the probably death of many millions of S. Koreans worth risking.
This is mostly right but the Norks have been working with other countries and sharing technology on such things as ballistic missiles and warhead design. Shipments of such materials have been intercepted going to and from the Middle East.
The point about the artillery cannot be stressed enough. The Norks have huge amounts of ordinance so that even if they just used conventional shells the death toll would be unimaginable. This is not sort of thing that can quickly be suppressed with air power or counter battery fire. It would likely take a massive ground invasion to put an end to it.
Kim used to like to sink things or stage skirmishes to try to extort concessions from his enemies so it is not at all unlikely his successor could make common cause with another country or a terrorist group if he felt it would give him leverage. Or North Korea could just put a bomb on a boat and pull up to any dock in the world. You don’t need missiles to deploy nukes… any old plane or boat will work just fine.
The real problem isn’t North Korea, it’s their dealings.
We already know for instance, North Korea is a major maker of counterfeit US dollars. It also is a major illegal drug manufacturer.
This is the real problem. North Korea could sell it’s technology and to whoever. It’s a remote possibility North Korea would set off a nuke, but they might sell it to a terrorist group who would think nothing of setting it off.
I disagree. First, if this happened the US has such an armed presence in the ROK we would respond. Immediately & massively. I believe that because technically The Korean War is still ongoing commanders there wouldn’t even need Presidential approval, that they have standing orders to retaliate if fired upon. It would be the closest thing to attacking actual US soil.
Anyway, we would retaliate first with radiation seeking surface to surface missiles targeting their SAMs and command & control bunkers. Once this was done we would roll in hundreds of B52s and quite literally “Bomb them into the stone age” nonstop, night & day for as long as it took. Our current air superiority fighters would massacre their aging, Russian & Chinese junk. The bottom quarter of the DPRK would become the surface of the Moon. Their closed, oppressive society would be an advantage in that there wouldn’t be any pain-in-the-ass foreign press there to publicize the carnage, and their propaganda would be, well, their propaganda- "STRANGE IMPERIALIST CUSTOM OF RELENTLESS BOMBING TO SIGNAL ‘WE SURRENDER!’ CONTINUES!!’* Our biggest concern would be stopping them from detonating any ‘Vengeance nukes’ in the South or elsewhere.
The most ironic thing is, even though it would kill millions and millions of North Koreans, in the long run it would save even more of them…
Trouble is they get a lot of that ordinance off before our bombs get there. A lot of S. Koreans will die as a result. Following that, the slaughter of N. Koreans will be monumental. We can’t risk anything less than total destruction of a huge buffer zone to prevent them from launching nukes (or dirty bombs).
The greatest danger is the impression of imminent internal collapse and starting a war to keep the military occupied. This is why we keep giving them food.
The whole problem is China. They can tell N. Korea what to do. They don’t want anything to happen that takes them down the path to reunification with S. Korea. If that happens, China has no more leverage.
N. Korea is controlled by madmen, who are actually immune to MAD strategy. Unless we can change China’s mind, we must appease the N. Koreans or prepare for an inevitable war.
As others have said, South Korea could easily defeat North Korea’s military. But, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of South Korean civilians would almost certainly die before that happened.
Then, there’s the question of what the hell you do with North Korea after you beat them, which is probably a bigger long-term problem than whatever military threat they pose.
Presumably, it would be re-unified under the South’s government.
That means that, basically overnight, Seoul will be responsible for over 20 million starving North Koreans. These are people who have almost no knowledge of the outside world, and their level of education and marketable skills probably leave a lot to be desired. Then there’s the matter of modernizing the North’s crumbling infrastructure, and countless other problems involved with bringing it into the fold.
That region would probably be a HUGE drain on the reunified Korea’s economy and budget for at least a generation. That would probably be the inevitable outcome of a war between North and South Korea. The aftermath of the war probably worries leaders in the South more than the war itself.
The problem is that NK is NOT China’s puppet. The Kims are quite capable of playing the Chinese as much as the Americans, just they know the stakes and possibilities are very different.
The border with China is not heavily armed - what would be the point? You can’t stop China if they want to invade, but China does not want to have to run the country either. Like everyone else, they just want things to say quiet.
Just like the USA - who could make strong suggestions to Marcos or Mubarak or the Shah or Noriega if the issue was big enough, but they couldn’t manage the minor details of how that country functioned.
If China had to go in and take over, they would either have to continue the criminally repressive policies and enforce the border restrictions with SK, or explain why they would not allow reunification. They don’t want reunification. They don’t want Americans on their border. They don’t want millions flooding into Manchuria looking for work (or food), or the best and brightest leaving for SK with the world press watching.
A half-century of Juche does not translate into “obey our Chinese overlords”. Tibet or the far west is a big enough problem, they don’t need to add more. NK knows this, and like thier attacks on SK, they know exactly what they can get away with with China.
The big danger, like always, is what would happen if the current leadership found itself up against a wall, the way Syria-Assad is trending. Would they resort to a more nasty attack by one loyal group, to prevent troops from leaving the border to gang up on the capital? Would they nuke Seoul or send a submarine nuke to somewhere else? Create a massive diversion to hunker down? Hope China comes in to save them and restore order? Are they gambling that China would leave them running an occupied NK?
The leadership is not crazy, any more than Ghaddafi or Saddam. There is no supreme dictator in an unassailable position - there is only a group juggling many deadly balls - who do you trust, don’t give any one group a big enough chunk of the army or police that they could pull off a coup, keep monitoring all of them and watch for conspiracies, don’t allow alliances to develop that could encircle you, keep all the power groups separate, be sure the inner circle really is trustworthy. If they are crazy, it is justifiable paranoia. After all, a few years ago when the late Kim was coming back from China by train, a massive blast on the railway line destroyed a large chunk of one town; it missed Kim because like similar leaders, he did not follow a published schedule. Someone still has the capability to attempt a coup.
Since this is GQ, how 'bout a cite or two? IIRC, from looking at a map, Seoul is around 15 miles (24 km) from the closest point of the DMZ. Of course, it really depends on where you decide “Seoul” starts. I picked the Highway 100 ring road as my arbitrary starting point. The city center looks like another 10-15 miles away, which jibes with globalsecurity.org’s page describing Seoul saying it’s about 30 miles away.
The reason this is important is that 15 miles, never mind 30, is pretty far when you’re talking artillery. True, lots of stuff can go that far and then some (M-46 130mm guns,their 170 mm Koksan and 240mm MLRS) , but lots of stuff can’t (122mm D-30s, BM-21 ‘Grad’ MLRS “grid eliminators”, the vast majority of mortars, etc…). Also, it’s not like the DPRK can sit the tubes right on the DMZ line, not if they want to keep them around for more than 5 minutes. Finally, the ROKs aren’t going to be sitting on their hands while the DPRK shells them for a week straight. They have counterbattery artillery/rockets and radar to identify and fix DPRK firing positions. Presumably, they practice extensively. Wouldn’t you?
All of this is to say that, sure, if the South Koreans were willing to sit there and do nothing for a month while the North shelled them, sure, you could kill a million civilians. But that’s not going to happen. It would be bad enough what would happen to Seoul and the rest of the northern parts of South Korea, should the North decide to shell everything----WAG, thousands of South Korean dead, billions in damage; there’s no reason to exaggerate things. Like this cite does, in a description of the DPRK 240 mm MLRS:
(The third quoted paragraph comes from a RAND study linked to at the above site, trying to get the Army to buy the Crusader artillery system, and coming up with a scenario for how the DPRK were likely to use their 240mm system. RAND doesn’t want direct links elsewhere to their .pdfs, though they’ll let you download them for free. The quote is at pages 44-46 of the .pdf, FWIW.)
I quibble with some of the numbers and projections they use in the quote. 4-8 rounds a minute sustained is really, really fast when we’re talking large tube artillery that’s loaded by hand, as I think the Koksan is. This cite describing the U.S. 105 mm M119 howitzer, mentions a sustained rate of fire of 3 RPM, with 6 RPM possible for the first 2 minutes. Though Korean armies in the past 70 years have been known for their adamantine discipline and fitness, so who knows? Still, the ballpark 10-50,000 shells the DPRK could get off before losing most of their emplacements would be excruciatingly unpleasant and phenomenally expensive.
As far as nukes go, have the DPRK even demonstrated one that works yet? I thought their previous test was a fizzle? They certainly haven’t demonstrated the ability to build a multi-stage device, which would be helpful if they wanted a large, extensive EMP weapon. I’m not sure they’ve yet built a weaponizable device, never mind one that can handle the rigors of use in an IRBM or an air-dropped bomb. Though, IMO, if they’re crazy enough to shell Seoul, they’re crazy enough to use whatever weapons they have. Which will definitely include chemical agents.
Yes. They are not a puppet of China. But China is the only country with real influence. N.Korea will abide by China’s wishes in many things.
China has no desire to take over. They would have done it already if they did.
Yup. Internal problems are the great danger. The government doesn’t need it’s back up against the wall, they just need to see that as a possibility.
Yes, models of sanity those two. :rolleyes:
I don’t think we have a solid grip on the distribution of power there. I would assume some group within the military is actually running the show.
That is basically the threat. It’s assumed there will be a massive air and artillery counter-assault that destroys almost all the N. Korean weaponry in hours. A ground assault from the North would likely be launched (unless N.Korea military decides to stay alive and runs in the other direction). Those ground troops will all die. S. Korea has no reason to launch a large scale ground counter-assult until after the weapons and troops are destroyed.
These would be revenge weapons right now, having no tactical purpose. They could just start firing shells with hot nuclear material in them at populated areas or into water sources. I doubt they have a deliverable bomb, or delivery system yet. The bomb may be doable before long, but I have doubts about the delivery. They aren’t getting it across their border in an airplane, and it’s a pretty hefty load to deliver with their second rate missiles.
I’d love to know where you’re getting that idea. The South Korean government and especially the South Korean military certainly do not seem to share that sentiment–they’re pretty much invested in the idea that they do, in fact, need the help of the UN forces to even survive an attack from, let alone conquer, North Korea.
If NK initiated an all-out artillery barrage of Seoul, non-nuclear but still with the clear intent of both inflicting massive casualties and being a prelude to invasion, the US would not only not stay out of it, we would immediately take charge of it. It would certainly be a coalition, but behind the scenes the US would be the supreme commanders. The Korean War ended with not even an armistice, but merely a cease-fire. It wouldn’t be a case of ‘starting it up again’ but of merely finishing it (60 years later). And NK is not just a regional threat, they are a world threat, and even with Russia being essentially out of the picture The Korean War pt II would still be very close to WWIII. The complete destruction of the NK regime would not just be the goal of the US, it would be a foregone conclusion the instant they massively attacked the South. It would be a a matter of working out the details of reaching it in the best way possible.
And China would find it diplomatically impossible to defend this kind of action on NK’s part. They would certainly want to discourage the US from eventually building air bases on the shore of the Yalu River, but I do not think they would intervene on the scale they did before, today’s world is simply too different a place. They would have too much to lose and little to gain.
I also believe that in terms of the NK people, once the whole rotten edifice was cracked their devotion to any ‘dear leader’ would fall away easily. Much the same as post-war Japan was easily pacified so too I think would the North Koreans. Easier in fact, because 60 years of miserable, thuggish, tyrannical rule goes a long way to being able to suddenly hate it. And in terms of feeding 20 million starving people, again this responsibility would fall primarily on the US, and it’s one that I think we would not find insurmountable.
I think China might enter N.Korea and try to occupy as much land as possible to maintain a puppet N.Korean government in. They don’t want to engage the US and S.Korea, simply maintain a buffer state between those US bases. The US will probably go along with the idea.
If I’m correct above, China will have to shoulder a lot of this burden. Even if I’m not, refugees will still flood over the Chinese border. But in any or all of N. Korea reunified with the South there will be a rapid absorption of the populace into S.Korean capitalism. N. Koreans already work very hard to barely survive. Given the ability to prosper, there will be an economic boom. The US and the rest of the world have the capacity to provide the food short term, and there’s no reason to think unified Korea will not be able to pay for it over a reasonable time period.
N. Korea is in much worse shape than E. Germany was. The typical conditions of a war ravaged country will be an improvement over their current quality of life.
I doubt that. First, that’s just not the sort of thing countries do, they never give nukes to loose cannons like terrorists. They would also realize that letting the terrorists detonate the nuke would get them vaporized once it was backtracked to them. No one would care about “plausible deniability”.
East Germany wasn’t remotely as bad off as North Korea, and was relatively smaller. It is both much poorer and the people are physically and culturally/educationally much worse off.
There’s an interesting relevant IMHO thread; Do South Koreans Want Reunification?. The consensus these days seems to be “no way, it would be an economic disaster”.