North Korea is the most unknown major country on Earth. We actually know very little about the internal workings of the country, and we have a poor handle on the psyche of the people. That carries risk.
But the biggest problem is that North Korea maintains a tripwire system of something like 9,000 large artillery guns aimed at Seoul, along with 5,100 Multiple Rocket Launchers. Supposedly (sources vary on their effectiveness), if the South attempts to launch an invasion these weapons are all to be fired at once, doing tremendous damage to South Korean populations within range. That’s a lot of people.
In addition, it’s estimated that as many as 20% of the rockets are armed with chemical warheads. How effective they’d be is anyone’s guess, but the risk is there.
Then there’s the matter that they may have as many as 20 nukes.
Finally, the other matter is that North Korea’s leadership is nuts. That makes their response very unpredictable. Do you really want to take a chance on crazy Kim Jong Un being rational enough to withold the detonation of nukes?
And I know the hypothetical assumes that China wouldn’t be involved, but North Korea is very useful to China. It’s a very effective buffer protecting China’s border. North Korea is no threat to China, but its existence protects real threats from encroaching it’s border. That’s why North Korea is still being propped up today in the first place.
That’s an interesting question. The South Koreans don’t want North Korea, for reasons already discussed. OTOH, any kind of a “massive attack” by NK on the South would necessarily include the large-scale attack on Seoul that Sam Stone mentions. So pretty much no matter what, SK will suffer a worst-case scenario, and NK doesn’t have the military or economic resources to sustain a war, so they will have to try to win at one blow.
NK will lose, of course. Either Kim and Co. will use nukes in their first strike, in which case the whole of North Korea will become a smoking ruin. Probably not a radioactive smoking ruin, but that hardly matters. Even if Kim holds his nukes in reserve and tries to threaten with them to force negotiations, that won’t work. The US and SK will then feel morally compelled to bomb everywhere in NK where a nuke might be, or has been, or might be in the future. Which is pretty much the whole country.
It might be like Desert Storm - an overwhelming victory in a couple of days, and then reluctance to follow up - in Desert Storm because the Arabs would pull out of the coalition if an Islamic dictator was overthrown, and in Korea because the South doesn’t want North Korea. China might even not join a coalition against the Northies for the same reason - they will win, and have to deal with the aftereffects.
I suspect any attack by NK on the South will have to be an attempt at a massive, win-at-a-stroke attack and the threat of nukes used to try to stifle a counter. Which is out of the question - NK cannot possibly win. I don’t think their missile technology is of a level where they could nuke anything besides Seoul, and so if they don’t do it right away, they lose. I wonder how good the rest of their military is - I think I read somewhere that by standard calculations the SK army is four or five times more effective than NK, based on equipment and training and economic power. And morale. The Iraqis surrendered en masse during Desert Storm - I can’t imagine the NK army doing any better. A week in, I expect tens of thousands of terrified North Koreans holding up crudely lettered signs saying “Will Surrender for Kimchee”.
No matter what happens, it is going to be bad, and tens of thousands will die. But there isn’t any way that I can see to avoid it. Come what might.
I’ve never been sure if Kim
[list=A][li]does some of the things he is reported to have done because he is nutsoid, or[/li][li]didn’t really do them, but allows the West to think he did because they will think he is nutsoid enough to nuke Tokyo, or[/li][li]some exhilarating mix of the above with a dash of “I was raised to believe I can have anything I want”[/list]Maybe it doesn’t matter.[/li]
Regards,
Shodan
There are a couple of things that would prevent this from being better and, in fact, would make it much worse. First off, the People’s Republic of China is rather serious about what it calls “maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula”. The government here (check my location) does not need to have a massive influx of refugees, economic or otherwise, from North Korea.
Next, there is really no love lost between North Korea and South Korea. North Korean society views South Korean society as loose and immoral. Also, the North Korean government classifies the people into “loyalty levels”. Those who have connections, no matter how tenuous, to South Korea are on the bottom of society.
As another poster mentioned, North Koreans have been taught from birth that the US and the ROK are, basically, Satan against their deity, Kim Jong Un. Even defectors from North Korea who had lived in freedom for years were stunned when the Kim Il Sung died, and had a repeat watershed moment when Kim Jong Il died. The indoctrination ran rather deep.
No, there is no way that there will be a successful conquest of North Korea by an outside power.
China doesn’t care about a buffer between China and South Korea. Also, South Korea and its military is by no means the US. It’s disingenuous to imply that. What China cares about is “stability on the Korean Peninsula”. That means no fighting, no hot war. This is to prevent the massive influx of refugees that would certainly ensue. China is having problems enough with their attempts to manage the pitifully few defectors that do make it into China now.
I really don’t think China, Russia, or anyone else would lift a finger to help North Korean besides some superficial weapons that wouldn’t amount to much. They’ll complain because they have to save face, but North Korea is in such a little bubble that they genuinely have no friends. China might muck things up a bit, threaten tariffs or sanctions or not cooperate in some way, but ultimately I believe they know its better this way.
I believe the worries about living standards and how much it costs is purely a political calculation. There are little politicians in existence in South Korea or the US that want to bear the brunt of the invasion and occupation’s cost. So they’ll say the right things, that they want to help North Korea but it we need to do a study on how much it costs, or we can’t do it because Seoul will be devastated, or we need to be aware of what China might do in retaliation, etc. etc. etc. All of that is valid and at the same time totally bullshit. I think the South Korean people want to be reunited. I think the American people want to see Kim gone. I think China’s leadership and people want Kim gone as well. Nobody thinks this situation right now is better than what might result 10 or 20 years from now, whatever it is, after the war
Many people have family on both sides or some familial ties. People have been kidnapped and brought to North Korea. The divide was within living memory. Too much of the two countries are still connected for me to realistically think that South Korea would take something as crass as living standards and use that as an excuse they can’t reunite. There will be a cost but South Korea will willingly bear it and the US and other countries will help.
There will also be near zero outrage in the international community, I think. The most will come from faux political maneuvers in China and Russia. Nobody in the international community gives a damn about Kim. There won’t be blocs of countries running to North Korea’s aid and sneaking fighters into NK to fight against the invaders. This is as near a unanimously supported war as we’ll get in our lifetimes. North Korea, by their own doing, has no ties to anybody. Are Muslims in the Middle East going to rise up and protest for an atheist god-emperor kingdom? Are there fanatical religious people living in sleeper cells just waiting for Kim’s call? Does he have tribal ties like Saddam to Tikrit? Are there billion dollar companies like Haliburton trying to protect their interests in North Korea? Nobody will care if North Korea’s government disappears and nobody will help them
But we need leaders, both here and in South Korea, with the willingness to put their jobs on the line and the intelligence to cover as much bases as they can before an invasion. While the US is relatively calm right now with no major wars going on, we’re still entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan, still have a potential conflict with Iran, and the GOP here would basically vote against god if they thought he supported Obama, so I don’t see the US able to initiate anything. And I don’t know South Korea’s politics so I can’t say if they have anyone willing to bear the brunt of the initial disaster.
China does NOT want a US-friendly country on its border. Certainly not one as friendly as SK is.
We might be able to pull this off in NK. I think the idea that NKns are mindless robots with no idea what is going on outside their country is a bit facile. There might be some stiff opposition at first, but I don’t think it would last very long. I still wouldn’t do it, though.
Whether its possible politically is a moot question. If there’s a will among policymakers and powerful people to do this, it could be done. And as we’ve seen with Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Vietnam, the general public has almost no capacity to resist a war that the government wants. Maybe after a decade or so the people can reign in the military, but not before that. If we wanted to, we could do this.
A civilization-length timescale is the time preference that we should have. Even if it took centuries, it’d be a worthwhile investment in our economic wellbeing and geopolitical security. But I think even the estimate you give is far too long. South Korea experienced enormous economic growth after the imposition of western-style capitalism and could probably fund a US invasion force out of their own GDP (Iraq invasion cost=100-200 billion/year, South Korea GDP=1.4 trillion/year). If we use the south as a guide, North Korea would enjoy a GDP of about a trillion dollars a year within a few decades, as compared to essentially nothing now. This will pay for itself rapidly and many times over. Our reward is not another desert wasteland like Iraq, but rather a new first world nation.
Sure, the costs are extremely high. But that’s all the more reason why it’s the US’s responsibility to take action. No other Western country has the moral fortitude (or foolish militancy, if you prefer) to do this. The burden is ours alone to shoulder. The cost is devastating, but the cost of inaction–leaving tens of millions of people to suffer in unimaginable conditions for decades–is far more.
I really don’t think that China would mind that much. This is no longer the age of empires and colonial powers where countries attack each other all the time to try and get land. A united Korea encompassing that entire peninsula would be no more or less dangerous than SK today. And China’s the poorer country, South Koreans are not leaving that country in droves to hop the border to China.
Seriously? Large numbers of those people suffering in unimaginable conditions would be dead after a US/ROK invasion.
There is absolutely no way the US/ROK is going to up and invade North Korea out of the blue one Tuesday morning. Not happening. You cannot keep the preparations for such an invasion secret, for one thing. And the response from North Korea would be devastating to Seoul. It takes time to silence dug in artillery. How many shells can North Korea land on Seoul before we finally manage to kill all the artillery tubes? This is a city of 10 million people.
Yes, the North Korean military is probably a joke, and not capable of sustained offensive operations. But putting bunkers around artillery tubes and supplying them with boxes of ammo is another thing. And the orders are very simple…fire your piece until all ammo is gone. No need to aim, you just need to hit somewhere in the city. No need for command and control, just fire everything. No need to retreat or move or supply the guns, the soldiers manning those guns are dead men, their only hope of survival is to run out of ammo before they get obliterated by counter-battery fire.
Yes, the US/ROK would win the war. At a cost of possibly millions of South Koreans dead or refugees. The cost, even if we totally discount the losses in North Korea, would be staggering. Is there a chance that the North Korean tripwire will turn out to be vastly less effective than feared? Yes, absolutely. It’s very likely that many artillery batteries will turn out to be completely ineffective–troops that don’t know how to operate the equipment, shells that turn out to be duds, boxes supposed to be shells that turn out to be full of shredded newspaper, communication systems that don’t work, soldiers who don’t obey orders, and on and on. How many millions of lives are you willing to risk on a roll of the dice?
This is true for both sides of the conflict: large numbers of people in both North Korea and South Korea would be dead.
To be more accurate, the Seoul Capital Area has about one half the population of the Republic of Korea.
This is pretty much all that those particular groups are expected to accomplish: fire, reload, fire again, reload again, etc.
If even just one of those artillery units accomplishes its mission, it will be devastating to the SCA. There are also specialist units that are not, for want of a better word, likely slackers. It’s not likely that the DPRK will prosecute the war with just one type of weapon.
First off, I’m not searching through a blog to see what your point is. Next, as to references in other things, what do those references say, what is their evidence?
Do you seriously believe that China’s government or the PLA expects the US to attack the DPRK. The DPRK obviously doesn’t expect that to happen.
Totalitarian countries are not known for trying to keep people out, but rather to keep people in. China may not be as totalitarian as it was, but it is still a one party state.