I was told by a SK soldier currently serving his required military service on the DMZ that they are expected to hold for 5 minutes. Not much of a speedbump.
The internet tells me that Seoul has an area of 606 square kilometers, or 234 square miles.
At 15 X 15 miles, and 10 blocks per mile, thats 22,500 square blocks.
Even the “6,000 artillery pieces” added in the 90’s could hit each and every block of the city with just four shots apiece.
That’s a pretty credible threat, regardless of American air superiority.
NETA: The new Koksan M1978/M1989 170mm system that the NKs operate has been observed under wartime conditions (they sold several to the Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war) as having a sustained fire rate of 2 shells every five minutes.
Also, and I am just thinking of this now, don’t the North Koreans field MiG-29s? That’s a credible 4.5-generation fighter that will tear apart Strike Eagles loaded down with bombs.
Then there’s the known 750+ ZSU-57-2 close-range air defense systems with the optical tracking backup sight that is known to be able to hit low-level supersonic bombers.
Status quo: NK people are impoverished and a great many die in famines. NK has no effect on nations other than SK, and its effect on SK is minimal. Eventually the leadership cult dies off and relations normalize.
War: a great many people in both SK and NK die. SK is econimically ruined. The war destabilizes the region and sets back western relations with China.
I think that despite the ongoing frustration, the solution is not a hammer.
This article suggests that we have contingency plans to deal with North Korea if they go Apeshit crazy , but I find it highly unlikely that we would actually do so before the shooting starts.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/20100715.aspx
That natural human tendency is to hope for a miracle right up to the point when the shells start flying. It is highly unlikely we could take out all of the artillery and the North Koreans do have nukes. It would only take one low yield nuke to cause tens of thousands of casualties.
Free-flight rocket delivery of low-yield nukes is one of those “oh shit” scenarios. You’d have to be suicidal to lob a nuke a few dozen kilometers downrange on a 240mm artillery rocket, but arguably the NK artillery line is already an inherently suicidal defensive position.
SK needs to do in Seoul what happened to Detroit: Drive people out, make the city worthless, and less attractive as a target. Hell, NK could probably shell Detroit and people wouldn’t even notice. 
Yeah, the Davy Crockett and it’s 1.25mi range may well have been the world’s most ridiculous suicide weapon. And we thought people would fire it in wartime conditions. Now imagine how little hesitation someone who’s been indoctrinated into the North Korean system would have launching 20 of those from a 240mm rocket launcher that fires them tens of miles downrange.
If it continues like this, at some point, the people screaming “Death to USA” won’t be extremists, or a minority.
The people of NK might hate and despise their government. But I’d bet they’ll fight against anyone invading their home. You may be familiar with that from a few other foreign adventures
And the correlation of forces says that hundreds of thousands to millions of SK civilians die in the initial artillery fire from NK, since it will take at least a week for the USAF, USN, USMC & SK air assets (with or without nukes), to reduce the arty to ineffectiveness, and Seoul can’t be evacuated during that time. Look at the clusterfuck the evacuation of New Orleans was, prior to Katrina, and that was without arty being added into the mix. That was just a hurricane. No large US city prior to that was ever evacuated since Atlanta, during the Civil War in (I believe) 1864. Not surprising it was done badly, except to those who believe the government is “all powerful”. No large city in Korea has ever been evacuated. Didn’t happen in 1950s, hasn’t happened since, ain’t gonna happen now. Us US “militarists” (AKA conservatives) are all, always, in favor of war (at least to hear the lefties characterize us), unless we’ve studied military history, and seen just how ugly it always gets.
When NATO forces attacked it was a turkey shoot. It was absolutely chewed up in every sense of the word. The air war started Jan 17th, the ground war started Feb 24th, and the war ended Feb 28th. 10,000 Iraqi troops were killed in the retreat.
The 3rd largest standing army in the world was crushed in a 4 day ground war. There wasn’t even an air war confrontation to speak of. North Korea doesn’t have the trained pilots that Iraq had. 7 hrs of flight time means their pilots will get the plane off the ground just long enough to become a target. Without air cover it’s a function of eliminating anti-aircraft positions and then ground assets are completely exposed.
We can’t even be sure they hate their government. They’ve been raised from infancy to view their leaders as gods, or something near, with no access to alternative views. Maybe that kind of cult-of-personality couldn’t really take in Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China, but NK is much smaller and much more culturally homogeneous and much more easily isolated.
“Exposed” in fortified, hardened positions where all they have to do is get off a few shots to fulfill their mission. The bombers couldn’t even reach them before they got off quite a few shots, and it would take a long time to get them all. Just how many bombers do you think we have and are willing and able to put in range?
The Iraq war comparison is bogus because the enemy artillery was so far away from anything valuable that it could easily be crushed before it could do any damage. Whatever pieces happened to be hidden, the US just waited for them to start firing, casually triangulated their location, then obliterated them with counterbattery fire.
North Korea is different. There are said to be 6,000 artillery pieces in range and targeted at Seoul. The hidden ones can’t be located until they fire. A trained artillery crew can get off something like 5 shots a minute. Do you see the problem here? When the shooting breaks out, a dense urban area is going to soak up something in the neighborhood of 30,000 rounds per minute.
I guess what profit to win the pennisula but lose your Seoul?
Oh. My. Goodness.
You win.
