All this sabre ratting from North Korea and our discussions about threats to the U.S. have me searching for some feedback and information regarding current day South Korea’s ability to defend itself against the North.
So speaking only in terms of military industry and might while also excluding for the most part (impossible to say 100%) any direct U.S. involvement, how does the South stack up against the North if war were to break out in Korea?
Broadly speaking, the South Koreans have a smaller but more modernized military. Their air force is made up of F-15s and F-16s, along with their native fighter, the F-50. The bulk of the North Korean’s air force is made up Mig-21s and older (Mig-21s were retired in Russia in the 90s). The south’s main battle tank is a K1A1, which is a local variant of the M1A1 Abrams; The north’s main battle tank are a bunch of really old Soviet junk like the T-59 and T-62, and more recently locally produced variants of the T-62 and T-72 (which are vastly older designs).
The problems for the South aren’t in the military matchup, at which they have a distinct advantage. Their problems are strategic, like Seouls’ proximity to the border, and the presence of China who’s willing to intervene to preserve NK.
Depends a bit on how you structure the scenario.
Two armies on a field, no civilians or infrastructure to worry about? SK pastes NK.
No holds barred, no third-part interference, total war, to hell with civilian casualties? SK pastes NK.
In a more realistic “I would like to have a civilian population after the war” scenario, NK has thousands of artillery pieces pointed at Seoul, so the civilian casualties would probably be measured in mega-deaths. This is a big reason they aren’t going to war - While Kim Jong-un may or may not care about his people, the South Koreans don’t really want huge civilian casualties.
While NK has a much larger military, SK’s military is better fed, better equipped, and better trained. It wouldn’t be much of a fight mano a mano. But wars are not conducted mano a mano. The US and China would almost certainly get involved, and probably Japan and Russia would have some commentary on the matter as well.
I do think if war broke out (and I hope it doesn’t), the NK would have the worse end of the deal, but it would not be pretty for the SK people.
(In case you’re curious, NK has 1.1M active personnel, and SK has 0.6M active personel, but SK has 2.9M in reserves and NK has 8.2M in reserves. cite: List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel - Wikipedia)
Militarily speaking, it doesn’t matter. The N. Korean ability to level Soeul with artillery means that S. Korea will lose any all out war, even if they “win”.
North Korea spends about $10 billion on military spending, about %25 of it’s $40 billion GDP.
South Korea spends about $30 billion on military spending, about %2-%3 of it’s $1.5 trillion GDP.
Also, the North Korean military is made of hobbits
So?
Military spending from country to country is a poor indicator of their immediate battle preparedness, in part because, much of that total is made up of salaries. Of course South Korean soldiers are paid more than North Korean soldiers; North Korean currency barely counts as money. Canada spends more on its military than North Korea but I have no illusion at all athat if Canada was asked to defend the 39th parallel, the North Koreans would roll us over.
NK’s capabilities are being run down here. Yeah, North Korea is poor, but the thing is that what they do have goes to the military. That is quite literally the central ideology of the state; North Korea doesn’t follow communism, they follow “son’gun,” whcih literally means “the military first.” The North Korean military does not support the country; the country exists to support the military. Ordinary North Koreans are hungry; the soldiers are the ones who get the food. Were war to break out it would almost certainly be a North Korean attack. Seoul would be ripped apart and the North Koreans would charge in as fast as possible, through multiple points of entry across the border, in an effort to surround and destroy ROK formations. It’s really a toss-up and would depend on the quality of the plans and of generalship in the first week.
It’s not that the destruction of Seoul is guaranteed. It’s pretty likely that the North Korean military has severe problems with command and control and logistics, so a lot of the supposed equipment they have might not function, or might not ever be used. When armies whose main job is supporting the boss, repressing the peasants and looking good on the parade ground meet armies whose job is to fight wars, the ceremonial armies often turn out to be paper tigers.
The notion that military dictatorship might suck at everything but can at least field a decent military turns out to be false. The armies of military dictatorships usually perform terribly.
There’s a bit of an “X” factor in SK’s favor.
There’s no infrastructure in DPRK. Even though everything they have goes into the military, they have hardly anything.
I once read an account of a defector from DPRK who traveled by boat and they said they encountered the DPRK Navy, but they didn’t have any fuel and the ship was under sail. As in a military naval vessel not using their engines because of no fuel.
Perhaps the ship had fuel, but was preserving it. In either case, a military in that situation - regardless of size/equipment will have difficulty waging war.
Yes - the artillery available to level Seoul is an issue. And it’s likely they wouldn’t need fuel for that. But what of their ammunition? I suspect the majority is 50 to 70s era at best. That stuff does have a practical shelf life.
And their personnel are hardly fed, aren’t paid, etc.
If major fighting were to break out, I would bet on massive defections/desertions of military personnel from the North.
Given all that, it’s not possible to quantify until it happens. War is bad all around. The whole thing would be dependent upon 3rd party intervention.
One on one, the South has the advantage by a large margin. The margin becomes less-so if SK initiates - I believe this because personnel in the DPRK would be more likely to stay and fight (rather than to defect/desert) if the South started an invasion.
That’s my point. It doesn’t really matter how good their military is. And indeed, I’m pretty confident their military is a dysfunctional mess, much like the rest of their institutions.
But they don’t need a functional military, they just need their artillery to work, and only some of it has to work, and it only has to work for an hour or less. And the N. Koreans are aware of this, and have spent the last fifty years hardening those artillery positions. Most of them will work, at least for a little while, and a densely populated city with half of S. Korea’s population that accounts for more then half of its GDP will burn to the ground.
Cities can be rebuilt.
China has recently started moving toward caring less about what happens to North Korea. A recent editorial said it wouldn’t be the end of the world if there was war on the peninsula and the NK regime fell.
I always felt that the Chinese were taking an amazingly short sighted view of Korea in being wary of a united Korea allied with the USA, and having US troops stationed there. Ultimately, in the very long view, a wealthy united Korea on their border would be a good ally, trading partner and safe border. After all, Korea would be sitting in the shadow of a Great Power 20 times their size.
How’s that follow? The loss/destruction of a capital city doesn’t mean the war’s lost, especially not in modern times. They’d probably just relocate the government somewhere in the southern part of the country, and continue to fight like hell.
All the calculations in this thread seem to ignore the hulking giant next door, and for that matter, the not inconsequential, sleeping giant lurking over the horizon. If China would ever decide to back North Korea 100%, their contribution would be the only significant factor to compute. Their supply lines are short, their resources tremendous in terms of both manpower and materiel.
And if the USA ever decided to enter the fray, we have another factor that would dwarf either Korea’s resources. God help us if both China and the USA went head to head; then it’s most likely WW3 & 4 all at once and nobody will give a shit about puny North or South Korea, who will be trampled in the dust.
Thing is, it’s questionable as to whether or not they’d unify anytime soon. And if they did, given the huge burden of rebuilding NK and re-educating the entire population to be able to function in a modern state, it would be a long time before a unified Korea qualified as “wealthy” again, especially after such a destructive war.
I understand that enthusiasm for the idea of reunification has dropped off quite a lot in SK, especially after seeing the trouble West Germany had reunifying with East Germany (especially since East Germany was nowhere near as badly off). The Chinese may be worrying that SK may just say “no way, we’re not touching this”, and they’d be faced with the choice of living with a chaotic failed state on their borders, or moving in and taking over the expense themselves.
That’s not really the important part. The 25 million people living in Seoul who would take massive casualties is generally more of a problem.
In an artillery barrage, a mega death scenario is more than plausible, it’s likely.
Maybe that’s not the end of the world, but it’d be arguably the biggest collapse of a civilized country since WWII with decades of rebuilding involved.
It’s my understanding that China hasn’t particularly cared about NK for some time now. Both the USSR and China increasingly turned deaf ears on Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il as those two leaders increasingly stopped keeping their ends of bargains. The leaders of the USSR and China learned pretty early on that NK’s leaders were batshit insane and largely stopped any support to NK back in the 1980s. And I think China is fully aware that NK’s brand of government isn’t particularly communist in any way, so why prop up something that you don’t support? Idealism? China’s too practical for that.
The whole world’s fully aware of what’s going on in NK. NK’s the only one not in on the joke too, which makes it particularly tragic. China’s not going to endanger their stature on the world stage to support a country that they get nothing from, politically or financially. And I think the spectre of world war looms too large for China to be interested in propping up some two-bit dictator in the most backwards state in the world.
If NK invaded SK (and be assured, NK would most certainly be the aggressor), I think Seoul would take a beating and there indeed would be huge civilian losses. For maybe a week. Then SK and its allies would annhiliate NK as NK’s inherent internal problems, old equipment and lack of allies break it down from the inside.
It wouldn’t be pretty. And I don’t know that SK is particularly interested in reunification - what’s it going to do with 24 million starving people?
Put 'em to work in sweatshops – they’re used to worse, so I hear. Pay 'em peanuts, which would be more food than they’re getting now.
Neither is China’s.
Its not just the “capital” its half the country. S. Korea’s population and economy is centered around its main city in a way that most other countries aren’t. More so then France with Paris, or the UK with London. I’m sure they’d continue to fight and “win” in the sense of beating the N. Korean army, but S. Korea would be totally devastated.
True 'dat.