To take all that food and wealth, of course.
People who’ve fled North Korea have returned, some voluntarily and others not so voluntarily. Those who’ve managed to escape a second time have recounted what happened to them when they stated the reality of either North Korea’s situation or that of the outside world. It’s not pretty and it’s certainly not safe for anyone in North Korea to “tarnish” the regime by telling the truth there.
Read your link again. The 700 guns figure comes from a cited webpage (here).
*(I’ll also note 700 guns/launchers is STILL tens of thousands of shells just in the first day, so I’m not even sure where exactly my original figure was wrong. )
The cited website appears to be a bunch of security experts (at least self-described experts) making their own assessments - and one for which wikipedia can’t seem to find any valid information for vetting nor for the site’s owner. While that doesn’t mean the assessment is necessarily false, it’s a far cry from vetted numbers from a better source.
And nearly 30,000 fatalities the first day. Of course, casualties don’t measure just fatalities but also injuries (often life threatening themselves), but we’ll let that slide.
20-30k dead, tops, in the first day and maybe a few more tens of thousands injured and/or homeless and fewer casualties the following days for only some hundreds of thousands of casualties overall and tens of millions more not exactly doing the normal day to day. Well, those numbers make me feel SO much better.
Still doing the General Ripper “acceptable” civilian losses scene very proud with this analysis.
<nitpick>General Turgidson. Ripper’s the purity of essence one.</np>
D’oh! You’re right. General Buck Turgidson.
Thanks for the correction. One of my favorite movies, and one of George C Scott’s better roles, and I get it wrong.
I see. So what happened was having not just lost the war with the Soviets, Finland decided that it had to lose some weight in order to maintain that lean and hungry look that had allowed it to not lose the war and in a gesture of conciliatory sportsmanship decided to hand over 10% of itself to the USSR. You know, that 10% that it had just fought and not lost the war over with the Soviets. That bit that it no longer had *de facto *authority in anymore due to all of those annoying Soviet troops and tanks running about. Also, in a completely unrelated note near half a million Finns abandoned their homes as a result of a collapse in the housing market and strange migratory patterns that still baffle leading scientists to this day. Oddly, every single one of them migrated away from territory that Finland had not just lost a war with the Soviets over.
You’re entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts. Finland lost the war. Yes, plucky little Finland didn’t immediately collapse, the Soviets performed horribly, David and Goliath, Finland holds out for three months. None of that changes the basic facts; Finland lost the war. It also has nothing to do with the reason Germany invaded the USSR. The reason Germany invaded the USSR was that it was Hitler’s intent to do so the whole time. He spelled it out quite clearly in Mein Kampf. The poor performance of the Soviets was taken as a good sign by the Germans, but Germany was going to invade the USSR regardless.
So which is it? They were both military dictatorships, you’re trying to eat your cake and have it too. Every failing of both militaries was a result of them having a dictatorship, but any success they had wasn’t?
That you think they seem like something isn’t evidence. You’ve got a very high mountain to climb if you think you can prove “The armies of military dictatorships usually perform terribly”. The militaries that put together the largest empires in history from Alexander to Rome to the Mongols to Napoleon to Nazi Germany were all run my dictators. If anything militaries mesh well with dictatorships as they share a hierarchical power structure.
Now want to know something that will really blow your mind? Mannerheim assumed dictatorial powers as commander in chief of Finland for the duration of the war.
Cavazos’ article is a paper presented to an academic conference in June 2012 and as such it’s likely to be the best source publically available. As for Global Security.org I’ve never heard of any reason to doubt their accuracy, and clearly Cavazos was comfortable citing them in his paper so that’s good enough for me.
The ‘tens of thousands of shells’ idea comes from a mistaken impression that all of North Korea’s artillery can reach Seoul - which just isn’t true.
It’s a far cry from the millions of casualties the alarmists say would happen. So yes, it does make me feel a bit better to know that far fewer people in Seoul are likely to be killed or injured if North Korea starts shelling them. Obviously I hope it never comes to that but there you have it.
It took until post 42 in this thread for North Korea’s nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to even be mentioned. Clearly the only war the North’s military could be effective in would involve WMDs and unconventional means such as a fifth column and dirty bombs.
I assume the North would attack the South in which case the USA’s nuclear umbrella would come into play and probably force China into the fray. That is too scary to contemplate.
I suspect China holds North Korea on a very short leash when it comes to attacking the South. Occasional incursions along the coast and naval “incidents” and sword rattling allowed, but serious action must be forbidden.
IIRC, the Iraqi military was well dug in along the Kuwait - Saudi front. The US led attack in January 1991 used US Marines with not the best allied equipment to feint against that line. Instead of simply making a show, the Marines actually plowed through that line with relative and surprising ease. Yes, the coalition air assault had softened up the positions, but still it was a snap.
These days I suspect drone weaponry could be very effective against “dug in” artillery.
Conventional vs conventional = South Korea “wins” with ease. (Wins in quotes because they do lose so many people and suffer so much property destruction that even whipping the causes much weeping.)