It’s worth remembering that while foreigners may see NK’s leader as a posturing child, North Korea suffered very grievously in the shooting war, and the memory may have created enduring bitterness. Statistician and “atrocitologist” Matthew White maintains that a realistic estimate of deaths from the American strategic bombing campaign is around 2 million people (almost entirely civilians, and as always with strategic bombing, a high proportion of those women and children). This is higher than public US and South Korean estimates, of course (or the numbers on Wikipedia). Bear in mind that’s just bombing deaths, not wounds, nor deaths from front-line combat.
The built-up areas of the country were reduced to a moonscape:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
As a result, almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed.[291][292] The war’s highest-ranking American POW, U.S. Major General William F. Dean,[293] reported that most of the North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wastelands.[294][295] North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground, and air defenses were “virtually non-existent.”[290] In November 1950, the North Korean leadership instructed their population to build dugouts and mud huts, as well as dig underground tunnels, in order to solve the acute housing problem.[296] U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay commented, “we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too.”[297] Pyongyang, which saw 75 percent of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.[298][299] On November 28, Bomber Command reported on the campaign’s progress: 95 percent of Manpojin was destroyed, along with 90 percent of Hoeryong, Namsi and Koindong, 85 percent of Chosan, 75 percent of both Sakchu and Huichon, and 20 percent of Uiju. According to USAF damage assessments, “eighteen of twenty-two major cities in North Korea had been at least half obliterated.”[300]
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Whether or not the Dear Leader is a joke or the equipment old, it is possible – indeed, likely – that burning hate still smolders in those who survived the 1950s conflict and the descendants they raised. I would advise North Korea’s military be taken seriously.
I don’t think there’s any question that (1) NorKo’s militaristic government is batshit insane and unpredictable; (2) that the population is intensely biased against the outside world through wartime experience, near-total isolation and three generations of careful indoctrination; and (3) their military equipment is laughable by modern standards but there is still a hell of a lot of it, and it will kill and destroy almost as effectively as it would have when new in the 1950s.
That NorKo cannot be reasoned with or even negotiated with in a modern sense is one part of the problem. That the Dear People will not throw down their arms and shout some equivalent of “Thank God!” when Pyongyang is nuked is another. That Dear Leader and the Big Hats seem willing to throw their catapults and muskets at us, in masses of hundred-thousand and million, is the last part.
There is nothing good here, and no good outcome. If NorKo really collapses on any front, their dying gasp will be to try and expend every shell.
I have no clue why you quoted the part in italics. The Chosan wasn’t a submarine, it was a corvette. That’s a surface ship. It was conducting ASW exercises that day, and reportedly had its active sonar on and apparently couldn’t locate some type of North Korean submarine (who knows what kind) before it was blown up.
What I said was, “Even crappy submarines can sink modern ships.” It seems you’re taking issue with that, but I have no clue what part of your post is actually responsive to my statement.
An equally important question is how many ASW assets are in the area compared to the number of NK subs they would be detecting?
Even if we (the US, SK, Japan and any other allies in the area) have sufficient assets to neutralize any of the NK subs on a one-to-one basis, do we have enough to track and defend against 50 subs simultaneously?
I, for one, don’t see any resolution to the North Korean situation that isn’t bloody and ugly. I don’t think anyone does. But the longer we can maintain the uneasy peace, the more chance someone will have to find that hoped-for non-bloody solution.
It’s like the North Korean’s include this maneuver as part of their 5-year economic plan.* Rattle the sabers and deploy the troops until the World Powers get nervous and say, “Look, here’s all this food and staples. It’s yours if you mellow out” and then they negotiate for a while and then take their deal and back down.
It’s like the bratty kid who has learned that the way to get attention and goodies is to be obnoxious until the grown-ups promise to give you the treats that you want in exchange for better behavior. And, as long as he’s working through that trove of candy, he’ll be nice because he’s preoccupied with it and therefore too busy to spend time being irritating – and because he doesn’t want it taken away. Once that pile of candy is gone, though, it won’t be long until he’s being a jerk again. And he knows it works!
–G!
The Soviets were famously mocked for their 5-year plans and China (and no doubt Communist Korea) dutifully adopted that part of Marx/Engels’ theory. Sure, they dampened market fluctuations from foolish fads and fashions (Pet Rock, anyone? Hummer?], but they’re also woefully unable to respond to resource depletions (wheat, ethylene glycol, and helium come to mind).
An interesting, to me at least, piece is that the agreement to deescalate included scheduled further talks. It makes me wonder if North Korea was following the old escalate before addressing another issue technique. Of course there’s been a pretty regular release of reports of a senior NK military officials getting executed for something minor. That certainly raises the possibility of it being a need to look tough because of internal issues.
It’s a step back either way. No need to start the pool on how fast those 50 subs are “found” after shooting begins.
When a US aircraft carrier is in the area, you can be sure there is an abundance of ASW assets. Helicopters, destroyers, cruisers, P-3 Orions and other post-SOSUS developments.
Then you’ve totally misunderstood something pretty fundamental about the whole story.
The NKs are not insisting any of their subs are missing. They’re not saying anything truthful or false about their subs since they’re not talking about them at all.
The SKs are saying (more accurately: the SKs did say a few days ago) that the NK subs have put to sea and can’t be / haven’t been located by SK forces.
Which was either SK lying and they’ve got them all targeted, or was SK telling the truth that some or all were not being tracked.
Makes sense, because the crisis now appears to be over. NK is going to apoligize for firing a shell into SK, and SK is going to shut off the fucking loudspeakers that caused this trouble in the first place.