How does that play out? Suppose Kim Jong Un decides to attack South Korea. It would be suicide. If he breaks the armistice, the U.S. would have no choice but to continue the war. What would China do? Come in on the side of North Korea, and thus enter a war against the U.S.? Or sit back let the U.S. destroy North Korea, and then have to deal with the refugees streaming across the border? The Chinese aren’t crazy. I suspect that they would try to play the role of peacekeeper (or restorer). Maybe they let North Korea be defeated, and then install a leader of their own choosing?
It’s difficult to think of any ground war started by North Korea in which it is defeated ending in anything but reunification with South Korea. At that point, you’re looking at leaders to help with the transition to a single government in Seoul, not an independent North Korea.
There’s a reason China prefers the status quo. No other option is any better for it. North Korea can’t compete with the South. There’s just no outcome where the North wins. Any outcome where the North has even a reasonable voice in its future is unlikely if it starts a shooting war. And despite China’s relatively large army, very little of it is useful for operations in North Korea nor is any of it positioned in any way to help North Korea in a ground war that’s likely to be done inside a week or two.
North Korea is such a destabilizing force that I would be absolutely shocked if agreements haven’t already been made between South Korea, the US, and China on what each country can and can’t do during a North Korean attack.
I would suspect that if North Korea suddenly crossed the DMZ and started to attack Seoul that any and all force could be used against troops actually in South Korea, and immediate strikes could probably be made against any guns or missiles that directly threaten South Korea.
Beyond that, how the leadership is removed, tried, and punished would probably be something all 3 countries would agree on together.
Assuming of course North Korean aggression. I don’t think China would be so magnanimous if South Korea or the US chose to preemptively attack.
SK may end up deciding they don’t want to reunify with NK, since that would be economically disastrous for them. Suddenly they are a nation much of which is filled with unemployable people and with an infrastructure that would make much of the Third World wince. Uplifting NK to be close to SK would be the work of generations, and incredibly expensive - it’s far worse off than East Germany was.
They burn large parts of Seoul, kill hundreds of thousands of fellow Koreans.
They get their asses handed to them.
China gets jumpy because SK with US assistance (and only assistance at this point, they have the forces to handle it themselves) are advancing into the North after a couple of weeks of mopping up the initial penetration and bombardment.
China tries to get SK to withdraw back to the DMZ.
China threatens to intervene.
The sky darkens and becomes as blood.
What happens then is anyone’s guess. There’s just too many variables.
I don’t see China coming in with military force on the side of North Korea, especially if the North Koreans started the dance. I can see them attempting to mitigate a total North Korean defeat, which is how this would eventually play out, but not directly intervening the way they did in the first Korean war. They have too much to lose now and nothing to gain by doing so.
The wild card, of course, is North Korea’s nuclear weapons. At some point the North is going to start to lose (probably fairly quickly, after they pound the snot out of the SK capital and probably advance into the DMZ and get chewed up bad). My WAG is the US and SKs will be launching deep penetration strikes on NK C&C, logistics and infrastructure as soon as assets are ready to go, and I doubt NK will be able to do a lot about that. Almost as soon as that happens NK is going to start to collapse, since even in peace time they don’t have what one would call a robust logistics or infrastructure, especially for their civilian population. Whatever stockpiles they have will almost certainly be staged for the invasion, and I don’t care how extensive their bunkers (especially the older stuff that they built decades ago) are it’s going to get hammered anywhere it’s staged. Things are going to pretty rapidly come apart at that point, as a civilian population perennially on the verge of starvation is going to tip over once war starts. Aside from the SK capital almost certainly being hammered until the NK artillery is suppressed, the scary part will be when things start to come apart…what will that crazy fat boy do? Will the generals go along if he decides to up the stakes and use NKs nukes? Do they have a viable delivery system to use the things reliably, or are we talking about trucks driving the things as far into the front as possible and setting them off?
Any way you slice it, a lot of folks would die, and in the end there would be no North Korea. The Chinese might try and leverage whatever they can to keep it going or to prevent the inevitable invasion and conquest, but I doubt they would be able to if NK attacks first and if they burn down Seoul, even if we are only talking about conventional artillery, let alone if they use nukes. The backlash would be too great, IMHO.
It is, but at least the older Korean’s still want unification, and I think that in the event of a full on war they would certainly press for conquest. Basically, if it happens, it would be similar to a large scale disaster, so presumably even if our Euro buddies didn’t get involved in the fighting part they would still be willing to address the massive humanitarian carnage, and so would everyone else. Pretty much they and the rest of the world would have too, because IMHO the NK people alone would begin starving as soon as the first NK attacks began…and that doesn’t even count how horrible Seoul would be, especially if this happened with some level of strategic surprise.
Best thing the world could do is flood a postwar NK with food aid, just to take the burden off of SK, who will already have taken a major hit with massive damage to Seoul. I picture NK remaining essentially a big prison camp, though the jailers would be SK, the U.S. and China as they try to keep the population contained while figuring out what the heck to do with them.
Letting South Korea be undermined by assimilating the North too fast will have worldwide economic effects. Better to keep the North in reasonably-well-fed but captive limbo for a generation.
What would China do if North Korea were to launch a concerted offensive? China would fortify their border with North Korea so much that the Berlin Wall would look like tissue paper in comparison. The current flow, such as it is, of people fleeing North Korea via China would come to an immediate halt. What would China not do? The would not fight against the US and ROK forces.
How about if ROK or US launch a concerted offensive against NK? Probably pretty much the same, but with the addition of condemning that act in the UN and in the international press.
The status quo benefits the PRC because China gets some material and even some labor from NK at some might cheap prices that would rise significantly if NK were to be reunified with SK.
It’s just not going to happen.
Oh, and to call South Koreans “fellow Koreans” in the view of North Koreans is a joke. The North Korean government certainly doesn’t consider them to be on the same level. And I use the term level advisedly. North Korean society is completely stratified using a system called *songbun (성분). South Koreans who have found themselves stuck in the North (kidnapped, defected, un-returned POWs, etc.) are quite low on that scale. If the North were to attack and, by some miracle, prevail, the surviving population of South Korea would simply be a new cadre of slaves for the DPRK’s government.
There is no way that Kim Jong Un is stupid enough to launch an all out attack on the South. He is smart enough to realize that the only bargaining chip he has is the threat to escalate. If he does go all out then he loses that threat and there is nothing stopping the west from obliterating his government.
The more worrisome scenario is that he starts a partial but significant escalation. Say he lobs an artillery shell into Seoul once a week until he gets his demands met. As to what we do then, I have no idea. There is still to much to lose if the US were to escalate to all out war, but the status quo is intolerable.
One shell might, maybe, be tolerated. After that, and given that there would then be a state of SK & US high alert, any shell sent over the border from the North would be traced back and the gun that delivered it obliterated within a few minutes. And probably a few of its neighbours. Given NK’s more limited resources, I doubt Jr would play tit for tat very long.
Truth be told, I’d find it kinda interesting if NK starting lobbing small salvos, just to see if the Americans and South Koreans would put a THEL system in place (or if they already have). I’m not sure what the current state of this tech is, but I can see it developing rapidly, perhaps to the point where even a large attack from the North would be blunted, and there goes the conventional threat.
I think China stays out of it. They may enter into negotiations, or help the US and SK in exchange for some small piece of uninhabited land or DMZ between former NK and China or whatever else, but I think in large part China would be glad to not have to deal with them anymore. If anything, China would be aware of the tactical benefit of South Korea and likely the US being bleeding hearts and hemorrhaging money and resources reconstructing and rehabilitating the North.
There are small questions, such as whether it becomes part of South Korea or becomes a client state with SK (and maybe the US) as custodians, but I don’t think in practice the actual effects of that decision would be apparent until much later since in the short term the custodian states would exert absolute power over it to keep it from regressing.
Seoul would probably get fairly damaged from artillery, however, it would be interesting to see how they prioritize reconstructing Seoul and rehabilitating the North.
I don’t know if the North would do an all out war. I’d assume they would do a quick strike, then back off and claim they will use WMD if SK or the US retaliate. An all out war results in the North being destroyed pretty fast. The official military in Iraq was destroyed in about 3 weeks in 2003, and in under a week in 1991. The same would probably happen in NK, considering their military is older and poorer than Iraq’s.
China seems frustrated by NK, I’m guessing they would remain fairly neutral and call for ‘restraint’ on both sides while secretly pushing for an internal coup and the rise of a China friendly leader who follows China’s reform path.
I read somewhere last night that China is uncomfortable with the idea of sharing a boarder with SK, as if SK took over NK in a reunification. And I wonder what it would take to de/reprogram the NK population from their Kim family worship. Though, for that matter, one wonders how real that is.
You’re right that it’ll take a long time. But a lot of the grunt work in building key points of infrastructure (bridges, roads, water works, etc., etc.) isn’t done by very skilled laborers. I bet most of them would be pleased at punch to have any kind of job that brings home money for not only the necessities but for luxury items for their families.
I’ve wondered about that too. The NK people are full of physical and mental illness due to how poorly run and brutal the regime is. About 25% of military conscripts are turned down because they are retarded (due to childhood malnutrition). Add in all the PTSD, the lack of trust and sense of community (NK’ans are trained from birth to distrust/betray family and friends), I once heard an expert say depression is rampant (can’t blame them), on top of the retardation and you’ve got a fucked up society of sickly, retarded, traumatized paranoid people who are completely ignorant of civics, technology and the world. According to an intelligence report (I forget which US branch) even if NK tried to implement reforms and market economics the people are so fucked up that it wouldn’t work that well. NK citizens who escape usually don’t adjust well to the South. And those are the ones with the creativity, intelligence and physical health to escape.
I’d wager 30 years just to begin to have a functioning society.
And then the officer’s kids, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc are sent to prison camps for a life of torture and death. I don’t see it happening.
