Are you serious with the lyrics to this song? THAT’S you refutation? Seriously? Really?
Well, I am convinced. Mods, please PLEASE close this thread. There’s no information here.
No, it’s a complement. The great wit of one of the greatest songwriters of this epoch doesn’t, by itself, point out that the ROK can win a war without US support, or that even if they couldn’t, it would still be their responsibility to take care of themselves.
I’m genuinely surprised that you couldn’t tell the difference, but I’m not surprised by the decision to take your ball and go home.
Even if the South has twice the population that doesn’t mean that additional population is in the military.
North Korea’s military is approximately 9.5 million people counting reservists. It’s the largest military force on the planet and comprises a huge slice of the North Korean populace. The South Korean military is “only” 3.5 million people, or one third the size of North Korea’s. Thus, on a military level, it is North Korea that outnumbers South Korea.
Likewise, a considerably larger portion of North Korea’s economy is military. South Korea’s overall economy is much larger, but most of it is devoted to things other than defense.
Thus, your statement that the South can defend themselves from the North is questionable.
The US is already involved in the conflict and has been since the 1950’s. There was never a formal end to the war, only a cease-fire.
True. Absent any assistance/interference from outside the North is quite capable of reuniting the peninsula under their system. I suspect this will be to the great detriment of the “traitors” who live in the South.
I’m sorry – we’re you automatically assuming the South would win? Why is that?
Again, you are assuming the South would win. Why?
There has already been humanitarian assistance. Most notably during the famine of the 1990’s aid came from all over the world. The biggest obstacle to distribution? The North Korean government, because accepting aid would mess with their “self-reliance” meme (they later told the population that the food was “tribute” from fearful enemies, or captured from the US and its cronies).
Can they do all that faster than a speeding artillery shell? Because if they can’t there are 10,000 artillery pieces that are going to open fire on Seoul and cause a LOT of damage and death. Not to mention anything else pre-targeted by the North. Nevermind the South military is outnumbered nearly 3:1. There will be carnage on both sides. Oh, and the North now has nukes. Granted, they’re pretty crude but nukes don’t have to be all new and shiny and up-to-date to cause a lot of damage.
SOME civilians – there’s no way in hell any significant number of the greater Seoul metropolitan area will be able to evacuate. I also question just how effectively all those remaining millions in the metro area will be able to shelter.
I seriously doubt any significant slice of the population of Seoul will fit into subway tunnels.
It doesn’t have to in order to cause massive death and destruction.
The South civilians don’t worry about it because of 1) denial and 2) they can’t do anything about it. Same reason I don’t worry about rocks falling out of the sky – nothing I can do to prevent it.
Why do you assume that?
Why do you assume China would help the refugees? Isn’t that the same country that on June 3, 1989 sent tanks to a peaceful protest, used live ammunition on unarmed civilians? Who by the morning of June 4 had deliberately rolled tanks over sleeping people in Tienanmen Square? Do you mean the government that massacred its own citizens?
What makes you think they would respond to several million refugees attempting to pour over the border with help? China doesn’t need more people. China is under no obligation to help non-citizens. They already systematically deport any North Korean found in their territory back to North Korea. I’d expect they’d station their army on the border and attempt to prevent any fleeing North Koreans from crossing that line.
Crude nuclear warheads are quite sufficient for warfare. Granted that the nukes the North has detonated so far were about half the yield of the one that hit Hiroshima in 1945 that’s still one hell of a bang. The distance involved in getting them to a target is pretty small as these things go, and the North unquestionably has the capability to deliver them.
The ROK has the right to make whatever alliances it feels beneficial to protect its people – including an alliance with the US.
The only problem with that notion is that it will be purchased with the deaths of millions of people. Well, I guess the dead don’t suffer, but the survivors certainly will.
It seems a lot of the world disagrees with that viewpoint, seeing sanctions as an alternative to war.
You are aware that the furthest extent of US territory is actually pretty damn close to Asia? About 2.5 miles to be exact. In fact, some parts of Alaska might well be considered Asia. Strictly speaking, a piece of it is past the international date line which by decree jogs around the Aleutians to keep them in the same time zone (and day) as the rest of Alaska. If the Russias have an interest due to the proximity of Vladivostok then the US has equal claim due to the proximity of the Aleutians and Alaska.
Meanwhile, the batteries will have already fired on Seoul. The destruction of massive parts of the South Korea infrastructure and deaths of enormous numbers of people will have already happened. The airstrikes on these fortifications will be revenge, not prevention.
No one has ever managed to evacuate a much smaller population than Seoul has in the time frame that would be required. The South’s population doesn’t worry about it because doing so would paralyze them. People operate in denial of threats they can’t do anything about. That’s why people live on top of volcanoes and on top of earthquake faults and don’t worry about meteors falling out of the sky and killing them.
The first sentence there sounds more like hopeful thinking than facts. As for the second – damn little shelter is going to shield you from collapsing buildings, conflagrations, and, maybe, a small nuke or two.
In Dresden in 1945 many who took shelter within the city had their shelters turn into ovens and died in them. Their bodies were reduced to charcoal. Survivors reported encountering pools of melted human fat. I think you vastly overestimate the value of bomb shelters in a truly focused attack.
The way south is closed. The DMZ extends across the peninsula and is the most heavily mined piece of land on earth. There are damn few roads or rails through it. It’s far more likely people will build boats and cross the line by detouring around it via the sea – and that’s not likely at all.
People are funny about having their country invaded. Frequently, they fight even harder. Sometimes, they get downright suicidal about it. Nothing to fight for? They’d be fighting to prevent an invasion of their homes.
Again – once the North’s guns fire on the South it doesn’t matter if they survive to fight another day, the damage will already be done.
They will, however, have reduced economic opportunities if they live elsewhere. It’s analogous to people who live on the slopes of Mt. Etna. On Etna people get the benefit of rich soil with the rest of volcanic eruption. Basically, they’re betting they’ll have a lifetime of rich agriculture and it won’t erupt while they’re living there. People living in Seoul today are betting that the current status quo will continue while they’re there.
But apparently it’s OK with you for China, other Asia neighbors, and Russia to be concerned? You’re not non-interventionist, you’re anti-US.
You don’t plan a war on hope. And a lot of WWII fighters went down fighting and didn’t surrender.
Why do you think the North is incompetent in all things? They labor/prison camps are actually pretty decent factories for extracting the maximum labor from people with the minimum input required to keep them alive and upright.
Actually, given the limitations of resources and electrical power the DPRK does pretty good with keeping the place running. That’s why the current leaders are still in power. It’s crappy by comparison with the rest of the world, but the North is cut off from the rest of the global economy.
You don’t understand that even “rank and file” soldiers in the North are privileged compared to civilians. The North operates under the principle that the military comes first. During the famine years the military fed themselves first, the civilians got what was left over, if anything. International aid efforts discovered that the ONLY way to ensure the civilians got fed was to send enough food to ensure the army was well fed first.
Good post, Broomstick. But you forgot about Guam. That’s US territory on this side of the IDL and Guam’s not that far from here.
True, Guam is a US “territory” but Alaska is a full-fledged state - it can’t be dismissed as some second-rate imperialist holding (not that I think Guam is in any way second rate, just anticipating objections)
I did some checking, and it looks like yes, there are indeed assessments of the situation in Korea, with plans and preparations for what might happen. It appears most plausible that, if the situation did escalate into war, the DPRK would not necessarily get a chance to strike first, thus negating one of their only advantages and sealing their doom. Even if they did, the ROK (and, for now, the US) have the ability to detect the first shots from the North, and neutralize the gunsbefore the first shells hit somewhere in the Seoul area. Thousands of civilians could die in the area, but that’s nowhere close to the apocalypse we hear about.
Nobody predicts that the North will conquer the South. I remember growing up reading the 1991 edition of Dunnigan and Bay’s A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, and in their section on Korea, they pegged the odds of a DPRK conquest of the ROK at around one percent. This was pre-famine! The DPRK’s military is huge, but not exactly a monolith, as there is a big divide in loyalty, among other things, between the elite units and the rest of the troops (see bottom paragraph of linked page).
Notably, all of these contemporary assessments include substantial participation by the US, but none of the actions involved are beyond the current or potential capability of the ROK.
As for the aftermath, I can’t imagine being so selfish as to think that it’s better to maintain this status quo because the alternative is expensive, but in any case, reunification will not necessarily mean economic ruin for the region, according to this study.
As for Guam and the Aleutians, that’s all the more reason to stop giving the DPRK any reason to feel threatened by the US, and to speed the process that will end in the fall of the DPRK. In fact, there’s a strong anti-base movement in Guam, a US territory!
As for whose business it is, if the DPRK’s neighbors are directly affected by refugee flows or anything else, it’s definitely their business. I mentioned India’s intervention into East Pakistan (thus creating Bangladesh), but there are many more examples, all the work of concerned locals who had few other choices. That’s vastly different than being drawn into conflict thanks to entangling alliances. That usually has catastrophic consequences, and I’m keen to avoid them.
Except that your brief article there doesn’t mention the fact that much of the NK arty is not only dug in but in fortified positions. See, THEY have been thinking about this as well, for decades, and dumb as they might be about some things they understand what counter battery fire is.
Sure, eventually the SK and US will use bunker buster bombs and be able to ferret out most, if not all of those positions. But it’s not going to be as easy as simply sending back some counter battery fire and calling it a day. It’s going to take days, or perhaps weeks to subdue those fortified positions, especially if the NKs open the dance. In the mean time, the NKs can literally fire 10s of thousands of tubes that are probably dialed in to Seoul…a city with over 9 million citizens living in it. Your prediction of a couple thousand casualties in the events of war is laughable and shows how little you understand the threat.
Agreed…I don’t think they have a chance in hell of conquering the South. IMHO, they don’t have the logistics to push their massive army through the South, especially with the certain attacks on their C&C and logistics as well as critical infrastructure. They COULD (and certainly would) do a hell of a lot of damage, however, and just because I (or you) might THINK it’s a bad idea, and just because the reality might be that it IS a bad idea, doesn’t mean that the idiots in charge in NK agree with that assessment. Unless the NK collapses I think it’s inevitable that at some point the NKs are going to push things over the edge. This would be doubly so if the US pulled out, IMHO.
Could you quote the part you mean? A quick skim doesn’t show much meat in there, and basically ‘not necessarily mean economic ruin for the region’ is hardly a glowing endorsement, regardless. Based on the mostly peaceful reunification of Germany, I’d say any thought that this wouldn’t lead to an economic (and probably humanitarian) disaster would be pretty unrealistic, whether the regime collapsed or there was a shooting war that eventually lead to the NKs collapsing. Either way, keep in mind that during peace time in NK a large part of the population is on the verge of starvation, let alone if the regime collapses or if there is a shooting war. And as fucked up as East Germany was, it can’t hold a candle to North Korea, so even if the NKs busted a cap in Kimmy The Third AND all of the other contenders to the crown AND all of the general staff and pulled out the white flag and told the SKs that they give up, come take is, it would be pretty grim for a long time straightening out the mess…and it’s unlikely in the extreme to go down that way.
Aside from what could or should happen WRT North Korea on the international scale, what would liberation look like to the average North Korean? Let’s take the plausible scenario where China is pressured to change policy and the North’s government starts to collapse under it’s own weight and ineptitude, but a catastrophic war is avoided. How would life start to change for the average peasant, prison guard, ruling elite, factory worker, or soldier?
I ask this because of the unusual situation where several generations have been brainwashed by the regime. We’d like to think people would welcome foriegners as liberators (especially if they brought food and medicine), but I get the sense that they would distrust anything not fed to them by their own government. There was that Japanese soldier who held out in the jungles of the Philippines for a couple of decades after the end of WWII, but in North Korea’s case, we are talking about a whole nation of people similarly brainwashed. Perhaps not all of them would WANT things to change (fear of the unknown). Would the west/China need to establish “re-education” camps to help the populace understand the world as it is, as opposed to the world that was created for them?
Reading this thread one thing I didn’t know before was how big the trade imbalance between China-SK is vs China-NK. The Chinese-SK engage in about $250 billion a year in trade, the China-NK trade is about $6 billion a year. So China has a lot of economic incentive to be pro SK. I hadn’t considered what role that would play before.
I’m surprised China’s policy isn’t just supporting an internal military coup in the North and creating a new NK regime built similar to reformist China (if not totally annexing the country into China as a new province). Supposedly one fear China has is that a unified Korea is going to cause a lot of Korean-Chinese nationals on the border between China and Korea to become restless.
I wonder what the odds are that that is how this whole thing ends. The world (China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, US) secretly agree to let the Chinese support an internal military coup, NK is assimilated as a province of China and China bears much of the cost of reconstruction of the North (as well as a stronger monopoly on rare earth metals which will let it corner the renewable energy and technology manufacturing sectors). The WMD program is abolished there and troops are pulled out of the NK/SK border. SK avoids the cost of reconstruction.
Well, after the systemic collapse and assuming that the international community could get basic life sustaining needs to the NK people in the interim, I’d guess that it would be similar to the reunification of Germany…except perhaps an order of magnitude more difficult. The NK people have been systematically brainwashed for decades, and their infrastructure, by and large, is much more primitive and less extensive than the East Germans had just prior to reunification. Gods know what sorts of environmental damage the NKs have been up to as well, so there is that to consider. And then there are the gulags and reeducation camps…
But I’d say that after the shocks of collapse and the huge cultural shock of going from the NK system to a reunified system presumably under the SK government you’d slowly see an improvement in the lives of every level of NK society (except the party elite). Even taking them to the standards of living of, say, Mexico would be such a huge difference to the average NK that it’s hard to even imagine, let alone the average standard of living of even the poorest in SK.
Well, you could pretty much count on the over-30 group to be too old for such radical change - just as, when the USSR fell, there were “demonstrations” by the elderly carrying pictures of Stalin* and wanting the USSR back. Those folks were never going to make good Capitalists, even if they were 30.
Farmers are farmers - they know land and have used chemical fertilizer. I’d expect them to adopt quickly to new (at least greatly improved) technology and would probably be thrilled to get market prices for their crops.
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- it just happened to be Stalin who was running things - back when they were young and absolutely certain of the righteousness of The Cause.
That would never work, sooner or later some nation is going to be pissed at the NK regime and demand justice. The NK regime has killed or kidnapped people from China, Japan, SK, France, Thailand, Romania, etc.
http://www.sukuukai.jp/English/Victims2.html
When Pinochet stepped down, Spain eventually tried to prosecute him because his regime killed and tortured a few Spaniards. The NK regime has committed so many crimes in so many nations that sooner or later one will push for the Kim family to be held accountable. And international justice seems like a stronger concept now than it did in Pinochet’s time.
I’m not a military expert, but how much damage can 10,000 pieces of artillery do? Also consider that the US and ROK have anti-artillery weapons, which will probably neutralize the guns pretty fast so at most the NK may get 50,000 shells off. London survived the Blitz in WW2 which was 9 months of constant aerial bombardment, why would 10 minutes of artillery shelling destroy Seoul? That isn’t to say we should start a war, I just don’t get it.
ALso nations like Israel have the Iron Dome system which can destroy shells midair. The iron dome can currently destroy about 90% of targets it deems are headed to areas with high value (it apparently doesn’t bother with the shells that will hit unpopulated areas and only focuses on the ones that will hit major areas). South Korea has worked with Israel to purchase the system to protect itself from the north.
Another major risk that isn’t brought up is the 200,000 commandos in the NK military. If they were armed with WMD (which wouldn’t be hard) they could set them off in populated areas in the south or in Japan.
Are you seriously suggesting that anyone has the capability to shoot artillery shells out of the sky? Perhaps a few, with anti-missile technology, but there aren’t enough Patriot missiles and the equivalent to get more than a few.
The only way to actually neutralize the NK artillery is a sudden, massive, pre-emptive strike (which probably won’t be perfect so a few will get through). I’m presuming that would not be acceptable to you. It’s certainly not acceptable to me.
If everyone just picks up and walks away from the DMZ the North would be happy to take a stab at it. Which is why the DMZ will stay fully staffed for the foreseeable future.
I’ve been wondering for some years about the assumption that reunification is either inevitable or in the best interests of those two nation. Yes, the older Koreans look back to when they were one country and the drumbeat of reunification has been thumped for decades, but the younger Koreans don’t remember when there was one Korea, to them there has always been two. The cultures of the two Koreas are starting to diverge. The division isn’t huge, yet, but there are language and accent differences as just an example, not to mention a huge body of cultural works - literature, film, art, etc. - that differs on the two sides of the border.
And what, exactly, is your point here?
The fact is that a regime like NK needs a boogeyman. The US is the convenient one, but if the US were no longer a player on the world stage another one would be found. Frankly, everything and everyone is provocative to the NK system.
I question your assumptions on how those refugees will be greeated and treated, though. Why do you assume China will help 20 million starving NK’s instead of trying to contain them in North Korea?
I’d have to look up the numbers, but I’m guessing that while the Blitz was pretty horrible it was a rate of X bombs per night over 9 months. I think the fear is that NK might be able to deliver the payload of the entire Blitz in just 10 minutes which would be much more concentrated and devastating.
Remember: all numbers in that prior paragraph are WAG’s because I haven’t looked anything up in detail, it’s a hypothesis.
A lot depends on how many targets the Iron Dome can evaluate/deal with in a given span of time vs. how many targets the NK’s can launch in that span of time. I suspect those numbers are classified and thus no one here would be able to give a definitive answer.
Which brings up the point that even in the face of an overwhelming defeat by others not all of NK will surrender at once, you’ll have fighters still soldering on even in the face of a lost cause.
How would the North win in a war against the South? The North has 3x a military about 3x bigger, but they are not as well trained and have terrible equipment. The ROK would have total air supremacy. ROK tanks and missiles could destroy NK tanks, artillery and heavy equipment before the NK is in firing range. Any effort by NK to mobilize for a full scale war should be visible from the air and SK could plan accordingly.
When the US fought against the 1 million strong Iraqi military in 1991 the US destroyed them in a few days with about half as many troops. When the US fought the 1 million strong Iraqi military again in 2003 they destroyed them in a few weeks with a small fraction of the number of soldiers. There was a protracted occupation afterwards, but the million strong (and better trained and equipped) Iraqi military was destroyed in weeks or months both times.
Aside from a potential blitzkrieg against Seoul, where NK immediately sues for peace against a SK that doesn’t want war, I can’t see how NK could win an actual war against SK. For another thing, the North has no military allies. Even China likely isn’t going to come to their aid militarily. The South will have assistance from all over the world if an invasion happens. It isn’t just for humanitarian purposes, I don’t think any country would want the Kim regime to control the wealth and land of South Korea because that would make them even more of a threat to the world. And I don’t think South Koreans are going to allow themselves to be conquered by the most human rights unfriendly country on earth w/o putting up a fight. Stories of mass starvation, raping/murdering family members, etc are probably reasonably well known in the south, they aren’t going to just let themselves be ruled by people that evil I would hope.
Starvation was rampant among soldiers during the famine too, officers and higher ranking soldiers would steal from the lower ranking soldiers.
South Korea has re-education camps for North Korean refugees already!
North Korean refugees who make it to South Korea stay at a halfway-house kind of place for 3 months while they teach them how to live in the modern world. The refugees don’t know how to do things like pay an electric bill or shop in a store. They also teach them the real history of the Korean peninsula, including such things as “the Korean War started when the North invaded the South” instead of the other way around. Barbara Demick describes these education programs in Nothing to Envy. Even so, North Koreans usually have a very hard time of it.
Trying to do re-education on a much larger scale would be a monumental task.
Or maybe those over 30 will have enough life experience to know that the NK the Kim regime was selling had nothing to do with reality. There will definitely be loyalists to the old regime, but guess what? People aren’t stupid, even if they’re North Korean and over 30. The vast majority of people will welcome “radical change,” especially if it means they and their families get some rice in their bowls.
I suspect that there is a dirty little secret out there–that a lot of people in South Korea don’t actually want reunification. They may not want their people to be suffering up there, but they also don’t want their country to suffer the economic cataclysm that reunification would entail.
No, not at all. I didn’t post anything about that. I’m referring to analysis by professionals in this field of study, who say that even if the DPRK did fire first, they might not get off another volley, either because they were destroyed, or at least pinned down.
Not necessarily, according to the most likely scenario in the HuffPo link. Something would happen to start a conflict somewhere, and then the South hits the artillery as a preventive measure, not a pre-emptive one.
It will be fully staffed, hopefully by the ROK on one side and the DPRK on the other, until the state of war ends. The US presence is not helping.
That’s for Koreans to decide.
That the Aleutians and Guam are not a big part of the strategic calculation at the moment. They would be even less of an issue without US involvement in Korea.
If that’s true, then they are welcome to find another boogeyman.
To contain them will entail some kind of help to ensure the stability that the Chinese are always talking about. Besides, not every North Korean is going to be a refugee, and not all of the refugees will head towards China.
It’s not my prediction, it’s that of professional analysts in the field. Even if the counter-attack (which will occur before the first NK shells land, according to the source) doesn’t knock out the North’s guns, it will at least keep them pinned down until air strikes destroy them.
I think it would be less likely, and it’s not the most likely scenario according to my sources, and in any case I would rather US forces not be around if it does happen.
The upshot there, and in part of the Feffer piece I linked to earlier, is that it doesn’t have to be “like Germany, but much worse.” There are other scenarios, and in fact certain opportunities to be had.
Mostly, that came up in response to someone earlier in the thread proposing the US simply walk away from the DMZ and allow the country to reunify. Which sure made it sound like a proposal to simply abandon the DMZ and leave an open border.
I’d rank that as a possible scenario, probably involving nuclear blackmail, but unlikely.
And the lower ranking soldiers would steal from the civilians. It’s always better to be a solider in NK than not, even a low ranking soldier.
The problem is that the first volley might be 10,000 artillery shells, which will kill a lot of people and break a lot of stuff. There will be enormous damage from just a first volley. So your insistence that they won’t get off a second one will be of no comfort to the dead and dying.
Or one day His Fatness might simply wake up batshit crazy and start a war. Again, the “preventive measure” is a possible scenario, there’s no gaurantee that’s the way it will play out in the real world.
You have failed to make a case that the US presence is harmful.
China has the longest and easiest border to cross that touches NK. Most refugees that attempt to flee NK will try to go there.