Ummm…North Korea crosses the DMZ, occupies the undefended territory, declares a major victory, accomplishes some genuine gains, and pumps up its legitimacy among its citizenship?
I agree Kim doesn’t have the technology to launch a missile against the United States. But he does indisputably have nuclear weapons. So he could always resort to more low-tech means of delivering them like covert insertion.
He can’t reach us, but what about Japan? Would the US go nuclear if NK lobbed a nuke at Hokkaido? Any other response would be too costly in American lives, methinks.
Or Guam, where we have major bases.
Considering the Seoul suburbs extend all the way up to the DMZ, you have just described free hostages for NK.
One of my cousins is a Kindergarten teacher in the area, and our family already gets antsy whenever NK pulls any shenanigans. No need to put her directly under fire.
Fish for dinner.
That flight path goes right over Southern Ontario. If the thing fell short, it has a good chance of landing on me or someone I know. Killed in honest battle with an enemy we chose is one thing. Killed by underfunded technical kleptocrats because we were in the way? That’s something else.
El Famous Burrito:
[Home Simpson]To Chinese invasion! The cause of, and solution to, all of North Korea’s problems![/Homer Simpson]
Just to ask (and I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable response I’m just not thinking of right now, because I’m kind of duh that way), why couldn’t they just nuke South Korea, if they were gonna nuke anything at all?
Leaper:
Because they don’t want a radioactive wasteland on their border, perhaps? Well, if they became winners of the conflict, it wouldn’t even be a border, it would be within their territory as unified Korea.
That’s one long inflatable raft trip for man, and a giant leap for mankind.
A nuclear missile requires technology of 2 different phases. 1 - nuclear and 2 - missile. The Nuclear stuff is probably easier than the missile technology since even if the missile does nothing more than rain unreacted radioactive shrapnel, it would still be unpleasant for the Americans it lands on. The rub comes in missile technology, which NK is cobbling together from Soviet, Chinese, and Iranian technology. It’s almost guaranteed to be outdated. Furthermore, the rocket may fly but the real tech lies in guidance.
The missile tests in December is notable that the North Koreans finally got something into orbit but without satellite guidance or extremely sophisticated gyroscopic technology, they have no way of delivering that payload.
Technologically, it is very much so a toddler throwing a tantrum.
While that would be a much more viable target, rationally, actually using a nuclear weapon against any target is tantamount to suicide.
Unfortunately, I don’t think NK has been accused of being rational at any point during my lifetime.
I suppose a better reason for them not launching against the south is that once they’ve done so, the territory would be ruined for plunder/expansion.
I read ome years back, sorry, no cite, that the chances of successfully hitting a target at that range is on par with hitting a teacup with a thrown baseball from the length of three football fields.
So while the first challenge is finding someone capable of throwing that far, the greatest danger will be to the football field between the pitcher and the cup.
They’re rational enough. For a long time they were very successful at getting the world to give them more aid by doing something crazy or saying they were about to do something crazy. It helped them stay in power and manage their own disastrous failures, and for good measure they kept working on their nuclear program in secret and selling technology to other countries. The problem for them is that it’s not working anymore. They keep trying to move forward on the nuclear stuff to force the world to deal with them, and for their trouble they’re getting less aid and tougher and tougher sanctions.
rational: methinks that word doesn’t mean what you think it does… 
I have never considered Danegeld to be a successful long term business strategy.
Honestly, they don’t want to have to deal with North Korea, which is economically depressed in a way that makes the German Democratic Republic at the time the wall fell look like a gleaming model of prosperity. Nobody wants North Korea. The South Koreans don’t. The Chinese don’t. We don’t.
Not too clued up on this whole ‘malnutrition’ thing, then?
Because they don’t really need to with all the artillery already pointed at Seoul.
Kinda makes you wonder what South Korea would look like as an island…
In which case we’d just have to hope that the Chinese immediately made it clear to the US that they weren’t going to interfere with them, or maybe they were even going to help out with an invasion. Because if the US declares war with China, it’s game over for all of us.