Are you talking about Kim or Trump?
This would be where the A-10’s would be doing a number on NK armor and artillery.
NK would be wiped out as fast as the Iraqis. The NK ground troops would be shitting their pants and retreating or dying. There would be no need for conventional warfare with ground troops. It’s nothing like the 1950s. We have enough firepower to wipe them out in a matter of hours.
The only concern is what NK can get off towards Seoul in the 1st 10 minutes.
I doubt more than 1 in 10 of those guns is even capable of firing. Totalitarian regimes are notoriously lousy at long-term maintenance.
Soviet guns (which is what NK uses, as I understand it) are famously maintenance-free - or at least designed to keep operating even if not maintained properly for a really long time.
Do you have some sort of reason for believing this to be true?
“Guns” in the sense of “artillery”? I’ve heard that about the Kalashnikov, that you can never clean it and bury it in the sand and then dig it up and fire it, but not about artillery.
And I am told that one feature of the old May Day parades in Red Square during the halcyon days of the USSR was that a good number of the vehicles on parade pulled out for maintenance - this sort of thing.
The main “big gun” in the NK military is the Koksan about which relatively little is known.
South Korea has a GDP about fifty times larger than North Korea, and spends five times as much on defense. South Korea has an edge in most military equipment, and it’s better equipment. Most of the NK aircraft are 1950s era.
Cite. The average South Korean is three inches taller than the average North Korean due to malnutrition.
If NK attacks, Seoul suffers horribly for four days. Then North Korea suffers horribly until they all die or surrender.
Regards,
Shodan
Well in 1950 it took the UN about two months to push the North Koreans from Pusan to almost the Chinese border. Back then there was no international force in Korea, Today there are a large number of US troops and others permanently stationed throughout the peninsula. The South regularly does exercises with the US on what to do in the event of an invasion. The South has access to the most high tech military equipment in the world the north has access to second rate ancient soviet equipment. The South will enjoy the logistical support of the free world to replenish their munitions. Nobody in South Korea will go hungry in the event of war, EVERYONE in the north will go hungry.
I’ll sell it to you! Samsung is a massive supplier for Apple.
I’m going to go with: it would be very bad for both Koreas, but US military would have some major losses too.
The claim made was “The NK ground troops would be shitting their pants and retreating or dying.” The fact South Korea p[ays its soldiers better does not suggest to me North Korea’s soldiers will flee in terror. Are they phobic of paychecks? Didn’t the United States lose a war to a poorer, worse-armed country in Asia that one time?
I am rather unconvinced by the argument that because South Korea is a richer country, North Korea’s army would immediately collapse. For one thing I don’t see how it’s relevant at all; Canada has a bigger GDP than South Korea but a fraction of the military. For another, the only people in North Korea who are well fed are the soldiers. South Korea is a country with an army; North Korea is an army with a country.
If there’s a prolonged conventional war between the Allies and North Korea, I’ve no doubt South Korea and its allies can win, but if you think North Korea will just fold up like Iraq, well, that’s just not going to happen. And, of course, the war being limited to conventional weapons and only North Korea on one side are matters I find very concerning.
All these rosy scenarios of a quick and easy toppling of the NK regime assume that China will sit on the sidelines. No matter how wonderful that chocolate cake was, that may not be the case.
Drop cheese crackers, or MREs.
I recall reading a book - may have been Eye of the Viper, or Bogeys and Bandits, or some other book - in which the author specifically mentioned that a future war with North Korea would be nothing like 1990s Iraq, in the sense that the North Koreans were far tougher, far more tenacious and hardened, and would make for a far uglier, bloodier war than Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom.
In another thread **LSLGuy **also pointed out that North Korea’s terrain and climate is very different than the flat, sunny, open-space terrain of Iraq, which was perfectly suited to Western style air and land combat and played to all of the USA’s tech advantages.
I recall reading about the Korean War. As someone mentioned up thread, the North Koreans were a push over. What makes the difference now?
They are also undernourished, under-trained, poorly equipped with antiquated weaponry, and facing a military from South Korea, who would be much better fed, much better equipped, fighting to defend their homeland from invasion (and to avenge the destruction, most likely, of their capital city), and from the United States, which is, simply put, invincible.
As mentioned, NK invades. They destroy much of Seoul, and have the advantage of three or four days while the US and South Korea muster a response. Then the Stealth bombers go in to degrade their radar and command-and-control. Within a few hours, six or eight at the most, the NK is blind and deaf. Then the US and South Korean airplanes go in and systematically shoot down and destroy all their 1950s era aircraft. (The score in the first Gulf War was, IIRC, 147 to 1 kill ratio of Allies vs. Iraqis). Now the North has no air cover. In go the A10 Warthogs and kill everything on treads. Behind them come the heavy bombers, and all of Pyongyang is an open tomb by dawn. The North tries to launch a nuclear- or chemical-tipped missile. We shoot it down, and subject the launch site to the kind of saturation bombing that reduces it to a moonscape.
It would be horrible - a worse human disaster than any typhoon or earthquake. But Kim and his generals will have to have their remains collected with a squeegee. And the rest of the country better hope that accents haven’t diverged since the ceasefire in 1950 to the point where South Koreans don’t understand the phrase “Please don’t kill me - I haven’t eaten in three days and I didn’t even see the missiles that killed everybody else in my platoon”.
Regards,
Shodan
Keep in mind that we’re talking about a people who have lived in denial of reality for generations. Sure, we can bomb them to rubble, and chew up their tanks and spit them back out again, and so on, but through it all, the North Koreans would still be convinced that they’re somehow winning.
If North Korea is in a position where it sees launching a preemptive invasion as a viable strategy, then their backs are fully against the wall and they will pull out all the stops including nuclear, chemical and what have you.
It may not be as easy as Desert storm. For one thing, Saddam sat on his hands inviting in weapons inspectors while the US built up a massive invasion force in Saudi Arabia. Kim isn’t going to wait that long before sending in a nuke or artillery barrage. Second, in the Gulf war although there was concern about a chemical attack, none materialized (because Saddam didn’t actually have any such weapons. The same will not be true in Korea where Kim clearly has chemical weapons and is rumored to have extensive biological weapons programs as well.
While we would no doubt win such a war, the cost to the civilians in neighboring countries would be massive.
I don’t think NK would actually invade – they’d just launch everything they had at Seoul (and maybe Japan), killing anywhere from tens of thousands to millions, depending on how reliable their artillery and missiles actually are. After that, I think it’d go mostly as you suggest (though perhaps a tad more difficult due to terrain and weather), until the occupation. The occupation and rebuilding would be very, very difficult, and very, very expensive, but at least it could be lead by people with the same language and (mostly, anyway) history and culture.
From the moment the first artillery shell or missile is launched, there would be a terrible attack from the US. There are F-16s an hours drive south of Seoul. Say fifteen minutes to get them scrambled and in North Korea’s air space. Seoul is going to be hit, hard, but the retaliation will happen in minutes, not hours or days. The ROK (Republic of Korea) military is not going to wait to attack. Not to mention the planes from bases in Japan, and whichever carrier group is patrolling the area.
The one thing observers should be looking for is a NEO (Non combatant Evacuation Order) evacuation. Once that happens, the kimchi is about to hit the fan.
North Korea nearly won the war in the first ten weeks, a situatio nreversed only by the Allied invasion at Inchon. Things went horribly for North Korea until the Chinese joined in, but, then, things went horribly for South Korea until the Americans jumped in.
Considering North Korea, barely a country at the time, was subject to a bombing campaign that actually tried to kill as many civilians as possible, and which killed at least two million of them, I’d say their tenacity was pretty impressive, all in all.
In any event, it’s not 1950 anymore.
Where North Korea is unquestionably weak is their air force; they are pretty much conceding that point, strategically speaking. Attempting to ramp that up would be a waste of money. The problem you face is that the armies would be all mixed up right from the get-go. The Norks could literally be running around in Seoul’s suburbs by the time the air war was getting ramped up.