The odds of North Korea ever prevailing, let alone being the conqueror, in the event of a war against South Korea are probably infinitesimally small - less than 1% - but just for the sake of it, let’s say that Pyongyang actually did pull it off and conquered all of the South - and without the use of nukes, to boot. For convenience, let’s refer to this new peninsula as United Korea.
This scenario becomes slightly less far-fetched in a Trump presidency, if Trump refuses to defend a US ally under attack like South Korea despite the defense pact, although the South’s fighting forces in and alone in themselves are still very formidable.
North Korea would presumably capture one of the world’s most advanced technological industry/manufacturing bases, although trade by the rest of the world with United Korea would plummet drastically, just like how Kuwait wasn’t doing much business after it was taken over by Iraq in 1990.
North Korea would be the conquering administrator of a South that had 2x as many people as the North, so this would be tricky - and furthermore, an extraordinarily wealthy and well-educated and well-nourished, affluent Southern populace as well. This makes putting South Koreans into labor camps or gulags tough, although one could also argue that Southerners would be “softer” due to their comfortable lifestyle and thus easier to coerce with threats of brutality or deprivation.
Undoubtedly a lot of foodstuffs would be ferried from the South to feed people in the North. But would Pyongyang strategically decide to let several million Southerners die off from starvation to make things easier for the United Korea government to handle?
Nuclear material from the South’s reactors and faciilities might be used to further expand the United Korea’s nuclear arsenal. As for conventional weaponry such as F-16s, etc. those would be an immense boost to Pyongyang’s new military, although presumably the war that just took place would have depleted a lot of the armed forces’ inventories of both sides.
And then finally there is the issue of insurgency, as most South Korean men have served in the military at some point.
A Japanese person once told me that the defining characteristic of Koreans is that they are always so angry all the time.
I’m not sure the southrons would be that amenable. Particularly if one gave them something to be angry about.
Part of me wonders if a South Korean insurgency would get back to the north, and also cause them to start to rebel too.
People like to throw about the BS talking point ‘fighting for freedom’ anytime a war happens, but the South Koreans really would be fighting for their freedom. I’m sure they know or would quickly know what living under the North would be like, and many would pick rebellion or death instead of submission.
I’m sure the SK government has some kind of ‘stay behind’ strategy in the off chance they are militarily conquered to create a resistance and rebellion. Just as I’m sure the North does. As OP says, many South Koreans have military training. They have 4 million active or reserve fighters. I’m sure they have lots of retired soldiers and reservists too.
When Korea was divided along the 38th parallel in 1945, the north was the half with almost all of the industry. The south was the rural half with an economy based around agriculture.
Kim Il-sung nationalized the industries and, through incompetence, lost the industrial advantage the north had started out with. If his grandson captured the industry that now exists in South Korea, I assume he’d repeat history.
I don’t see how NK could hold onto the South. They don’t have the resources for any kind of protracted insurgency in the South. I’m not sure they even have the resources (like gasoline) to make it all the way through the South, let alone occupy it.
The North can get what it wants from the South and avoid all of the problems listed in the OP simply by getting the Sunshine Policy revived. The South Korean left will be back in power someday, and a fully nuked-up NK would be in a position to demand even more aid and concessions from SK than it got the first time.
Exactly, their logistical tail is their weakness. They could do tremendous damage in the opening week or two of a military campaign. But the further south they go the further they have to send bullets, bombs, tanks, artillery, fighter jets, soldiers, commandos, submarines, et cetera. And South Korea all by their lonesome are most likely prepared to take that logistical tail and chop it off, blowing up the fuel and supplies North Korea would need.
I also don’t worry about Trump abandoning Korea. I think it would be quite the opposite. If North Korea decided to invade South Korea I think Trump would be more than pleased to have the military might of the US crush the Kim regime.
The reason nobody has invaded North Korea is that they have the weapons to cause a lot of human death and injury as well as property damage if anyone invades. They have:
[ul]
[li]Thousands of pieces of artillery pointed at Seoul[/li][li]A commando force of 200,000 that can commit sabotage, assassinations & terrorism behind enemy lines[/li][li]missiles that can reach pretty much anywhere in South Korea & Japan[/li][li]Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons (including chemical and biological warheads)[/li][li]They are working on long range missiles to reach the US, as well as nuclear weapons fired from submarines.[/li][/ul]
If anyone goes to war with North Korea, the North will cause hundreds of thousands (potentially millions) of deaths and injuries, as well as trillions in property damage and economic damage. It is their Trump card and they are playing it well. It is pretty much the only reason the regime hasn’t been invaded.
If North Korea let millions of South Koreans starve in a deliberate policy of favoring North Koreans in food transportation and consumption, any slow-burning insurgency would explode into a much faster-burning one. This would be particularly problematic since North Korean army and police would be stretched to the limit occupying the more populous south and couldn’t police both the people of the north and south at the same time.
Besides, since North Korea doesn’t really have much if any of an amphibious warfare capability, they would have a tough time conquering Jeju island, which is probably where any surviving South Korean army, navy, and air force units would flee to, besides Japan. That might serve as the Taiwan for the South Korean government, though considerably smaller and less populous.
Yes, the Japanese are famous for having unbiased opinions about the Koreans. And vice versa. Just ask one or the other about their neighbors and you’ll have all the biased stereotypes and negative half truths, sorry I mean facts, you need to know.
North Korea would conquer South Korea over the bodies of many thousands of Americans. Those are the ones now stationed there; not the ones who died years ago in a forgotten war.
It wouldn’t do them any good. Most of SK’s wealth is due to free trade. NK doesn’t do trade, and conquering the South isn’t going to change that even they wanted it to. And there isn’t any reasonable scenario where the North conquers the South that leaves anything worth having on either side.
As folks have said, this is a tough hypothetical to get behind. Once we’ve applied enough fantasy to get there, it’s hard to say what other effects that same fantasy will have. Here’s some disconnected thoughts not adding up to an essay.
For round numbers there are 25 million NK and 50 million SK. The historical success rate for occupying and holding a population 2x your own is not good. If the militaries are roughly matched you might expect civilian casualties to be similarly matched. Each side losing a million makes a much bigger dent in NK than in SK. Making the ratio even more lopsided against NK.
Clearly the NK leadership’s goal is to convert the rest of SK into a prison colony like NK is, while pocketing the portable wealth for themselves. They truly don’t much care what their new country’s GDP or total calorie supply is. All they care about is enough to overstuff themselves and then adequately feed the police force that suppresses the 90% of the populace they don’t care about at all.
The war itself of course will be a combined arms offensive. So artillery, aircraft, and missiles pave the way followed immediately by armor and infantry. Since the goal is population control I’d expect them to be using something like the Einsatzgruppen - Wikipedia following right behind the troops and launching a wave of mass terror and extermination against any and all civilians.
Under those circumstances, 90+% of the survivors will be cowed and at most 10% will flee to the hills to become guerillas. Unlike Southeast Asia or South America, the Korean peninsula is a crappy place to sleep outdoors year round. Guerillas, like mosquitos, tend to die off *en masse *over the winter.
All in all, the world will have a rude re-introduction to foreign policy pre-19th Century style. Noisy; very noisy.
The North would get a quick lesson in the flight of capital - all the money in the South will be gone before the North can get to the banks.
Machinery can be sabotaged in ways the North cannot repair.
All that wealth they thought they’d get would be gone.
Foodstuffs are undoubtedly going to be hid in the old wartime tunnels and mines.
All airworthy (and a few not-quite-airworthy) planes will be ferried to Japan. No shiny new fighters, no airliners, not even anything of value, save maybe a few primary trainers. C-152’s and PA28’s will be the spoils.
Refineries make huge fireballs when they go up. With luck, the explosives will be delayed until the North’s “warriors” come to visit.
As if anyone in the North would be able to run a modern refinery, factory, or even farm machinery.
Horescarts and MiG19’s, yes. Heavy trucks and F16’s, no so much.
And I suspect that either sugar in the gas tanks still works, or somebody has created something that will.
Start up a jet engine and throw chickens in it - or gravel.
How many hours would it take trained crews to sabotage simply everything?
That is my thought as well. Their equipment is garbage. Their training is garbage. They do not have the ammunition or supplies to sustain any kind of military campaign.
The arty and missiles will do some damage, sure. But I would not be at all surprised if SK has its own version of Iron Dome and I guarantee those NK guns will be subject to wave after wave of laser-guided counter-battery fire that will turn concrete bunkers into sand. The absolute air superiority of the combined US/SK forces will ensure that the NK ability to hurl damage south is quickly and completely degraded. It is not as if they have to make it up as they go along. They know where this stuff is and they know what it will take to destroy it. It might take a while to saturate such a target-rich environment but the NK forces will crumble under relentless assault.
NK could unleash a nuke or a chem or bio-weapon. But if so, it’s over for them right then and there. A nuke would be responded to in kind and even the most hardened soldier of the Kim regime would lose their esprit de corps upon learning that Pyongyang was now nothing more than a toxic cloud of greasy wind. Chem and bio weapons are an overstated threat. The wind can blow north just as easily as it can blow south and there’s no way NK troops are prepared to fight in MOPP gear that weighs as much as they do. And since the US does not maintain a chemical or biological arsenal the option for responding in kind is a nuclear weapon.
I will grant that the NK opening salvo would be deadly to many assuming the rusted guns actually shoot true and the rusty, shitty old Russian tanks and APCs have enough gas to get across the DMZ. Commando units will definitely be wrecking things (although SK commandos will be doing the same north of the 38th parallel). But within a week or two North Korea is getting its ass handed to it.
Right - I understand well the implausibility of the North Korean invasion succeeding. My question concerns itself more with the subsequent occupation than the war itself. Are we looking at labor camps all over the Korean peninsula?
