I apologise. smithsb did make a statement here whether front-line forces would or would not be a speed bump.
In the US we have about 320 million people, but we only have about 300 tier one operators (delta force and DEVGRU) and the rangers, green berets and seals have about 3000 members each.
So North Korea with a population of 22 million, with a very strict social hierarchy that excludes competent people because of social class (I think only about 1/4 of NK are considered part of the government friendly classes, I don’t know if NK is going to train people from the wavering or hostile class as special forces soldiers, and those classes make up about 75% of the NK population), and with tons of starvation is going to have trouble getting 1% of their population qualified to act as special forces. Especially considering the malnutrition and lack of health care in NK is making cognitive and physical problems common (large numbers of military recruits are turned away due to health problems like retardation due to chronic malnutrition). Supposedly many (probably most) North Koreans who escape to SK have serious physical and psychological problems due to growing up in NK. I don’t think the NK’s special forces would be immune.
Plus NK doesn’t have much of an officer class full of officers who can think and act independently (so I’ve read). The NK military might have issues due to that. Independent thought and action is heavily discouraged in NK since even minor acts of non-conformity can ruin your life and the life of your family, I don’t know what happens if the communications from the generals is cut to groups behind enemy lines. But I have no idea.
So they have a large special forces unit. And I’m sure they can do a lot of damage but I don’t know if they’d be comparable to a group like the Rangers.
Chronos, this sounded obnoxious, sorry. I’m not used to seeing hyperbole in your posts.
Is there a term for the reciprocal of “decimated”?
Being part of a pocket like at Bastogne isn’t being overrun, it’s being surrounded. Being overrun is something worse; that’s the point when the attacking enemy basically penetrates the defender’s lines at multiple points and the defenders can’t really mount an effective coordinated defense or even retreat in good order anymore. They just basically fight as tiny uncoordinated groups against a coordinated attacker, which is a recipe for a slaughter. The usual solution is to try and pull back the overrun units if possible , and set up another defensive line to the rear some distance.
It’s pretty unlikely, given the mobility and firepower advantages that the US and ROK forces would have, that any of them would be overrun; they’d just withdraw when necessary, probably to pre-prepared positions and set ambushes for the advancing N. Korean forces. It would be a horrible slaughter, assuming that the US and ROK air forces didn’t utterly destroy their armored forces as they crossed the border to begin with.
It wasn’t actually intended as hyperbole. Most North Koreans are badly undernourished, and that’s true even of their military. Now, I don’t know if the thousand-Calorie number is precisely correct, but I figured a factor of 2 or so was a reasonable guess. In any event, it is true that they’re undernourished to a sufficient degree that their performance is significantly affected for the worse.
Do they have such weapons, i.e. in sufficient numbers and reliable enough to be deployed en masse?
My understanding is they have an advanced chemical and biological system as well as nodong missiles with a 1000km range, which would let them hit SK and parts of Japan. I don’t know if their other missiles are good enough. I have no idea what their production ability is. I’ve heard several tons a year, but I don’t know if any of that is verified (it could be more, it could be less).
I have no idea how effective a patriot missile system would be against a nodong missile.
Why not? South Korea is.
That is because SK liberalized their economy and culture. If NK does that the regime will start to fall if people start getting wealthy and informed. Keeping the Kim regime alive is the main goal of the NK regime.
Bullshit. When mobilized the sizes of the North and South Korean armies are approximately equal in size. Some of the figures that show the North still having a larger army when mobilized are counting the Worker-Peasant Red Guards, a people’s militia which essentially makes up everyone in North Korea capable of holding a rifle. In terms of equipment the South has an enormous advantage in quality. With only a very few exceptions (~40 MiG-29s, ~36 Su-25s, and perhaps 500 homemade P’okp’ung-ho MBTs incorporating a mish-mash of T-62, T-72, T-80, T-90 technology - early versions use the 115mm gun of the T-62) North Korea’s military equipment is 1950s and 1960s technology. They are still using the MiG-17 as a front line fighter aircraft. The DMZ is also the most heavily fortified border in the world. South Korea has had 60 years to dig in.
You’re exaggerating both the size (it’s closer to 180,000) and capability of this force. It certainly is a danger not to be dismissed, but declaring they are all the equal to the best of special forces is dubious at best. How exactly are all of these 180,000 specially trained insertion troops to be inserted? The best estimates are that only 5,000 could be lifted by small craft and submarines at once.
Again, the DMZ is the most heavily fortified border in the world. Saying you could just basically level it and clear a way through is like saying the trench lines stretching from the Alps to the English Channel during WW1 were something that could just basically be leveled and cleared through. Breeching it in either direction is going to be a very painful and costly affair.
No, they don’t know this. What they know is they have second largest artillery force in Asia (China is still in Asia last I heard). Numbers of tubes alone does not make the effectiveness of an artillery force. If it did, then Iraq had the most effective artillery force in Southwest Asia in 1991 during Desert Storm. It surely must have decimated the US Army.
You noted SK’s “geography, economic size, population”, all of which are basically matched by NK at the time of partition. I agree that if NK could liberalize and match the success of SK, they’d be golden (and China would be angry). But NK’s geography, economic size, and population aren’t substantially different from SK in the 1950s when the two Koreas split. Granted, SK is the poster child for success in industrialization in the modern world that other 3rd world countries aspire to, but still, NK’s problems are not geography or population, and economic size is a measure of the success they’re looking for. NK’s problem is political, and they’re ideally placed to fix it if they just make their economy reasonable. (How could you beat being located between China and SK? Manage that arbitrage and you’re golden!)
Forgive my ignorance on this issue, but could the success of South Korea be partially attributed to US involvement and desire to “prove” their vision of Korea is better than the Chinese and Soviet one? Would South Korea be as important a country if they weren’t a conveniently-placed containment on North Korea? North Korea isn’t necessarily in the same position to be successful as South Korea is, even with similar population or geography.
Having said this, I suspect if North Korea said they’d play nice and move to a system similar to South Korea’s, the US would be at least as generous as they’ve been to their neighbours.
Even with SK’s economic growth, they really aren’t a major player in the global political scene. The US, China, western Europe, Russia and to a lesser degree places like Latin America are the movers in the world events. One of the biggest criticisms of SK that goes on in NK is that they are a puppet of the US. I doubt its true, but even with all their wealth SK isn’t going to have the influence of a nation like Germany or China.
NK can have meaningful global influence by causing regional instability and by selling WMD and missile technology on the black market. Supposedly one of the big fears of NK is that the US will start bypassing them and just dealing directly with China to determine how to deal with NK. So the more problems NK causes, the more attention they get.
I ‘think’ the NK regime saw the collapse of the USSR not long after political and economic reforms took place, and decided to double down on totalitarianism. So for them any kind of reform could open a floodgate that leads to a mass revolt. Once people in NK get wealthier and realize how bad the Kims have been screwing them, there are going to be problems.
10?
Ironically the northern part of Korea has historically been the richer half. South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world after the Korean War. Aside from never having been considered a wealthy country by any means, the war had devastated the country and just prior to that it had spent several decades as a colony of the Japanese Empire. The US was flexible enough in its vision of the South that it’s first President, Syngman Rhee (1945-60) could hardly be described as a proponent of a healthy democracy, and from 1961-79 Park Chung-hee led a military coup d’état and installed himself as president for life. South Korea was able to ascend from a poverty stricken nation to an economic powerhouse the same way as the other Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan by maintaining a high level of growth through industrialization from the 1960s-90s and then high tech industries after that.
I don’t know what the number of calories is, but this is likely true for the fodder that will be sent across the lines and manning the artillery along the border. But an invasion isn’t going to be based on hand-to-hand combat, or much individual physical effort anyway. Aside from causing a lot of casualties and damage I don’t think many people believe a North Korean invasion can be successful.
[Quote=Ranger Jeff]
Is there a term for the reciprocal of “decimated”?
[/quote]
No. In military terms, decimated means 10% losses. I was wondering about a neat, clean term to indicate 90% losses.
FUBAR and/or TARFU!
CMC fnord!
The term “speed bump” is most accurate, because, at least for the Army personnel stationed in Korea, their job, assuming a North Korean invasion, is to kill as many enemy as they can before they get killed. The whole point of stationing US Armed Forces personnel in Korea is deterrence, not a a viable plan to repel an invasion. Their purpose is to kill the enemy and notify the US government in order to bring reinforcements to finish the North Koreans off.