(Hi mods, if you feel this is too similar to the “Is it time to do something about North Korea” thread, you can blend it with that, although I think it is a separate sub-topic):
North Korea’s artillery force pointed at Seoul, and its soon-to-be-ready nuclear strike force, are often held up as some kind of ace card that requires the US, South Korea, Japan and the West to use restraint and not hit back at Pyongyang, for fear of Seoul being hit by an artillery attack that will kill hundreds of thousands.
The sinking of the Cheonan corvette, which killed 46 South Koreans, didn’t lead to military retaliation, and North Korea got away, essentially, with shelling Yeonpyeong Island. North Korea firing missiles over Japan itself is met with no military retaliation, etc.
So just to what extent can North Korea get away with things, before its artillery threat to Seoul no longer permits it to get off scot-free?
Can Kim have his artillery to fire one single artillery round into downtown Seoul every day, 365 days a year, while threatening that any South Korean retaliation will lead to a much bigger barrage attack?
Can North Korea destroy a few Japanese and South Korean or American ships/aircraft every month, and again play the “artillery-against-Seoul” card for all it is worth?
Surely, at some point, the threat of Seoul getting hit by artillery can’t provide an umbrella for Kim anymore?
They’ve also tried to kill the South Korean leader (in the 1960s) and kidnapped a ton of people from Japan and South Korea (some of the kidnap victims said that various people of European nationality were kidnap victims in North Korea too).
So I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be anything the North can do to an individual or small groups that warrants retaliation.
They were high enough not to be airspace violations. After all, our Apollo launches flew over several African nations without violating their rights. We fire missile tests into the Pacific fairly often. That’s legal. In this specific wise, NK did nothing wrong.
I think they could get away with firing a non-detonating missile somewhat close to Samoa or some other friendly territory. We’d be alarmed as all heck, and the talk would ratchet up, but it wouldn’t lead to real military retaliation.
I think they would get away with setting off a nuclear explosion in the middle of the Pacific, in international waters…so long as they don’t hit anyone’s shipping, either military or commercial. Hell, they’d probably even get away with it if it destroyed a freighter, tanker, or fishing boat. Again, the bellicose talk would spiral up, but not (necessarily) to acts of war.
Firing one (count 'em, 1) shell into Seoul might not trigger a massive response, but by the time they fired the tenth, the war-hawks would move into full ascendance. A firm deadline would be delivered…and then not acted on, because democracies vacillate. But by the time they ignored the third or fifth serious “red line” warning, counter-strikes would begin.
(This, IMO, would lead to escalation that could only end with the total devastation of Pyongyang.)
I suspect something like a missile launch or attack that killed one or more Americans would provoke a military response from the current administration. Perhaps we’d see one if a missile landed on some uninhabited portion of the territory of Guam and caused no casualties or real damage as well. If North Korea launched missiles that crashed into Guam’s territorial waters, assuming they didn’t hit any ships, I suspect we would not go to war. Missile launches into the international waters portions of the Pacific, I don’t think we would do anything.
As for attacks on Japan / South Korea, I hope we’d defer to them at least a bit. For your example of a solitary artillery shell launched into Seoul once per day, I’d hope we’d ask the Koreans whether they’d rather tolerate that (sort of like the Israelis do with Hamas rocket attacks) or have us respond, at the risk of lots of casualties.
Do you think the evacuation of Seoul would trigger an artillery barrage by North Korea? Hostage takers don’t normally sit idly by while their hostages slip out of their grasp.
Yes - or, in other words, I think a solitary shell is an unlikely “provocation”. There are undoubtedly evacuation plans, and it seems illogical to trigger them with something that would do little damage, but be certain to generate a severe response.
North Korea has committed other acts of war against its neighbors, and not triggered an escalation to full war. My point wasn’t that it was “okay” for them to do such a thing, only that they might very well “get away” with it.
A full evacuation of Seoul would arguably do more harm to South Korea (in terms of lost productivity, the trouble of having to shift millions of people from one place to another, the burden posed on other regions by a sudden massive influx of refugees,) than all but the most all-out artillery barrages.