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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

NK couldn't and can't be liberated because it has tens of thousands of artillery pointing toward Seoul, a city of 10M+.

That is always being repeated, but I wonder if it still holds up with modern systems like the iron dome, and especially laser weapons that are being tested right now. A combination of pre-emptive strikes on NK's artillery, combined with anti-artillery radars and a laser weapons air defense network could render NK powerless.

Edit: that assumes that SK would be the 'liberator', but chances that it would be China are probably higher.

The thing is, that even if few % of their artillery/missiles get through, that can still mean hundreds of shots hitting Seoul and thousands of people dying. No one wants to take that risk.

there was a study some time ago dismissing the most dire projections of these artillery pieces http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-the...

While they will end up killing lots of people and causing heavy economic damage the real inability to deliver on the threat that has been kept alive by those who want a stronger stance against North Korea is likely one reason they are pursuing nuclear weapons. They know they don't have a strong threat and they want one. Whether this is to truly for self protection or for aggression is for teh intelligence wonks to figure out

Iron dome is ridiculously ineffective even against home made rockets, with a success rate of about 5%:

http://thebulletin.org/evidence-shows-iron-dome-not-working7...

While I agree it's not going to be effective against serious firepower, you may be looking at the percentage wrong. It uses computation to only target the subset of rockets that are bound for populated areas (as far as I understand). Thus the untargeted will are still "successes".

Perhaps eventually our technology will out-pace NK's artillery so that Seoul will be basically immune from attack. We're nowhere close to that at the moment. Iron Dome isn't even entirely effective against a few artillery pieces, and NK has something like 20,000. Most of them already pre-aimed at Seoul.

as others have noted these capabilities are in their infancy right now and no match for the threat.

Also don't forget that next after artillery fire the NK can march in couple millions of soldiers - short of nuclear strike there is no way of stopping such a mass of infantry.

A marching soldier can be stopped with one bullet. I guess you mean these soldiers would come in some sort of armored vehicles, but those can be stopped by anti-armor guns. The task of stopping one million, or ten million soldiers is quite easy, if they are ill-equipped.

I doubt this is a main reason. Main reason is that they don't have valuable natural resources that can be exploited, they have not so important strategic location. Investment in "liberation" of NK will hardly be as beneficial for US (main "liberators" in the contemporary world) as "liberation" of other more lucrative countries (that has oil or somehow threat stability of US dollar).

That certainly may play a part in the reasoning but I doubt it's a more pressing concern than the death toll and economic destruction that South Korea would face if full on war broke out.

Not to mention that even if N. Korea were to be "liberated", I'm not entirely sure the South would want to bear the cost of reunification. Korean reunification would make German reunification look cheap in comparison.

By this logic you're wrong. The value of a unified Korea particularly to South Korean firms would be astronomical in terms of a highly capable populace that could help Korea regain dominance in manufacturing

Why would they want to start a war in their own country? US start wars very far from its own borders. It's highly profitable and only small number of lives of US citizens are in danger.

But for US situation with NK and SK is already good enough: no profit from invading NK, and US already profit from having military base in SK because SK pays them huge money for it.

USA gains nothing from invading NK. When any variable change and invasion will become profitable, NK will be inevitably "liberated".

Also, AFAIK, the people in NK are actually behind their leader.

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