War is always the worst option. Especially a war against somebody with tens of thousands artillery pieces on the border, with medium range missiles and with nuclear weapons that can reach something like 200 million people.
Not to mention the fourth or fifth largest standing army in the world.
Iraq had the 4th largest army before Gulf War I. We obliterated it in less than 100 hours. And Iraq's technology was infinitely superior to that the North Koreans. The largest thing that is preventing us from killing these assholes is that Seoul is within distance of NK artillery.
Which is poorly equipped, hungry and depressed.
But that's not the point. The point is the potentially very high civilian casualties.
Yeah, that is going to be a problem wrt pow camps when we have to house all those who surrender so they can get food, clean water and a bed to sleep in.