If a major conflict with NK happens, the victim will also be South Korea. Seoul is close to the border, and is targeted by a colossal array of weapons. Not destroying it will always be a large bargaining chip in NK's hands.
South Korea would obviously wants support from the US and the rest of the world, but I'm pretty sure they can flatten North Korea right back if they're fired upon.
As crazy as North Korea is, if they fire first, South Korea isn't just a sitting duck.
North Korea would probably be obliterated just from South Korea hitting back, let alone if anyone else allied to South Korea jumps in.
Micro scale MAD. North Korea is just grandstanding for food, it doesn't really mean that they will follow through. I mean, they're a dictatorship, so who knows.
If China will say "jump" to Kim, he will, for as long as the physical security of Kim's family is provided (which is pretty much the one, and only carrot China been using with them)
There's no doubt the US and allies will be victorious, barring massive strategic blunders, but there's also no way to prevent horrific levels of destruction.
To say nothing of China stepping in and kicking off WWIII.
No-one is going to start an actual war.
It's naïve to say "we were just trying to make the point X, we didn't think it would escalate" when the actors involved have the resources and incentive to react with interest.
If anything North Korea developing its own nuclear arsenal took war off the table. That was the point, although full-scale war was probably already off the table, but a more limited action to topple the regime probably wasn't.
It's borderline madness to suggest otherwise.
so far, MAD has kept that from happening again. But it's not borderline madness to observe something that definitely actually happened.
A war on the Korean peninsula already happened in the past and it went quite badly for all involved.
Now it is 2020, with very interconnected economies between all involved and with the US, China, Russia, and North Korea having nuclear arsenals. Therefore it is indeed borderline madness to suggest that anyone might decide to start a full out war on the Korean peninsula, it is even more ridiculous to suggest that this might happen "by accident" (like it is ridiculous to suggest that WWI started by accident).
In the real world of today one might look at Chinese-Indian relations. Probably 10s of soldiers on both sides died recently. Are the nukes flying yet? Of course not, no-one is suicidal and both sides won't attempt anything beyond their skirmishes in one or 2 remote valleys.
It's only sensationalist news channels that peddle the risk of war with North Korea.
Hardly. NK nukes don't really change SK's MAD vulnerability calculus; it's more of a factor for the US. I worked with a guy who was present in 2010 during that year's Key Resolve....when the "exercise" suddenly became very real due to the sinking of the Cheonan.[1] He was dialed into the video teleconferences that were held by the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said the ROK military leadership was absolutely furious and was legitimately ready to basically re-start the war, and that it was the USFK Commander (the US military 4-star who would command the fight) who had to talk the ROK generals down from the ledge.
It came up in conversation I think during 2016's Ulchi Freedom Guardian because the NKs were launching ballistic missiles during the exercise and we all experienced a "pucker factor" for a moment because we weren't sure if they were escalating the conflict or not. Then the missile trajectories indicated they'd land in the ocean and we could breathe again. Fun times.
I have no idea how you could read what I wrote and conclude "see nobody was serious". Seems like the worst case of normalcy bias I've ever witnessed on HN.
This is not normalcy bias. This is keeping lucid and realising, as said and repeated, that war in Korea is not a realistic prospect, instead of going all Dr Strangelove after watching to many movies.
Again, the Korean War was painful for all involved at the time. Today war is simply not possible anymore by any assessment of the situation.
The worst thing that could realistically happen in Korea is a collapse of North Korean regime. This could trigger a limited civil war but everyone would have an interest in limiting the fallout, and this is why people tend to be very cautious about any suggestion of effecting "regime change" in the North.
With the caveat that I wasn't the one there, so this is second-hand: Yes, that's how it was communicated to me. The Korean 4-stars were advising restarting the war, and the sole American 4-star to have any say in the matter was the only voice of sanity. I dunno how much of that conversation made it to the South Korean President, so I don't know if he fired anyone afterwards. I'm not sure what the formal process is for the ROK-JCS, USFK, CFC, etc... to make a recommendation to the Korean President, as well as the US President, as well as the United Nations Command. All I know is that if left to their own devices in 2010, the ROK JCS would have invaded the North, knowing full-well what the consequences would be.
Things coming down to only one, single, yet influential person saying "that's a bad idea" should highlight that maybe we don't have sufficiently robust institutional controls in place to avoid a bloody conflict indefinitely.
>>>The worst thing that could realistically happen in Korea is a collapse of North Korean regime.
I'll absolutely agree with this though. There is a very poor understanding of the morale and motivations of most of the NK flag officers. We don't know which ones will outright surrender. We don't know which ones will say "Fuck it, attack the Imperialists!" We do have a reasonable understanding of the Kim regime's priorities: regime survival. So the status quo is preferable to the almost-guaranteed chaos that will ensue should the NK commanders suddenly find themselves in a power vacuum, especially if caused by a hostile foreign actor.
It’s not clear the regime is prioritizing this aspect of their military beyond paper tiger levels.
People actually have to keep loading and firing those guns. And not run out of ammo. And the guns have to not break down.
Then, maybe North Korea can get to millions of casualties.
That, combined with how quickly and effectively the US and South Korea can start firing counterbattery missions and establish air superiority to attack the Northern batteries from the air.
The idea is to deploy, fire a few shots and the GTFO as quickly as possible, as the other side has detected your projectiles via counter battery radar and likely sent their own, all possibly within seconds of your first round being fired & often in an automatic manner.
Its reportedly even crazier for mortars - mortars shells move much more slowly than artillery shells, yet you can platform the origin of their trajectory just as well.
This can theoretically result in the mortar being destroyed by a counter battery artilery shell before the first mortars shell it fired even impacts.
So no wonder fixed artilery emplacements might be considered less viable when cutting edge artillery tech is considered.
NK has enough completely conventional artillery in range of Seoul to deliver a Hiroshima level attack. Their WMD programme is about deterring outsiders.
This can definitely be done in both directions.
There are, of course, other considerations, but Seoul would be very difficult to defend from 'simple' weapons like artillery. The US is very proud of it's ability to fire artillery 40 miles (64km), but Pyongyang is much further than that.
Everything I've read suggests the Seoul is a casualty of any conflict. Regardless of the eventual 'winner'.
Once someone on either side has been killed in war, both sides permanently lose. There are no take-backs, only damaged soldiers on both sides and casualties.
Both Seoul and Pyongyang are within range of their adversaries' weapons.
The point oblio is maintaining upthread is that because SK and her allies have much more advanced weaponry NK doesn't have a chance of standing against them in a conventional conflict. That's true, but misses the point.
Before NK had nuclear weapons one of their main deterrents was that they'd had years/decades to fortify conventional artillery at the border pointed at Seul. So even if their military couldn't stand a chance in a conventional war they could plausibly threaten MAD by holding Seul hostage.
That's the context in which the border proximity is brought up. Replying to that by saying that Pyongyang is 150 km from the border or whatever is irrelevant.
Yes of course the US could win an all-out conventional war with an enemy 50, 150 or 1500 km from its border. That was never in question.
The question was whether a relatively weaker enemy could present an outsized threat due to some strategic geographic position.
That's been the case with NK precisely because mid-century artillery technology can be dug-in close enough to the border to matter.
Whereas if the border happened to be 150 km away those assets could be taken out by missiles once they tried to move in position to shoot on a major target like Seul.
Whether the NK artillery actually poses a strategic threat is another matter. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all mapped out be the US/SK and would be taken out in the first 5 minutes of a conflict by targeted missile attacks.
But it's not just a strategic question, but whether e.g. NK can make threats that are taken seriously by the SK population for it to pressure its government to make some concessions to NK.
Sadly no. There are so many UGFs (underground facilities) on the JIPTL (Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List) and we don't have anywhere near enough ordnance of the right types staged to hit them all before Seoul is a smoking crater. I've participated in 5 or 6 of the big Korean Theater exercises[1][2], working at a Corps-level HQ. The entire country is a reinforced underground fortress. Remember how we shelled Iwo Jima for several days and still barely scratched the defences on Mt Suribachi? NK is like that, but worse. They've had 60 years to dig in, and instead of a small island a few miles wide, the fortress is the size of Indiana.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Resolve [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulchi-Freedom_Guardian
This is not 1945.
Thats why diplomacy is the way forward. Our species cant go through a global war with countries outdoing each other to kill civilians.
I think we are in agreement here.
You are right that they might not use the same weapons, but long-range precision guided artillery is expensive. Because the shells are expensive, not all countries have enough to use them without limit as was the case in WW2 - where in the last few months of the Western Front the allies preferred to expend munitions rather than their own soldiers' lives.
- NK has a LOT of artillery, but the majority of this artillery doesn't actually have the range to target Seoul from within NK.
- To significantly damage Seoul, NK would have to concentrate most of the necessary artillery into a rather small area. That would make the artillery easy for the south to target, and difficult for the north to mobilise away quickly (say if they needed to retreate for whatever reason). It would also leave this force more vulnerable to something like an encirclement.
- Assuming hostilities are unavoidable, there would be little military benefit to NK doing this. It would leave military assets in the south free to retaliate in any way they see fit rather than having to recoup from damage a bombardment would bring. It would also further jeapordise any attempts for a peace settlement, or international aid (which NK would surely need due to its military inferiority when compared with the south).
- It is likely that the north would be unable to hold the border for that long, and would be pushed back, so any potential artillery barrage wouldn't last for long.
- NK has a very weak airforce compared to the south, so the amount of functional artillery it could field would drop quite quickly due to airstrikes.
That said, Seoul being targeted is a terrifying prospect, and it would likely happen in a conflict, but I think you are slightly overstating this scenario.
Also, any attack on Seoul would also hurt the economy of SK yes, but a war with the north probably wouldn't last long enough for that to be a factor (although admittedly this is hard to predict with any certainty). And even if the souths economy contracted, say, 50%, it is still larger than the north by an order of magnitude).
If we assume Seoul is largely destroyed, the economic damage I'm thinking of comes from a few different places, not from the war going on but from the aftermath. Many people could die, causing both a loss of expertise and simple manpower. Housing would be destroyed, such that those that did survive would need emergency housing. The massive destruction of property would burn up trillions of dollars in real estate investment. And lastly, specialized commercial and industrial properties would be destroyed. I don't know to what degree Seoul is an industrial capital, but there's likely some of this at least.
A deterrent is not very effective if the thing it's intended to deter actually happens.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/mapping-t...