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In the case of Rwanda, a great deal of the breast-beating that followed had to do with the fact that Western nations could have done much more to prevent the genocide than they did (at least on paper). The strategic situation with North Korea mandates that the only thing to be done to relieve the suffering of North Koreans would be to restart and win the Korean War. China likes having North Korea as a buffer state on that border (which is why they intervened the first time), and at least in decades past, Russia and China had ideological reasons to prop up the regime.

More immediately, Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it. In the renewal of hostilities, Seoul would be flattened within hours, and Seoul has 15 million people living in it. More than Russia and China, that gun pointed at South Korea's head has always mandated extreme caution when dealing with the North (and allowed the North to get away with provocations that would have been crazy anywhere else).

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> Seoul is within range of the DMZ, and North Korea has 80,000 pieces of artillery aimed directly at it.

Why didn't South Korea start, decades ago, relocating its capital to somewhere out of artillery fire, i.e. end all development in Seoul and build a new city in the south. It seems to be a bit thoughtless to build a major city where it is a hostage to the brutal and aggressive dictatorship next door.

A bit of a tangent here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._in_the_America...

Despite being the nation's capital, Washington remained a small city of a few thousand residents, virtually deserted during the torrid summertime, until the outbreak of the Civil War.

"Of all the detestable places Washington is first. Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fair [fare], bad smells, mosquitos, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience... Beelzebub surely reigns here, and Willard's Hotel is his temple."

At the outset the U.S. Civil War, Washington D.C. wasn't just a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater; it was a stinking, festering, undefended podunk backwater bordered on the south by the most powerful bastion of Confederate sentiment and on the north by a state experiencing a crisis of North/South identity. So why didn't Lincoln pack up and move the capital to Philadelphia or New York? This question isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious. Was it national pride? Would moving the capital have been viewed as an act of implicit defeat? Whatever the reason, perhaps the South Koreans felt the same.

This is an interesting question, and one that a few brief minutes searching the usual sources doesn't turn up an obvious answer (or even much discussion). Moving the capital doesn't appear to have been seriously considered at the time.

It is easy to find lots of information on Washington DC's civil war defenses - some ~70 forts, 400 emplacements for field guns, and unmatched transportation/communication infrastructure. The resources devoted to protecting the capital instead of campaigning were a regular source of contention for Lincoln, his generals, and public opinion - many opportunities were missed by Army of the Potomac commanders who feared leaving DC vulnerable.

On the other side, the Confederate capital was originally in Montgomery, Alabama, and moved to Richmond, Virginia when Virginia seceded following Fort Sumter. Like Washington, this put the capital remarkably close to the front lines, but the existing industry, infrastructure, political weight, and defensibility seemed to make the position worth the risk.

Hoping someone with knowledge chimes in :).

The world was bigger and slower back then. If southern troops were mobilized, there would be days or weeks of warning before they got to DC. By that time, the politicians could retreat, and replace themselves with union soldiers.

Given this story http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/sites/uscapi...

During the war construction costs for the new dome [for the Capitol building] other parts of the building drew unfavorable remarks. Lincoln, however, stressed the importance of continuing the work, saying, "If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on."

The same reasoning would explain keeping the capital in DC.

They actually have been trying to move the government functions to Sejong City(which is 120km south of Seoul), but the courts stopped it from happening:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18670195

I don't follow Korean politics, so I don't know if the motivations were to escape NK artillery or some other reason, but it seems like organizing a massive move is just one of those things democracy is bad at.

They didn't build it after the Korean War, it's been there for 2,000 years. While they could relocate the government to Pusan, the millions living there would likely have stayed, resulting in the same situation.

What was the population of Seoul just after the war ended? Would I be right in guessing it was a lot less than it is now, and that most buildings in modern Seoul post-date the war?

Seoul means very much for them. If I understand right, "Seoul" is a word for capital.

They took traditions seriously and traditionally it's THE capital. Even North Korea considered Seoul the capital for decades, calling Pyongyang "the capital of revolution" or something like that.

Also, it was a very poor and unstable country post-war and didn't feature much strategic thinking. And obviously USA wanted their military bases near the border, i.e. in Seoul.

At what point was this a good idea or even remotely feasible? For most of the 20th century South Korea was comparatively poor and a developing nation. They've only reached a level of wealth comparable to the western world in the last few decades.

Also, an attempt to move people out of the capital would have been a provocative act to North Korea, at any time. Because it would have been seen as an obvious prelude to an invasion.

Would relocating the capital really change the strategic situation much? North Korea possesses missiles whose range could (supposedly) hit any other piece of ground in South Korea.

It would change it a lot, but maybe not enough. As it stands now the combination of civilian population density and quantity of North Korea artillery means that millions of people would die in even a single hour of shelling.

However, even if all of Seoul was evacuated it wouldn't necessarily make things so much better as North Korea has missiles with enough range even to hit Japan or the US, and potentially nuclear weapons to go with them. Potentially one could imagine banking on anti-missile systems to nullify that threat but that's a pretty big gamble.

During the cold war, the same could be said of Washington D.C. Even now, a surprise SLBM salvo can turn DC into a smoldering crater before you can say "get the president to the bunker".

It's prohibitively expensive to move a city, especially if the justification is "if we get really f-d, then we'll be a little less f-d".

The U.S.'s defense against an attack on D.C. was the assumption of a rational enemy, nuclear hardened command and control bunkers very far from shore, nuclear hardened ICBM silos very far from shore, continuously airborne nuclear bombers, and very stealthy SSBNs.

Really, South Korea's strongest defense is that an invasion by the North would instantly kill enough US troops to guarantee massive US retaliation against all military bases in NK, and would instantly kill enough civilians that China wouldn't retaliate as long as no US troops crossed the DMZ. Hopefully this is a big enough threat that a significant number of high-level and mid-level military leaders would stage a coup d'etat rather than follow orders to invade SK.

Edit: one would hope that the U.S. and China already have negotiated how much retaliation China will tolerate in response to various acts of war by NK. One would also hope that these details have been leaked to NK.

This is a question I've had as well -- but since I can't think of any examples of this happening in any country ever, despite the timelessness of the plight, my hunch has always been that it's essentially impossible for some reason that's not readily apparent. (My money's on the impossibility of mustering political will to do something so destructive that reeks so much of defeat and desperation).

Maybe submit this to xkcd's 'what-if'?

> China likes having North Korea as a buffer state on that border (which is why they intervened the first time)

That seems somewhat similar to the logic that the US used to decide that Vietnam was strategically important; some sort of minor variation on the domino theory.

Interesting to consider it like that.

As I understand it (I could definitely be wrong) China's concern isn't geopolitical but pragmatic: the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the DPRK would be a gigantic flood of refugees into China.

That is how I also understand their position currently, but I'm not sure that makes sense as their reasoning initially before the situation was so extreme (I'm assuming it wasn't, though I suppose war refugees of any sort can present an issue).

It would be easy to underestimate the importance of "sphere of influence" doctrine to (post) Communist states

Why would it not result in a flood of refugees to S. Korea (ROK)? Unless you're saying that the indoctrination is such that they would rather flee to another (more moderately) centrally-controlled regime versus a free democracy - one that shares their culture (ignoring the most recent 60+ years) and language?

The conduct of the war in Vietnam makes it easy to laugh at the notion of "containment", but it made a lot of sense to a generation who had just witnessed the slaughter of WW2.

The Soviets had no warm water ports on the Pacific, and Vietnam was smack the the middle of key US allies and strategic trade routes for rubber and oil. It was a strategic place.

That said. This isn't an excuse for the insanity of US policy in Vietnam from 1945 onwards.

Except that North Korea is a bordering country to China (by a land border no less). A little different to Vietnam, not very close to the US.

From my own reading, it seemed that China's involvement was largely due to the Russian, and Chinese push for more "Red States" (which is why they were also involved in Vietnam). There was the notion that Capitalism would fall by the hand of "Global Revolution"...

Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either.

Koreans have shown already that they sometimes still think of themselves as one people, with north and south koreans being friendly toward each other and wanting a reunion of the country (the way of the reunion that is the disagreement).

North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world. South Korea also has a huge army.

Also both of them have huge amounts of military equipment.

And finally, Korea in general (both from north and south) and very belligerant, or was at least, in the past, Korea history is filled with wars that they caused, and crazy conquest attempts.

Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship.

The united Koreas, maybe will just awesomely advance the world technology... Or maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China.

There are several countries that don't want to risk the second option, and thus every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself.

I am not saying I agree or condone that, but this is how it works.

Your entire post feels very ill-informed.

> Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either.

Name one.

> North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world.

No, it doesn't. The US, China and (India, IIRC) all have larger standing armies.

> Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship.

This is a poor and complex example. Several quite Japan-specific cultural issues are at play here. It's also not as welcoming to non-Korean foreigners as you seem to imply.

> The united Koreas... maybe they will start another crazy war and attempt to conquer Japan or China.

This is ridiculous.

> ...every time one Korea is losing advantage in the stalemate, that Korea gets some sort of clandestine or official help, in a way to force the stalemate to continue, and the biggest army of the world divided in half and turned into itself.

Aside from the factual inaccuracies ("biggest army of the world"), this feels like a half cooked conspiracy theory. Do you have any evidence whatsoever?

Division of the Korean peninsula was as a matter of fact a capitalism vs communism thing. Its a cold war baggage.

North Korea was a proxy for the USSR and South Korea a proxy for the US.

US wants a strong presence in the area given how Chinese are growing on the world scene currently. I am not saying that the Kim family are saints, but US is not present in South Korea for charity work. Everyone in the game is for their interests.

It looks like he got the "biggest standing army" from Active military + Reserve military + Paramilitary. Just sort descending by the "Total" column: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

It's still a misleading stat, The North Korean stats are essentially a "Total War" stat (as that reservist number is the ~ number of Males). To suggest that any countries are scared of another's simply by it's population is ridiculous. Let alone suggesting that "The West"s combined forces would be intimidated by that...

"Human Wave" [1] Tactics didn't work very effectively in the Korean war, they would work even less in a modern combat theater.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_wave_attack

> "Human Wave" [1] Tactics didn't work very effectively in the Korean war, they would work even less in a modern combat theater.

The Chinese were quite successful in the Korean war. But yeah I do not think those tactics would work today.

You seem to be looking for evidence that this is actually true.

Wasn't speeder explaining why people wouldn't want a united Korea, probably based on faulty assumptions and stupid theories?

Not that I found his comment very convincing anyway but things like this do not have to be true to be the reason for policies.

The point is that no-one actually has those faulty assumptions. They are make-believe, and thus do not form the basis for any decisions that have been made (or will be made in the future).

Historically societies have based foreign policy on equally or more ridiculous assumptions so I'm not so quick to dismiss the idea of fear, prejudice or historical animosity being a factor.

Regardless, you clearly were not making the point that no one has those faulty assumptions, you were pointing out that they were faulty. That was my entire point.

> Historically societies have based foreign policy on equally or more ridiculous assumptions so I'm not so quick to dismiss the idea of fear, prejudice or historical animosity being a factor.

As a generality, sure. However, "fear of a united Korea" is not a driving factor behind any "Western" plot to keep them divided. It's preposterous to anyone who knows anything about geopolitics in the region.

> Regardless, you clearly were not making the point that no one has those faulty assumptions, you were pointing out that they were faulty. That was my entire point.

You're interpreting my post a little narrowly.

The "assumptions" are faulty to the point of being ludicrous. It's implied that no-one actually believes it to be true.

It's a bit like saying terrorists "hate us for our freedom".

> It's a bit like saying terrorists "hate us for our freedom".

Excellent example!

My point is that that preposterous assumption is widely believed by people who vote and is therefore a large factor in foreign policy, even if those who are using it as a talking point have other motivations and don't actually believe it.

Then there are also those that are in office and do believe this kind of stupidity, optimists generally feel these types of politicians "can't exist" because how would they get into office without being smarter than that. As I got older and actually met a decent number of politicians I realized they were normal people who can be just as stupid and confused as the public in general, especially when it's in their interests to believe these things.

I agree in general with what you write here, with a big caveat: Korea is at the cross-roads between China and Japan, and throughout their history have been the battlefield between those two. Most recently, Korea suffered under a long and incredibly oppressive Japanese occupation up to the end of WW2. While Koreans are militarily ahem enthusiastic, it's not that Korea is the crazy man of Asia, prone to belligerence and expansionism. There's a long history there and a lot of justified anger on the part of Korea towards her neighbours.

> it's not that Korea is the crazy man of Asia, prone to belligerence and expansionism.

As a Korean-American, I'd say that's accurate, but it would be more accurate without the phrase after the comma and without the negative in the part before the comma.

> Let's remember that several western countries do not want a united Korea either.

This might be true of China and Japan -- though I'm not sure I'd call them Western -- but I doubt if any European country would be the least bit bothered.

> Other asians are still very wary of ethnic Koreans, in Japan for example it is known that while there are several non-japanese citizens, ethinic Koreans rarely get citizenship.

Almost ALL Foreigners living in Japan rarely get citizenship in Japan. Havent you been told ? Your example means NOTHING.

As for the crazy conquest/wars started by the Koreans, feel free to substantiate, please. And let me laugh at the idea of Korean conquering Japan/China. Where in the world can they even dream to do so ?

You seriously have no idea what you are talking about.

> North Korea has the biggest standing army of the world.

It's big, but not quite biggest according to Wikipedia. Or are you using a more specific definition of "standing army" than the amount of active servicemen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

(Just a nitpick though, I appreciate your input.)

I think South Koreans don't want the united Korea either (not on the words but in practice). It will pose a huge burden of organizing and assimilating a huge and a very strange country.

Regular North Koreans will be eager to join but then they won't be so happy in fifteen years seeing how their life quality won't nearly match the "historical south" and only jobs available to most of them will be of low prestige and pay.

South Korea has already sunk billions of dollars into trying to help the people of the DPRK without even considering unification, and is promising even more than that in exchange for certain concessions from the government. There are still many families that have yet to be reunited with each other across the border, including parts of my extended family. The Korean War hasn't ended so long ago that there aren't still plenty of people that remember what it was like before this split, or even back to WW2 and earlier.

Nobody is saying unification will be easy for anyone, but they're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers just because the burden is a lot to shoulder.

Not to mention it's not South Korea blocking the development of North Korean workers at the moment.. there have been attempts to work together (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region) but between the batshit crazy government up north and everyone else scared shitless of what they can do it's not possible to manufacture and import/export a lot of technology instead of just mass-manufacturing clothing with cheap labor. Pretty frustrating.

Part of what makes the "wait it out" solution particularly troublesome is that as generations pass, the "hey're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers" thing will gradually become less and less true.

Right now there are families in which people who were once together are now divided, but those generations are rapidly aging. How many generations can these two groups of people be relatively isolated before those bonds start to falter?

South Koreans just want to keep playing Starcraft and League of Legends.

I can't blame them for that. I'm sitting on the couch in a warm room with new year tree and 47" TV right now and I certainly won't want to go outside in the snow and cold to fix the agriculture or restore the order of some remote and unhospitable land.

Also won't want to have my lifestyle degrade because my country suddently have 20 million unproductive mouths to feed.

If Seoul is within range of the DMZ, wouldn't that mean that a first air strike with very heavy gas bombardment would be relatively easy? After all the planes wouldn't have to fly very far and whatever radar NK has is properly a joke, or nonexisting.

The problem with nukes is that it only takes one. One that SK/US intelligence didn't know about and bomb in the first strike.

If the West really cares that much about South Korean civlians, why doesn't North Korea use their threat to extort stuff from the West? Say things like the following:

"Lift the US embargo or we'll kill 15 million South Korean civilians."

"Give us $10 billion a year or we'll kill 15 million people."

"Give us an aircraft carrier or we'll kill 15 million people."

"Give us some better technology or we'll kill 15 million people."

"Give us 10,000 South Koreans to us as slaves every year or we'll kill 15 million of them."

What's stopping North Korea from making these demands?

Well, it has been doing essentially that for decades, and they are getting food and oil 'gifts'. There is a lot of negotiation by South Korea and USA with North Korea all the time about where exactly the line will be drawn, with all kinds of negotiation chips.

They don't have N * 15 million people.

But they did use the "give us a hundred thousand tons of grain or 100,000 people will starve" tactic pretty effectively thru all the 90-s

>What's stopping North Korea from making these demands?

That they are an actual country, and not some comic book villain's brotherhood?

I mean, WTF? People in the West really believe those kind of things can be demands or that those kind of BS passes through North Korean people's minds?

If a war opened with a surprise attack against that artillery position, could the attack be strong enough to save Seoul?

Does this change if the attackers are allowed to use nuclear weapons?

(This is a strictly academic question. Nuking North Korea seems like a move that'll likely start a war that will end civilization.)

As I understand--and please be aware I'm only working off public information here--no. North Korea is well aware they cannot wage a war of aggression nor can they sustain a defensive posture. They've been aware of this for 40+ years and have had time to prepare. Their only effective military option is to make the cost of defeating them so prohibitively high that no nation will dare. To this end they've riddled the mountains near the DMZ with tunnels for logistic resupply and as firing positions. These tunnels admit the movement of men and material out of sight of overhead spy planes and, now, satellites. The DPKR easily has thousands of tunnels at its disposal.

It's entirely possible that the US and its allies have mapped the endpoints of these tunnels and _could_ simultaneously bombard them all, but if even 10% were missed Seoul could be absolutely decimated. (There are reports that South Korean and US special forces make incursions into the North to discover and map tunnels, so I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of unknowns is much higher than 10%.)

Interestingly, if Seoul and other populated areas were to be moved--that is, its 15 million citizens collectively abandoned the city and rebuilt, say, 100 miles away from the DMZ--this strategic advantage of the DPRK would be voided. Ignoring the staggering cost of this, it's probable that the North would view such action as provocation to war and act accordingly.

From the field of possible responses to North Korea it's entirely possible that waiting for it to burn itself out may well be the least costly tactic, measured by unnatural human deaths. That means, of course, that the DPRK's concentration camps and system of repression must be tolerated until such horrors lead to the destruction of the government from internal forces. Personally, I find this morally repugnant and I pity any world leaders that must choose the waiting game.

The Imnam Dam on the Bukhan River is North Korea's "I win" button. It's holding back roughly 3 BILLION gallons of water and wired with explosives that can be remotely detonated from Pyongyang. If it were to fail or be destroyed Seoul would look like New Orleans within the hour.

The south spent $500 million dollars building the Peace Dam downstream in an attempt to defend against flooding, but it is still a very credible threat.

General consensus of American boots on the ground in South Korea is that the North Koreans will be in Seoul (or what is left of it) within 48 hours. Everyone drills for rapid evac. The picture we like to paint is that they are inept starving fools, but they have been planning and drilling non-stop longer than some other countries have even existed.

Actually the wikipedia article says that the Peace dam can contain flooding from Imnam Dam. But I take your word that its not as simple as containing water by turning a tap.

I forgot entirely about the Imnam Dam. Thank you!

Well, the tunnels near the border aren't really an offensive threat to SK, but regardless I'd be willing to bet that technologies like SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) and others we don't know about have already been used to map the majority of their tunnels near the border. Considering the massive defense expenditure by the South, I'm equally sure they are keeping close tabs on the activities of the DPRK military in general. I think the real concern is the dam mentioned in another comment combined with boots-on-the-ground invasion, attempting to overwhelm through sheer numbers(would be short-lived as the preparations for which would no doubt be noticed beforehand).

If Seoul installs an Iron Dome-like system similar to Israel(but on a much larger scale) it would render any remaining artillery bombardment from the North mostly ineffective(as SK and US forces would likely hit the majority of their installations very quickly):

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=10007...

Absolutely decimated. And the remaining 90% was unscathed.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your comment. You might mean one of two things:

1. There could be some confusion as to what is left undestroyed by 10%. I intended that figure to refer to the DPRK's tunnels, but especially the artillery capable tunnel mouths, not Seoul itself.

2. You may be employing a single definition of 'decimate', namely 'to take a tenth part of, tithe'. I doubt you mean the historical Roman practice of killing every tenth man, chosen by lot, of a legion. I kindly note that 'to destroy a large percentage of' is a a commonly accepted English usage of 'decimate'. It may be the most common usage, especially as knowledge of latin roots is not widespread.

The second one is a pet peeve of mine. For anybody who's familiar with the traditional meaning, the newer meaning is actively confusing, since both mean destruction, but only differ by degree.

Are there really not enough words for destroy/crush/obliterate/etc, that another one needs to be created?

So to break the stalemate, china would have to invade north korea?

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