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North Korea shells South Korean island


KAH

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NK is a nuclear power. And they are crazy enough to use nukes. You all keep saying "casualities of 250k in the first few weeks before they are crushed." I assume you aren't factoring in any attempts by NK to use nukes either on the penninsula or at Japan. Part of NK's whole schtick is that they want everyone to know they are crazy enough to do this, especially if they are desperate or desperately losing.

ETA: Also I'm not sure what the US's capability is for conventional ground forces in Asia, naval and air power I'm confident we'll kick ass.

From what i've read, they have only a few nukes. Less than a dozen. They probably have a limited amount of launch sites, and chances are the US/Japan etc actually know where they are.

Everyone is going on about the nukes and NK's numbers and losses, but i think the losses would be entirely one sided. The North Koreans would simply get slaughtered, at least in the initial engagements. Guerilla warfare would be something else entirely, but their main forces would simply get fucked up.

Add to that that most of NK is starving, chances are their soldiers are likely to have piss poor morale and give up when things get too hard...because its simply not worth it.

If it comes to war, which is alaways an unknown when the leader of a country is fucked in the head, NK is toast.

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I suspect China doesn't really care about NK as much as she does about having the U.S. even closer to her borders. I think China would prefer that the U.S.-affiliated SK stay the hell away, except in trading relations. So, if China can take care of the NK problem and deny the U.S. a chance to make another staging area in Asia, I think she will. China has allowed NK to be a problem because it provides a nice distraction for the world at times. But when the distraction causes more problems than is worth, it'd not be a surprise to see China step in to remove Kim and his unruly generals.

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Not to mention that the massive debt that the US owes China will go out the window in case China went to war on NK's side. China would send in peacekeeping forces once the worst fighting is over (this is in case there's a war in the first place), but they'll be nominally on the South Korean side.

I think that this is really naive. What is more likely, in my opinion, is that the North Koreans realize that no one wants to deal with the massive casualties that the war would cause, and the economic burden that occupying the north would require. Knowing this, they can blackmail their enemies into dealing with them.

You're kind of overestimating North Korea's efficiency and sanity. They're living off black market goods and in terrible poverty, yet still send test missiles streaking over Japan just to prove a point.

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You're kind of overestimating North Korea's efficiency and sanity. They're living off black market goods and in terrible poverty, yet still send test missiles streaking over Japan just to prove a point.

No, the common North Korean is living in terrible poverty. You are assuming that the leaders of the country share that position or actually give a fuck about the common people, which is probably not the case.

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You're kind of overestimating North Korea's efficiency and sanity. They're living off black market goods and in terrible poverty, yet still send test missiles streaking over Japan just to prove a point.

Yes because everyone in North Korea is insane.

@Wert: Thank you for your answer and I hope your last sentence is the truth. Really, we don't more death and violence.

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WH,

I don't think anyone believes everyone in NK is insane. However the NK leadership has not always been terribly rational.

Why because they don't give a fuck about the poor in their country? Personally I do not believe that the NK leadership is insane. Kim is another matter but well at the end he is one man - you can always get rid of one man.

Up until now the NK leadership was able to control the land and earn TONS of money - the poor do not see one Cent of those Millions, that's true.

They must have made some good desicions - otherwise they would not rule NK. At least that's my point of view. Everyone has the right to think otherwise :)

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You should also read "Nothing To Envy". The title comes from the song they sing in North Korean schools, where the lyrics say that North Koreans have nothing to envy from the outside world. It's a really fucking depressing book - perhaps the worst part is the one that shows how the North Koreans, physically the same as the South Koreans only 50 years ago, are being born with shorter bodies and larger heads because of starvation.

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I don't think anyone believes everyone in NK is insane. However the NK leadership has not always been terribly rational.

The terribly irrational leadership of North Korea has managed to stay in power for half a century, while countless dictatorial regimes around the world have fallen due to bloody coups, terrible civil war, and violent revolution. Maybe they're not as irrational as you think that they are?

It strikes me as odd that many of the proponents of this theory also seem to believe that the leadership overestimate's their own military might. Why then, have they not attacked South Korea, if they are so deluded that they believe they have a reasonable chance of victory? It doesn't make sense. They know the military capabilities of USA, South Korea, and Japan. Even a coffee farmer in Ethiopia can wiki that information. It seems more logical to me that they are willing to blackmail the world into financing the continued existence of their regime, and thus, the comfy lives of those in power.

If you think about it, it is a rather brilliant ploy by those in power. They have the entire world playing their game, and getting them exactly what they want - continued power.

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Any worthwhile reading on Chinese/Nork relationships? I was under the impression that China like North Korea to be a pain in the ass because it sucks up US assets. China also has some slave labor factories in NK, no?

Does China have any publicly stated plans on what they are going to do when NK collapses?

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WhiteHaven, do I have to be literal about everything and yell it out clearly?

I didn't mean every North Korean is insane. I meant that the North Korean leadership is completely irrational, and those who are rational are just too intimidated to speak their minds.

The North Korean leadership, other than the Dear Leader himself, seems very rational to me. They just have different goals.

The people at the top live very, very well. The generals get luxury, weapons, prestige, etc., all in a country that would be far too poor to support that lifestyle in anything approaching an open society. If they opened up and stopped those insane military expenditures, the military/political people currently at the top would have less power, less prestige, and less luxury. Sure, it's not sustainable in the long term, but in the long term, those particular people will likely be dead anyway. They'll continue to loot the corpse of that country until there is absolutely nothing left to loot.

So, if you assume the goal of the rulers are entirely selfish, what they're doing is far from irrational.

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China likes NK because it's a buffer between them and US allied SK.

They also like NK beacuse as long as it exists and remains not-China, they don't have to fucking deal with the HUGE fucking refugee/starvation/etc problem that is the inevitable endgame of NK.

Which is why China is perfectly happy to let the situation continue as is. So is pretty much everyone really.

The international community only shits it's pants when it looks like war is about to start between the Korea's or when NK looks like it might gain the ability to kill someone besides it's own citizens. Otherwise, no one, especially not their neighbours, want to deal with them or the fallout of their collapse.

And, as LooN points out, NK knows this and uses it to their advantage.

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I know little about the Korean situation, but is it possible that the increasingly bellicose behaviour of the armed forces reflects some sort of internal political problem linked to the succession?

Of the three sons, one is a bit of a playboy whose favourite pasttime is trying to sneak into Disneyland Tokyo, the middle one is apparently out of favour because 'he's like a little girl' and the youngest one has been appointed due to the fact he's a general in the military. However, there's also a bunch of more distant relations and several senior generals who are jockeying for position. There's been speculation that the sinking of the South Korean warship earlier in the year was a product of this internal struggle with the right hand not doing what the left hand is doing.

What is the topography of NK? Is it flat? Mountainous? Hilly?

Not as hilly as the Ottoman Empire, but still pretty hilly. Actually, the border is mountainous and pretty bad territory for tanks but then appears better to the south. One idea I've seen is that North Korea's previous best chance decades ago would have been to smash through the central DMZ with an armoured thrust, then hang a right and encircle Seoul before South Korea knew WTF was going on. However, that's no longer really viable since North Korea's armoured forces are so old they could be stopped with a couple of guys armed with tin openers. With American and South Korean air superiority it'd be the Gulf War Road of Death all over again.

This was one of the reasons why the Korean War was such a problem. Once both sides could get through the mountainous central region of the peninsular, they found it to be a war of movement (at one point the North Koreans had seized the entire peninsular apart from the UN bridgehead on the south coast before the UN forces broke out, and at another the UN forces had taken the entire peninsular right up to the Chinese border, before China intervened and threw them back). Inbetween, when they were fighting through the hills, it was more like WWI trench warfare and the use of aircraft and tanks was limited.

imo, best option here would be, to scramble the jets, bomb all their artillery positions first, and then bomb the airfields. Afterward, bomb the nuclear facilities, if ya wanna. Then establish a No-fly Zone over N. Korea, and bomb them at random intervals to let them know who's boss.

That's certainly one option, but given that there are allegedly about 12,000 artillery pieces ranged on Seoul, some of which may have chemical warheads, you'd need to hit all of them on a first pass before any could fire. Otherwise you risk a pretty horrific situation developing in the capital. I'm not sure if the US, SK and Japan's entire airforces would be able to guarantee being able to fly enough sorties to hit 12,000 separate targets in a very small window of time.

Surely the leaders of that country realize this? I know that the population is kept in the dark about, well, everything... but are those in the know also overestimating thier own military might? Becuase if they have a realistic grasp on the military situation (ie. starting a war = defeat) then what makes them so confident that they can shell thier neighbors without setting off a war? I realize that this particular border has been tit-for-tat for 50 years... but an artillery barrage into a populated area is a big fuckin' deal. Do you realize how apeshit the US would go if someone shelled an American town? I just wonder what the NK's are thinking, and why they're pushing the envelope lately.

North Korea has been pulling some pretty aggressive shit recently and the response from South Korea and Japan has been lukewarm, at best. They're seeing how far they can push before South Korea pushes back.

NK is a nuclear power. And they are crazy enough to use nukes. You all keep saying "casualities of 250k in the first few weeks before they are crushed." I assume you aren't factoring in any attempts by NK to use nukes either on the penninsula or at Japan. Part of NK's whole schtick is that they want everyone to know they are crazy enough to do this, especially if they are desperate or desperately losing.

NK has a few, small nukes and no proven capability to deliver them to a target and detonate them. Plus if North Korea uses a nuclear weapon on Seoul or another South Korean city, especially if they kill thousands of American troops and civilians, what are the odds that the USA drops one on Pyongyang in retaliation? The other issues are that Korea is pretty small, dropping a nuke anywhere near the border (such as on Seoul) is a bit like trying to kill someone standing five feet away with a hand grenade. If you're not careful you could do yourself serious injury as well. Finally, if NK starts firing off nukes, not even China is going to raise much protest when NK gets invaded by the USA and her allies

ETA: Also I'm not sure what the US's capability is for conventional ground forces in Asia, naval and air power I'm confident we'll kick ass.

There's 30,000 US troops in South Korea, more in Japan. There's certainly enough to do some serious damage by themselves, and the South Korean and Japanese militaries are formidable enough that more American troops wouldn't be needed. The USA and her allies already have naval superiority (it's actually quite impressive that the NKs managed to sink that SK warship so quickly, since their subs are pretty old), and would achieve air superiority very quickly. The North Korean jets and ships really need to be in a museum.

It's actually interesting to see Japan go on alert so readily. Whilst they hate North Korea, they're not exactly flavour of the month in South Korea (who've 'stolen' a lot of trade and manufacturing jobs from Japan, in the Japanese view) either. I'd bet that having Japanese troops fighting on the Korean Peninsular, even alongside the South, would be controversial in Seoul.

They maste have made some good desicions - otherwise they would not rule NK. At least that's my point of view. Everyone has the right to think otherwise

No, the reason they are running North Korea is because the military and the politicans work together to keep the common people completely in the dark about the outside world. They tell the people that South Korea is still in ruins from the Korean War and that the USA rule the country as a puppet state. Anyone who argues with this - like people living near the DMZ who can see the lights of Seoul blazing in the distance when all of North Korea is blacked out due to power shortages - is disappeared. It is terrifying how totally successful their regime of control, propaganda and ideological brainwashing is. When the government falls and the people of the North have to rejoin the world community, they are going to have a staggering case of culture shock.

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imo, best option here would be, to scramble the jets, bomb all their artillery positions first, and then bomb the airfields. Afterward, bomb the nuclear facilities, if ya wanna. Then establish a No-fly Zone over N. Korea, and bomb them at random intervals to let them know who's boss.

That won't/can't work. There are far too many NK artillery positions to suppress absent months of airstrikes, especially given that many of those sites are at least partially hardened, and guarded by well-sited AA missiles.

There really is no way to disable a signficant number of NK artillery tubes before they are able to launch hundreds of thousands of shells. The best hope for neutralizing them is to attack the ammo resupply routes/depots, which means they get to fire all the ammo they have on hand, and engage in counterbattery fire, which likely would be difficult given the NK troops that likely would pour over the border. In terms of actually eliminating those artillery units, though, it would take physical occupation of that ground by troops.

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That's certainly one option, but given that there are allegedly about 12,000 artillery pieces ranged on Seoul, some of which may have chemical warheads, you'd need to hit all of them on a first pass before any could fire. Otherwise you risk a pretty horrific situation developing in the capital. I'm not sure if the US, SK and Japan's entire airforces would be able to guarantee being able to fly enough sorties to hit 12,000 separate targets in a very small window of time.

Alleged is the big thing though. I've heard alot of reports that it's actually closer to 60 that could hit Seoul, and even those can't hit the centre. (Not that this is much of an issue since most of SK lives in and around Seoul) The canons are also old as fuck.

Missile Batteries are potentially more of a concern as I remember.

But ultimately, I don't think it's known for sure what the North Koreans could do, but it's alot less then popular internet myth says.

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But ultimately, I don't think it's known for sure what the North Koreans could do, but it's alot less then popular internet myth says.

This. People keep screaming about North Korea's 'vast army' but it's a vast army of malnourished, badly-trained conscripts using decades-old equipment and who are pretty badly motivated. Not exactly as terrifying as some make out.

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