North Korea shells South Korean island

[Lightning Lord]

Where would we evacuate 20+million people to?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LL,

I imagine south out of range of the NK pre-sited arttilery at the very least.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

United States dispatches USS George Washington from Japan to Korea

The nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which carries 75 warplanes and has a crew of over 6,000, left a naval base south of Tokyo and would join exercises with South Korea from Sunday to the following Wednesday, U.S. officials in Seoul said.

"This exercise is defensive in nature," U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement. "While planned well before yesterday's unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates the strength of the ROK (South Korea)-U.S. alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrenc

Dispatching carriers to places is kind our "sit the fuck down" statement yes?

[jurble]

But the South can't keep ignoring provocations. This year, dozens of South Korean military personnel and now several civilians have been killed by the North's actions, and the North has gotten away with it. That situation cannot continue.

Seriously, how many other nations on the planet can sink a ship, and shell the island of a neighboring country, and get away with it?

[Spastic Plastic]

North Korea can. This is more extreme than anything they've done before, but I'm fairly sure that South Korea will just sent more money to Kim Jong Il to shut him up for a few months.

Like I said before, it's a very controlled sort of irrationality. The North Koreans have toed the line for decades but always stopped short of outright war.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Seriously, how many other nations on the planet can sink a ship, and shell the island of a neighboring country, and get away with it?

The US, Russia, China, Israel, probably Turkey. Remove the "Neighboring" requirement and I imagine that you could add the UK and France to that list.

[KAH]

This whole meme of "the leaders of _____ are totally irrational" or "the leader of ____ is insane" is stupid, guys. Neocons play the same record whenever they talk about the Ayatollahs running Iran. Many, including the left, also said it about Saddam's refusal to surrender outright to the United States.

Just because NK flexes military muscle to prove a political point doesn't mean they are incapable of rational thought. It just means they are corrupt as hell and only interested in their own ends.

The North Korean leadership may have ample capability of rational thought.

But without reliable facts, rationality only gets you so far, and we have no reason to believe that the North Korean leadership have all the necessary facts, and less reason to believe that they find them reliable.

The North Korean society is built on ubiquitous propaganda. Even democratic countries where information flows more freely than everywhere else, sometimes errs...and with deadly effect. In dictatorships, this is magnified many times over. Yes-men and lickspittles who are chosen for their loyalty rather than their competence thrive; carriers of bad news and inconvenient truths are at best looked as possible traitors.

So Kim may be hitting the internet and Wikipedia once in a while. Who says he believes any of it? I recall a report from a defected Iraqi general who spoke with Saddam days before the US invasion of Kuwait. This general was asked by Saddam about the situation, and if plans for strapping US prisoners of war to Iraqi tanks would work. The general, obviously spooked in the face of opposing Saddam's plans, went ahead with what he believed - that it wouldn't work, that the situation was untenable, and that they would get their asses handed to them if they did not withdraw. Saddam dismissed him with "Yes, well, that's your opinion."

Saddam knew that he was being lied to by people around him, but he had few options. Dictators live in a blinding prison of 'loyalty' that they have created all by themselves and do not know how to deal with effectively.

There's little reason to believe that the North Koreans fare better, informationwise.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Isn't NK just operating a protection racket, writ large?

[Werthead]

I can't see the benefit of that. Evacuating Seoul clearly says to the North, "we're going to attack you", thereby provoking an attack before the evacuation finishes.

Pretty much. In hindsight, South Korea has learned there's a good reason why most countries don't have their capital cities 20 miles from the border with a hostile power armed with long-range artillery. Plus, as has been mentioned, Seoul is one of the most heavily-populated cities on Earth. By some counts it's the second or third most populous city in the world. Moving those people out is impossible without even the pretty information-starved North finding out.

However, this kind of timing has always been a huge problem with military brinkmanship. If Britain, France and Russia had gone to war with Germany rather than accepting Munich, they'd have trounced them. Accepting that peace deal gave Germany time to build up more troops, introduce more advanced tanks and planes and so on and achieve first parity and then local superiority (and even then we could have won if we'd attacked German whilst the bulk of its army was in Poland). Instead we waited and hoped for the best and paid the price.

Similarly in this case, North Korea has made it clear they are going to build more nuclear weapons. This isn't Iran farting around the issue and trying to stay in the law or at least appear so, this is a rogue state saying, "We are going to develop the capacity to kill millions of people at will and we do not give one shit what anyone thinks about it." North Korea's conventional military potential now is dangerous, but that capacity in a few years if nothing is done will be downright terrifying. Living in Seoul with the threat of chemical weapons raining out of the sky with no warning must be bad enough, but it'll be worse when megatons of nuclear munitions are available to Pyongyang as well. Unless the total collapse of North Korea is seen as a more likely situation in the South than they seem to think it is, there seems to be no reason not to at least have contingency plans.

Maybe our SK-resident borders can report on this, but does South Korea and Seoul have bomb shelters, evacuation plans, drills and so forth? Or do they just assume that an attack is never going to happen and carry on as normal?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

FLOW,

Ever read Larry Bond's Red Phoenix? In it ROK and U.S. forces gave the NK lots of ground in the West then after about a week launched a massive counter attack from the rougher terrain in the east on the NK left.

No, I haven't. Sounds like a cool book.

Two comments on that, though. First, I think there are huge political issues with simply surrendering the northwestern part of SK to the NK's like that. Not at all sure the ROK's would do that.

Second, I haven't been to that area in about 20 years. Now obviously, the topography itself wouldn't have changed, but urbanization alone can convert what was previously good tank country into slug zones. So I don't even know if fast movements are even possible there anymore. Also, once you let the NK's get into an urban area, it might be a real bitch to get them out. The best hope there is that the NK army would collapse logistically within the first month, at least in terms of supplying troops that have crossed the border. In that case, peasant conscripts who are isolated, hungry, and getting the shit kicked out of them might throw in the towel.

[Lightning Lord]

Seems like there wasn't much to be done about Seoul as capital. Korea could have tried making it another city, Daegu or Busan, but the city name itself indicates that it should be in charge. It hasn't always been the capital of the peninsula, but for awhile now. :(

I don't know of bomb shelters. Most buildings, especially the taller ones, have a couple floors below street level, but those are for small shops. They aren't (afaik) reinforced to withstand shelling.

The schools have had a couple drills in the nearly two years I've been here, drills that were broadcast throughout the country. I was told to ignore them and continue teaching, just as everyone else in my school and everyone else in other schools did.

So preparedness...not so much.

FLoW

Do you know much about the anti-tank fortifications south of the DMZ? From what I've read, it would be a real chore to get tanks through the northern part of ROK and in the event of hostilities anyone attempting to destroy those would be getting bombs just rained on them from bases in the south of the country.

[horangi]

Maybe our SK-resident borders can report on this, but does South Korea and Seoul have bomb shelters, evacuation plans, drills and so forth? Or do they just assume that an attack is never going to happen and carry on as normal?

Yes, South Korea does have a sheltering procedure. Theoretically, the drills are 8 times a year- in reality, everyone just ignored the sirens and did what every person in a city as compact of NYC does- well whatever they were doing before.

LL: Just from what I've seen, the Northern highways are set up with tank barriers (literally giant blocks of concrete that can be dropped down on the roadway.) In addition, last time I was up north (granted a while ago), there were a ton of embedded tank positions. What also hasn't been mentioned is that, at worst case, the Han river is probably uncrossable to the DPRK. If, by some miracle, the DPRK forces were able to get that far south, the ROK would simply blow the bridges and hold the other side of the river.

[Lightning Lord]

Yes, South Korea does have a sheltering procedure. Theoretically, the drills are 8 times a year- in reality, everyone just ignored the sirens and did what every person in a city as compact of NYC does- well whatever they were doing before.

LL: Just from what I've seen, the Northern highways are set up with tank barriers (literally giant blocks of concrete that can be dropped down on the roadway.) In addition, last time I was up north (granted a while ago), there were a ton of embedded tank positions. What also hasn't been mentioned is that, at worst case, the Han river is probably uncrossable to the DPRK. If, by some miracle, the DPRK forces were able to get that far south, the ROK would simply blow the bridges and hold the other side of the river.

I knew they had the procedure, but there's just nowhere for everyone to go. Like with a theoretical evacuation - there's just nowhere to go. There's plenty of mountains, but half of the country's population is in the greater Seoul area the other cities combined might be able to hold them all, but I would bet not. And this place is nearly 4x as dense as NY.

Seems you're also in ROK now? I thought I was the only boarder in Korea.

[Brude]

The best hope there is that the NK army would collapse logistically within the first month, at least in terms of supplying troops that have crossed the border. In that case, peasant conscripts who are isolated, hungry, and getting the shit kicked out of them might throw in the towel.

A month? The more I think about it, the more I realize that concentrated airstrikes by US and SK forces would probably destroy any logistical infrastructure NK has very quickly. We'd probably have all the roads suppressed and their advances would grind to a halt within days, not weeks. Roads would get choked with ruined vehicles and nothing would move. It's the kind of thing the US is probably the best at and I don't think air superiority will be a problem for us.

I'm looking at the satillite maps of S. Korea north of Seoul and there are a very limited number of large roads that go from the NK border, south to that region. It won't be too hard to keep our planes an choppers concentrated on those few invasion routes.

After that, it will be a turkey shoot for all of those tanks they have which will be sitting ducks. It would be nasty, bloody and due to the proximity of the North to such heavily populated areas in the South, very devastating to SK, but I don't think a war where the North attacks the South would go very well for the North.

[horangi]

I knew they had the procedure, but there's just nowhere for everyone to go. Like with a theoretical evacuation - there's just nowhere to go. There's plenty of mountains, but half of the country's population is in the greater Seoul area the other cities combined might be able to hold them all, but I would bet not. And this place is nearly 4x as dense as NY.

Seems you're also in ROK now? I thought I was the only boarder in Korea.

I agree with you on the reality of an evacuation. However, for the most part I would think the best option would be to hunker down. I'd dare say the the threat of moving during such a panic would be worse than the actual shelling itself (look at what happened in Cambodia last week vs. civilian deaths in the shelling the last two days (albeit a real war would be 1000x worse.)

(I used to live in Korea but moved back home recently)

[Lightning Lord]

Ah, damn. It's so lonely over here, board-wise. :) But my plan that I don't tell my family is just ride it out if anything happens. Because I fear winters and know they're coming, I always have massive stockpiles of food.

Spam and Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Yum.

[horangi]

just ride it out if anything happens. [...] I always have massive stockpiles of food.

Spam and Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Yum.

Honestly, I think this is a good idea. Whether your living in one of the brick "villas" or the concrete "aparts[ments]," your probably better keeping it cool and waiting out any crisis than trying to move during the first 24 hours unless you get a consulate warden message in advance. I actually, (to the ridicule of my in-laws) maintained a reserve of food, water, and gas (for our grill) saved up in a closet. I took the precaution immediately after the DPRK tested their first nuke, only to have my first stash slowly absorbed by my in-laws that thought I was an over-paranoid foreigner. Hopefully, they are correct.

[KAH]

Well, the North Koreans may be looking at a pummeling if they invade, but they can take solace in moral support from someone unexpected (?).

[Lord O' Bones]

Dispatching carriers to places is kind our "sit the fuck down" statement yes?

In my experience, absolutely. And for the record, I'm no longer "zzzzz"ing about this.

Man, I wish I had access to a JOTS terminal right now.

[Spastic Plastic]

Well, the North Koreans may be looking at a pummeling if they invade, but they can take solace in moral support from someone unexpected (?).

I hereby commend Sarah Palin for her brave support to our North Korean allies, and nominate her to be our ambassador to Siberia. After all, she can look east and see her house whenever she feels lonely.