Quote:
Originally Posted by TLAM Strike
It would go something like this I think:
The DMZ is 160 miles long, assuming the DPRK put all of its suspected bombs along the DMZ it would cover just about 8-10 miles of it. The situation gets worse if the DPRK has to plan for an amphibious or airborne assault.
There are going to be a lot of dead bodies but most are going to be North Korean. But then again there are a lot of people dieing in North Korea right now with no war. If the balloon goes up US and ROK response is going to be amazingly swift and deadly, by the time the amount of dead bodies makes the west queasy it could be over. We took out the Iraqi army in a month with almost nothing prepositioned, we have had 60 years to plan and stockpile for the North Korean Army.
Now if the DPRK does do this, and some South Korean reporter digs up my assessment and sticks it on the news I'm hiding at your house Oberon. 
Then again some might say we need to get rid of someone who would nuke their own soil even more. |
Good points all, and I'm sure I can hide you in the wardrobe somewhere alongside the tanks and helicopters.
A swift and decisive war against the North is a good outcome, however it is depending upon everything to work right first time. As we know, that doesn't always happen, an example that I recall was the laser guided bombs in the Kosovan war which had trouble during rain, as well as radar guided missiles having problems with reflections off tractors, and other objects in the countryside.
Now, even those problems aside, the DPRK is going to suffer extremely heavy casualties, however casualties on the Allied side might not be as light as you'd think, technology can only go so far and if the Koreans have learnt anything from the Vietnam war, then they will have plenty of roadside bombs and other traps as well as Korean undercover agents who stay behind in DPRK villages when the front line overtakes. Now, if the US public can be so divided over 629 average US soldier KIAs per year in Iraq (estimate), how many casualties will there be in a second Korean war?
Now, the first Korean war put out 36,516 US KIA, over a three year period of fighting, so an average of 12,712 per annum. Now, this is a completely different war to the one that we would fight if it all kicked off today, for one thing, the DPRK has no arms parity with us, back in the last war they had T-34s and lots of them, and the ROK was hideously unprepared, and their leader a murdering lunatic. However, we pulled off the Incheon landing and kicked them back over the DMZ and went north, only getting pushed back when the Chinese got involved.
Now, it's very unlikely the Chinese will get involved, the latest wikileaks indicate that they want a more stable government in Korea and reckon that a unified government under the ROK is that much more stable. So, we can march up to the Chinese border with no threat of the Chinese coming to meet us. That's good. However, casualties are still going to be at the level of or higher than the Iraqi war, that much surely must be certain, I mean, the DPRK may be years behind in technology but a bullet is still a bullet and a bomb is still a bomb. The Taliban is decades behind us in technology but they've still been damn hard to subdue.
Perhaps the North Korean people will welcome us with open arms? But then...we thought that of the Iraqis didn't we? And the Afghanis, and yes, some did, but others welcomed us with AKs and IEDs. Now, there's religion behind that, yes, and nothing drives a crowd like faith, but Kims personality cult day in and day out over sixty odd years must be a powerful force of its own, particularly if it is enforced by DPRK loyalist commandos, perhaps hiding in China and using the Chinese border to operate over into the former DPRK, just like Afghanistan and Pakistan...but we can't bomb over Chinas border, China wouldn't like that, but China wouldn't like the Allied forces to get away completely scot-free with an invasion and occupation/liberation of the DPRK and would encourage the US to tie down more forces in Korea and overstretch itself.
I do find it hard to believe that China would be happy with US forces that close to the Chinese border though...but likewise, the DPRK has been nothing but a continued annoyance. Unless China agrees to move in and take the north under its control when the war gets back to the DMZ, and then install a new more stable and easier to control government in Pyongyang...that's another idea.
However, there is one other factor which none of us have brought in whilst discussing a resumption of the Korean war. The economy.
Now, the Asian markets are on a fine line as it is, China is strong (ish), Japan is attempting to recover from the global slump which hit it so soon after the bubble burst, a resumption of the Korean war would smash the markets completely, and that's something China really does not need, and likewise America because if Chinas economy goes down the pan the America follows. Ok, America can pull itself out of the pan faster than China can, but it's still a side effect that's not going to be needed or wanted when coupled to news stories showing coffins draped in flags arriving back in airports in one shot, and market crashes and price rises in another.
Basically, if it was as easy as some people make out, I'm confident that it would have been done already. Therefore, other factors must be in play which discourage both Democrats and Republicans alike (bear in mind that the DPRKs been an absolute ass since 1953) from finishing the Korean job.