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Originally Posted by Skybird
Yep. Just one thing really is worrying, or two.
First, the chance that NK shells the south with dirty grenades or bombs, shells with radioactive material to contaminate the region. Second, the NK seems to turn increasingly desperate, and that is what makes such regimes even more ruthless and not caring for any future: because they have nothing to lose.
Primitive weapons and no gasoline to fuel planes and tanks - okay, but the AK-47's bullets still kill when hitting and the old iron bomb still explodes. A war still would call a tremendous blood toll, on both sides. I only say: get a map and check the topography. Mountains. Hills. Plenty of woods. The right place to play the old cowboys and indians in the jungle type of game.
Maybe that path cannot be avoided, nevertheless. Ball is in the North's field. And I am against making concessions again.
What a war would mean in financial burdens for an already bankrupt America, I do not even mention.
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It's entirely possible that they could do such a thing, but their artillery range is fairly limited, they don't have any standard artillery that can reach Seoul, only missiles. So what they would hope to achieve with a dirty shell attack is beyond me, extend the DMZ perhaps?
Certainly it would cause alarm and concern, and a large scale retaliation which would cause a lot more damage to the DPRK than the DPRK inflicted to begin with, even if the clean up would be easier.
The DPRK is in a corner, this is true, but Kim is not a Muslim, he knows that as long as he keeps control over the military then he has a cushy number. It is most likely this concern which has prompted him to conduct the nuclear and missile tests, in order to gain approval from the military and cement his position. The military know that if they start a war then it's all over for them, they can see the guns of the ROK, the ships and drones of the US, they have access to the internet, they know that their only hope of continued survival in the future is the nuclear bomb. If they gain enough nuclear weapons then the south will not invade them. When they are able to miniaturise the nuclear weapons enough to put them on a missile, then things get a little more tricky because it comes down to how much damage they can inflict knowing that the retaliation will be total. However, right now their nuclear weapons are about the size of Fat Boy or Little Man, they have to be dropped by aircraft, and no aircraft is getting a millimeter across the DMZ without getting a SAM shoved up its exhaust pipe.
Now, the terrain is good for jungle warfare, however they have to get across the DMZ first, which has a mine in every other square foot, which has countless killzones marked and remarked. A simple few radio codewords and the southern part of the DMZ becomes a sea of fire. It would be a massacre, and although the DPRK will cross the DMZ through weight of numbers alone, it will not be able to repeat its success in the last Korean war by driving south to Pusan, it just doesn't have the mobility, nor does it have the airpower to cover it.
It will be open season for anything airbourne with infra-red sensors, although I admit, the infantry will be hard to find, it would be like Vietnam in that respect...but such an approach in warfare would not achieve much, and certainly wouldn't capture Seoul any time soon.
The casualty count on the DPRK side would be ridiculously high, and eventually the ROK would gain the initiative and push north, which would lead to a massive crisis in the DPRK leadership.
In regards to America, well I can't say, but honestly bankruptcy or not, if you don't want Iran or the DPRK to have the bomb, then America is your only hope, Europe won't do anything about it, Russia and China won't do anything about it...so you'd better hope that the US isn't bankrupt because they're the only people willing to step up and do the job that you want doing.
If I were Kim though, I'd use those nuclear weapons in a similar manner to which we used our mines in the opening of the Battle for Messines Ridge. Would open up the DMZ quite well by blasting several kilotonnes worth of holes in it. Wouldn't even need to tunnel all the way to the other side of the DMZ (although it would be advantageous to the DPRK if they could detonate the nukes UNDER the border forces, but the risk of detection before detonation would be too high) just plant them in the middle in several clusters and detonate to clear a way through the minefields. Use the artillery to clear a way through the defending forces and then send in the shock forces to break through what's left.
However even this plan (which relies on a lot of things going right for the DPRK) wouldn't be enough to capture Seoul, because the ROK would just fall back and commence massive attrition and the USAF would join in the fun and games shortly afterwards and that would be the end of the war.
Whichever way you wargame it, the DPRK doesn't get anywhere near as far as it did in the last Korean war, in fact, in many circumstances it doesn't even get as far as Seoul.
I won't write the DPRK military off completely, like you say, a bullet is a bullet, it will still kill, however the fact that is for every one DPRK bullet, the Allied Forces can return a missile worth fifty bullets. It will be bloody, but at the end of the day, the biggest blood will be shed by North Korea...and that's why they won't attack, they will do every single thing they can up to that point, but they will not initiate all out war...because they will lose, and defeat will mean the end of their comfortable lifestyles, which although they are becoming harder with each passing sanction, are still much better off than the people below them.
No, in my opinion, they are dragging this out until they can miniaturise a nuclear weapon, and then they will sit back and say "Right, well, we've done it...now let's talk about arms levels." All this posturing is just mirroring the internal power struggle between the new boy and his military.