"What If?" Scenario: Korea

[attackrat]

So I'm sure we've all been following the news lately about North Korea and their enthusiasm for pursuing a larger, more capable nuclear weapons stockpile. I don't want this to be a political discussion, a pissing contest or a flame-fest. Instead, I would like to see your thoughts on how a modern Korean War would play out. I don't know very much about this theatre of operations, and I have no clue what the current US/South Korean/North Korean deployments look like, so I'd like to hear from those of us who are familiar with the units, the land, the capability of each force, etc.

Any thoughts?

[Kingsman39]

Lots of arty...

[brazen]

with all that pre sighted artillery.... it would be a mess for 36 hours or so... i wouldn't want to be living in seoul. but after the first day or so the south/american forces would do what they have trained to do... could be messy for a while though... the north has a deliberately decentralised command structure to avoid the problems iraq had.

i don't think the north korean people would have the heart. they support the regime so long as there is a status quo. if something happened the nation may collapse totally... as its only being held together by a tether as it is. food and humanitarian problems would be disasterous

[bad_cayuse]

Would China support the DPRK or remain neutral? Thats the central question for me.

[bad_cayuse]

Attackrat if your interested theres some links to force makeup under opfor armor in sb general discussion

[ShotMagnet]

IMO it wouldn't last long. Lots of artillery, then a probe that would go nowhere fast. It should be noted that in the Korean War, the North Koreans were rolled up pretty quick, once the allied forces got their collective act together.
Since then, the DPRK has done nothing but lose ground politically, economically, and militarily. The best DPRK tanks, according to http://www.fas.org simply don't measure up.
The DPRK economy, suffering under a regime that has effectively isolated itself from the rest of the world, is not able to feed itself. Starvation and cannibalism seem to be the 'order of the day' up north. How well and how hard they might fight would be reflected accordingly.
Short, sharp, and over pretty fast, maybe faster than the first time.

Shot

[Ssnake]

A war in Korea simply is inacceptable unless you accept Seoul being wiped out. Might be a good idea to rebuild the city in the south preemptively.

[brazen]

A war in Korea simply is inacceptable unless you accept Seoul being wiped out. Might be a good idea to rebuild the city in the south preemptively.

pre emptive reconstruction....

the man or woman that pulls this one off would surely be in line for a nobel prize of some sort...

[chrisotto]

i don't think the north korean people would have the heart. they support the regime so long as there is a status quo. if something happened the nation may collapse totally... as its only being held together by a tether as it is. food and humanitarian problems would be disasterous

NO WAY

You must understand some points before arguing on NK...

1. Confucianism: The strong beliefs in a superior and the unquestionable following of before mentioned person will not result in North Korea citizens jumping around in the streets... The Iraqi mentality has a lot of Bedouin culture still in it, the idea of being a nomad in the desert. The authority is always right and you will always be obedient. The NK propaganda structure is built on the same ideas: The Kim family displays themselves as "fathers", kind of benevolent pater familiae, not as timocratic government figures.

2. The closed eremit-kingdom-syndrome: Asians, especially Koreans, are horribly xenophobic. No outsider will ever be welcomed just like that (yes, even the UN was frowned upon and still is, refer to Korean newspapers, please). This closure of the borders and total information blackout also results in a diluted perception, there is no equivalent to BBC World Service, which still gives a certain different perspective on World Events. Go to www.kcna.co.jp for a deeper look into the propaganda twists on the DPRK.

3. Information Blackout, Travel Ban: Contrary to East Germany, there is no "normal" way in or out of NK, no free traveling. There is no way to contact relatives in the DPRK, no way to visit them... Even the recent exchanges of relatives was nothing: The ROK sent elderly people, desperately wanting to see their relations in the North for the last time before dying, the DPRK sent people to the South, the delegation composing only of Professors, athletes, Party cadre... i.e. "politically reliable".

Any thoughts? Political discussions: Please PM me and drop me your e-mail address.

[chrisotto]

http://www.chollima-group.com

Watch this web-page for future DPRK propagada posters & T-shirts...

[brazen]

by self destruct i don't necessarily mean the nation will do the same as iraq, i mean its very fabric may fall appart. the nation can not feed itself now, take away its biggest sources of food(foreign aid) and the results would be a disaster. popular revolution is unlikely, but mass starvation and hardship will be problems very quickly. i fear this would only be made worse by the structure of the norths government and by the very things mentioned above in points 2 and 3, the structure of the society lends to the possibility that the people actually do nothing while their nation falls to pieces in the midst of a foreign onslaught. the lack of any centralised authority which would follow the initial stages of a counter attack, may be able to be dealt with by a decentralised army, but the ability of the people to act without food, or any central figure is somewhat questionable. the nation may simply cease to exsist where it is not represented by local officials or a military presence.

that said, i also believe that paramilitary forces would be a problem as they were long after the north korean army was shattered in the last war.

[attackrat]

Hmm, I didn't realize the North was in such bad condition. I wonder what their worst-case nuclear strategy looks like: it sounds as though a fight could potentially lead to use of tactical nukes at a very early stage, perhaps in the first week of fighting. Anyone know any specifics on the North's tac-nuke strategy and deployment systems?

[chrisotto]

Hmm, I didn't realize the North was in such bad condition. I wonder what their worst-case nuclear strategy looks like: it sounds as though a fight could potentially lead to use of tactical nukes at a very early stage, perhaps in the first week of fighting. Anyone know any specifics on the North's tac-nuke strategy and deployment systems?

The main problem is the control of the nukes... Firing control might be centralized with Kim Jong-Il, maybe the battlefield commanders have firing authorisation on hostile incursion... Both ways, the trigger is in the hands of a single person.

[ShotMagnet]

I'm kind of wondering if the nukes would be launched. They're in the hands of a totalitarian regime, this regime has the basic, Stalinist, lack of regard for life, and that might make it seem as if their use would be a given.
Having nuclear weapons and actually using them are not the same thing, though, especially in the case of North Korea. Isolated economically, they have survived this long by trafficking in illegal narcotics and weapons. What tenous contacts they have with the rest of the planet would be severed the moment they launched what missiles they had. No one would want to be seen associating with such a nation, even secretly. What economy they have would dry up and blow away. That's assuming that the inevitable counterstroke left the nation in any shape to have an economy.
Totalitarian regimes don't think rationally, but the prospect of national suicide must still merit a measure of attention.
Assuming that it doesn't, there's still the technology of the rocketry to consider. The North Koreans have shot a missile over the Sea of Japan. Very impressive, great way to scare the neighbors, but how many times had they tried to do the same thing, before they got it right? Missiles, even for folks who have been firing them regularly, have a habit of being very finicky.
A fired missile might fail from its own inadequacies and the consequences from a botched launch might make things worse for the DPRK than if they had launched, and hit something.


Shot

[Ssnake]

I don't think that the North Korean leadership is acting totally rational. Going down in a blaze of glory, and taking the world with them (or at least their neighbors) might actually appear to them as an option. In any case, even without nukes, Seoul would get wiped out since it is within conventional artillery range. And the inevitable collapse of the South Korean evonomy would trigger another major economical crisis in the entirety of Asia, including the choked Japanese economy, und ultimately hit the USA as well as Europe with a severe recession.
From a strategic point of view, this risk is pretty bad. You'd need a damn good reason to sacrifice a multi-million people city and world economy as well as eventually starting a nuclear exchange for making war with North Korea.

[chrisotto]

I would not call the NK regime totally irrational.

The last time threats were made, it resulted in loads of foreign food shipments (which were done without any country's marks on the outsides of the bags, which was a demand of the DPRK) and the building of the reactors.

It is therefore rational to appear to be irrational, it pays off the most.

[ShotMagnet]

Going down in a blaze of glory, and taking the world with them (or at least their neighbors) might actually appear to them as an option.

Hardly a rational act, at any rate.
It should be noted, though, that the most recent experience with 'irrational' regimes did not result in the use of CBW. One could say that C3I was disrupted, that SH didn't have them, etc, but he also didn't use them 12 years ago. On the other hand, he did manage to ignite a lot of oil wells, for reasons that are hard to view as other than irrational.
Not that I necessarily think the DPRK regime is totally irrational, though current policies and practices that allow, perhaps require, massive starvation and cannibalism would be hard to view as rational.
I don't want to lock this thread, I won't veer any closer toward politics. I think they won't use nukes, if it comes to that. Regardless of policies and stratagems, questions about missile reliability and/or accuracy will probably keep them on the ground.

Shot

[brazen]

its very much a historical rule that wmd aren't used by dying regimes. i don't know why this is

hitler did not use mustard gas on allied soldiers, when it would have been devistating. he had large stockpiles, and on several occasions stated that if he couldn't rule germany, nobody would.

when it came down to april 1945, no such attack.

theres something to be said for the fact that most wmd's are offensive weapons, and have been used thus historically. be it an atom bomb on nagasaki, mustard gas in the trenches of ww1, or saddams offensive against the kurds.

maybe it has something to do with the fact that it takes a lot of skill and time to issue and deploy them, not something you can do as your force is being over run.

that said, its always been rumoured that israel had its nukes deployed in the first few days of yom kippur when it looked very likely that the syrians would cross the river jordan.

[Ssnake]

I would not call the NK regime totally irrational.Me neither. I wrote, I don't consider them totally rational. ;)

[ShotMagnet]

its very much a historical rule that wmd aren't used by dying regimes. i don't know why this is


Interesting; one would think that the last act of a dying regime, especially the ones noted here, would be the 'blaze of glory' Ssnake mentioned. Could be something to do with the fact that, as you mentioned, defensively these things seem to be a lot tougher to employ than offensively. Why that might be so might have something to do with the difficulties of decontamination. An attacking force would have the option of cleaning up a gassed or plagued site, or bypassing it if the difficulties of cleaning up proved cost-ineffective.
Defensively the option to bypass wouldn't exist; the attack would probably occur on home soil and/or on a target as valuable to the defense as to the offense. Defenders at ground zero would have to go through lengthy decontam procedures made difficult if not impossible by attacker artillery and/or air attacks, which would still have the defenders sited even if the attack failed. If they couldn't decontaminate they would have to stay in place, they probably couldn't participate in a counter-attack, and they likely wouldn't be in any condition to counter-attack anyway.
Could be that defenders using WMD might be doing themselves more potential harm than good.
In Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy makes the interesting case that chem/bio attacks are potentially more destructive than nuclear attacks, for the long-term eco-damage that results, though it seems to me that a nuclear detonation and attendant fallout would present some nasty eco-damage itself.


Shot

[bad_cayuse]

IMO, I dont think that bio weapons are of much use as defensive weapons as they require substantial time to feild and appreciate results , also used to close to the final protective lines expose the defenders troops to the same weapons. As for chemical weapons being used defensibly I can see a nonpersistant agent ie blister agent being used to slow an attacking force or to deny terrain to combat ops. Tac-Nukes on the other hand could be possibly used in a final protective fire scenario to disrupt a main assault but again used defensivly would result in the loss of defense personel who would probably be lost to enemy action anyway.