1. I do not consider it likely that North Korea will have the means to successfully deliver nukes to population concentrations in S. Korea, Japan, or the US. As far as I know this is expert consensus. It has had impressive successes in both nuclear weaponry and long-range rocketry in the past year, but there is still no concrete evidence of the successful coupling of the two technologies. Without that, you are just going to get a far shorter and less intensive – and likely not that much more accurate – version of Germany’s V-2 attacks against London in 1944-45 (with just three civilian deaths/rocket, one of the least effective military investments ever).
2. The construction of a survivable deterrent capacity is a separate project that will take many more years and might in any case be beyond North Korea’s capacity anyway.
- The actual strength of the North Korean Army might be closer to 700,000 troops (the widely cited one million figure is now suspected to be more of a fantasy). Furthermore, I don’t see a large percentage of these being credibly combat-worthy. It’s no secret that the North Korean military doubles as a source of cheap labor, from helping with the harvest to road repairs and construction. This is time that they don’t spend training. Healthcare is at a Third World level. That recent defector was swimming in parasites, and those are border guards which could be expected to be more privileged and politically reliable than average. There has since been yet another defector. This raises questions about the real state of morale in its forces.
The often quoted figure of 200,000 “special forces” I suspect are the only ones loosely equivalent in quality to regular First World armies. However, even they are much more technologically obsolete. For instance, even at the most elementary level, none of the North Korean soldiers I have seen in videos ever seem to have body armor – something that has long been standard in modern militaries. As commenter peterAUS also noted, the last experience of real military conflict that North Korea had was more than half a century ago. How much do North Korean generals, and no less importantly, officers, know about modern developments in military theory?
North Korea does indeed have some genuinely “special” special forces with impressive feats over the decades. However, by analogy with other countries, there can’t be more than a few thousand of them.
One more note on morale. Although North Koreans have never lived better – hardly a high bar to clear relative to the barracks socialism of Kim Il-Sung and the famines of Kim Jong Il – this has also translated into a large material gap between elites and commoners. To be sure, North Korea has always had draconian, legally entrenched class differences that would put any capitalist country to shame (read about Songbun), but it is only in the past decade that is has become more visible than ever before – that is, the Pyongyang elite now has cars and access to department stores, while the rest have only have bootleg DVDs about the unimaginable quality of life in China and South Korea. And we know from cliodynamics that rising inequality is the death of asabiya. Unclear if unprivileged conscripts would still want to fight for such a country.
4. North Korea’s air defense system is extremely dense, and with over 150 AAA positions, Pyongyang is the most defended city in the world. But the guns and fire-control radar are of 1950’s/60’s Soviet vintage.
Much good they will do against this scenario (which is itself from 2003):
Six B-2s each armed with 80 500-lb JDAMs sequentially launch from Guam. The strike is coordinated with several divisions of B1-s with 12 JDAMs per aircraft and F-117s with two laser-guided precision-guided weapons per aircraft, taking off from other bases in the region. These strikes would be deconflicted with the launch of more than 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the various cruisers and submarines positioned in the Pacific. Six additional B2s, flying out of their homebase in Missouri, time their arrival closely behind – loaded with 24 1,000lb JDAMs or 16 2,000lb JDAMs. One thousand targets could be destroyed prior to sunrise.
- The US has by far the best SIGINT in the world, and more of it is concentrated per square kilometer in North Korea than on any other country in the world.
Recent leaks indicate that voices within the Trump administration, including McMaster and Trump himself, want to “punch North Korea in the nose,” for instance, by destroying a launch site while the North Koreans are prepping for a new missile test. They should have no problems in doing so.
I do not believe it at all likely that China will intervene. While China has a formal alliance with North Korea, which it has publicly affirmed it will keep, it has no love lost for KJU and would not mind him getting taken down a peg or two. Another thing that few people mention is that both China and Russia have good relations with South Korea, and are unlikely to want to jeopardize them for the sake of Rocket Man. Neither China nor Russia want a nuclear armed North Korea, which could potentially rebound on them; and should this provoke a pro-Chinese military coup against KJU, then all the better for Beijing.
Consequently, the smart thing for North Korea to do at that point would be to swallow their pride and leave matters be.
- North Korea has no proportionate means to retaliate against this. Maybe it could just about manage to lob a missile at Japan or Guam, with few chances that they will hit anything important, but that will just invite a much harsher retaliation against its military infrastructure.
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What North Korea could do unleash its massive artillery forces against Seoul – the “soft” WMD doomsday scenario on the Korean peninsula. This might add up to a few 10,000’s of deaths before they are fully suppressed, especially if chemical weapons munitions are used.
This means total war, of course.
As I wrote, “I suspect it will be a harder nut to crack than Iraq in 2003, or even 1991. It is an ultranationalist regime with a formidable secret police, so you’re [probably] not going to be buying any generals off. North Koreans have higher IQs than Iraqis (so more competent), do not practice inbreeding (so more cohesive), and a have a lot more hills, mountains, and tunnels (which partially negate South Korean/American technological predominance).”
Still, this doesn’t make up for the vast technological gap (which some “anti-imperialist” writers seem to brush off as of no consequence). A South Korean victory over the North is pretty much inevitable, with the KPA getting much the worse of the exchange and ceasing to exist as a coherent force within a couple of weeks if not a few days.
Perhaps the regime’s best technologically feasible bet to stall and massive increase costs for the advancing South Koreans and Americans would be to use nuclear mines (an idea touted by NATO in the 1950s to counter Soviet numerical superiority). Not much the advancing forces will be able to do about this, and will increase their military deaths from 1,000′s or even 100’s, into the 10,000’s.
If China is smart (and they are) they would use the opportunity to try to foment a pro-Chinese military coup against KJU, and/or to take direct control of most of the country under the pretext of defending it from American aggression. With North Korea existentially engaged in the south and the Chinese-North Korean border denuded, this should be a trivial task. Americans end up expending most of the political capital, South Koreans do most of the bleeding (apart from the North itself), and the Chinese end up with most of the actual territory, which it could then leverage in post-war negotiations.
Are there sources for the expert consensus? I have no idea, since I’m not well versed in the topic, and it’d save me an hour or more of searching and reading.
Absolutely crazy piece. No power has ever got stuck at the stage of putting ICBMs and H-warheads together, and all the clowns who now assure us the DPRK has done so were telling us yesterday they couldn’t manage either technology individually. As for survivability, all it takes is one mobile system or suitably equipped submarine (both of which the DPRK has or will soon have) at most, probably not even that.
The supposed amazing advances made by the US since 2003, or indeed since the 60s, are imaginary.
The Chinese also don’t have much military experience. Remember the time when Mussolini tried to take advantage of the French military collapse, and it brought him little glory. The North Korean troops might even have more motivation against them, since they will probably think that
A) the Americans defeated them, not the Chinese, who merely try to prevent the reunification of the country (Kim will certainly not want the Chinese to have the spoils after his own death); the Chinese will also be seen as traitors; militaries don’t like to surrender to such backstabber secondary attackers, for example the Greeks surrendered to the Germans but not the Italians, the Hungarians in 1849 preferred to surrender to the Russians instead of the Austrians, etc.
B) it’s better to wait for and surrender to the Americans anyway, in the meantime they might hold off the Chinese
But I think it often took several years to put them together, so it isn’t improbable that the North Koreans are not going to crack that nut for a few years either. But I wouldn’t bet my house on it.
North Korea may be capable of launching a nuclear missile in 2018
I don’t think such delays in deployment, where they happened, reflected technology problems but rather a more leisurely schedule, since those powers all had a bomber force already.
The Italians were frontstabbers of the Greeks (but backstabbers of the French) in 1940, they just missed with their thrust.
This topic is beyond your expertise.
http://www.38north.org/2017/11/melleman113017/
The idea that China will not intervene is absurd in the extreme. Their strategic interests and exposure on the Peninsula are existential. And it important to remember that the last time out China defeated the US without a navy or air force and with a WW I army that did not have enough rifles to go around. This time they come equipped with a fully modern military, army, navy, air force, cruise and ballistic missiles and nukes. They have the second largest submarine force in the world, after North Korea’s. And while North Korea’s is obsolete, the Chinese force is modern. The China Sea will be a killing zone for the American navy.
One should also remember that the USSR participated in both the Korean War and the Vietnamese War (China did, too). Russia has same strategic concerns as did the USSR, and they will provide aid and assistance to the Chinese and North Korean forces.
Furthermore, as The Saker has pointed out, the terrain on the Peninsula imposes an infantry war, a walking war of trenches and bunkers, platoon on platoon. In that war, our magical Wonder Weapons (reference to Hitler, if you’re too young to get it) will be much less effective. Also, we have very few infantry nowadays, and they are reluctant to engage raghead militias, never mind modern infantries.
Finally, everyone ignores the people of both South Korea and Japan. Both countries suffered nearly genocidal losses in WW II, and Korea again suffered such losses in the Korean War. Both populations have large pacifist minorities that openly oppose any war with North Korea. Pres. Moon of South Korea was elected on a peace platform, and while Abe is aggressive enough to please American neocons, he is severely constrained by Japanese pacifists.
It is utterly impossible that either Japan or South Korea will sign off on any pre-emptive attack on the North. Their populations will not give up all that they have built over the last 70 years or suffer another genocide. Both governments will at the very least disavow such and attack and denounce it, and they might intervene to prevent it.
Regardless of whether the North can deliver nukes by missile, a renewed Korean War would mark the end of the American Empire and our expulsion from the Western Pacific.
Yes, I gave a number of different examples where the defeated military was willing to surrender to one but not the other. Being backstabbed is one reason. Perceiving to have been defeated by the other is another. Providing considerably better conditions to POWs (like Western Allies vs. the Soviets at the end of WW2) is a third. All three will apply here: the Chinese will be backstabbers, not the ones to defeat the North Korean military, and providing worse conditions to POWs.
Apparently they believe it’s going to be finished in a year, maybe as little as a few months. And those beliefs are not things I’d bet my house on. What if, for example, they managed to mount a warhead on one of the shorter range missiles? The problem of mounting one on an ICBM could be more difficult than on a shorter range missile. It’s possible that they already cracked that nut, or will do so quickly.
Who wants North Korea, except for North Koreans? It seems to me that the territory is pure liability to any modern power that could occupy it (South Korea included), and a massive one at that. So not sure what kind of leverage holding it would give to China. If it comes to all-out war against North Korea, the winner will be whichever one of the US or China will get the other (or the other’s allies) to take responsibility for occupying it. A plausible compromise is that one or the other or both will find someone pliable in the local elite (or among the higher-ranking runaways) and put them in charge, under certain stipulations and with foreign supervision to make sure that they will not be a nuisance (and that eventually Korea may be reunited, but I don’t think anyone will want to rush it this time; integrating East Germany was hard enough for West Germany, but here the contrast is even sharper).
” some “anti-imperialist” writers seem to brush off as of no consequence [the technological gap]”
again we judge by results:
In Serbia, we know that US&NATO allies had a mediocre record at destroying a dated military. They did disrupt it and force it to go into hiding, to be sure, but only bombing soft (civilian) targets + political maneuvering led to the Serbian leadership surrendering. No technological edge was required to bring about this income.
In Iraq, they had a better record mopping up conventional forces. They then proceeded to fail at the task of occupation, which is also where they fail in Afghanistan. US&British cutting edge SIGINT&precision strikes? Similarly failing to curb Houthis militias in Yemen (Gulf Arabs are not doing this on their own, Western expertise is involved at every level) who keep beating back GCC troops and mercenaries. Again, the technological edge including drones&precision strikes can’t secure victory.
In North Korea both winning conventionally and seizing the ground will be required. What with these nuclear sites? You’re looking at a high likelihood of encountering the same resilience the Serbian military put up AND a high casualties partisan war that promises the same grit as islamic fanaticism. No wonder the US has opted out for all these decades, even as NK WMD potential was still in its infancy.
Assuming Kim doesn’t believe himself to be dead anyway in such a scenario. For example he might think that his prestige among his generals would collapse unless he retaliates. Then he’ll bring about total war in the hope of somehow surviving it or at least avenging his own death. Or he’ll retaliate in the hope of not bringing about total war. But the Americans won’t be very understanding, so total war will arrive anyway.
The Serb military would’ve been cutting edge in the 1970s. The North Korean military would’ve been cutting edge in the 1950s. Big difference. The Serbs’ opponents were 1990s US and NATO forces. The North Koreans’ opponents will be 2010s NATO and US forces. Another big difference.
Can anyone explain the meaning of the words “strikes would be deconflicted”? There should be an antonym for IYI.
Why do you think there have been significant purges in the North Korean leadership, including KJU’s uncle by marriage?
The situation might change if the Chinese military entered North Korea, ostensibly to protect it from the Americans.
The North Korea drama is substantially fake, tho it indeed may become a tragedy killing tens of thousands of Koreans … it is a fiction through collusion amongst the USA, China & Kim Jong-Un, preparing an epic distraction from the upcoming Chinese and global financial explosion of excessive debt which cannot be repaid (about 40 trillion in China, over 200 trillion globally)
Everything in North Korea is dependent upon China, apparently even their internet connections, Kim Jong-Un is a puppet
A big background story – not easy for today’s ‘smart realists’ to grok – is that nuclear weapons are fake and have never existed … Will not repeat the longer material here that I’ve posted on Unz
AK: Yes, good idea. Because I am just going to hide this nonsense behind the MORE tag to save comment field real estate for better material.
, but in a nutshell, Hiroshima & Nagasaki were beyond any shadow of a doubt firebombing raids just like Tokyo etc, artificially promoted as ‘nuke’ events – mushroom clouds are chemical – Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman has been showing for years nuclear weapons aren’t possible – Antony Sutton proved half a century ago, the US & Soviets were in collusion during the entire Cold War, and an element of that was the fake ‘nuclear terror’
The fakery of nuclear weapons are upheld via big power collusion, just like other big fake stories the major powers collude to uphold – the laughably fake ‘moon landings’ of 1969-72 – the fairy tale of USA 9-11 New York towers destruction as caused by ‘Muslims hijacking planes’ (see the New York Times ‘Israeli art students’ in the towers photographed with boxes of bomb detonators) – the plain-as-day CIA fakers ‘Edward Snowden’ & not-really-living-inside-Ecuador’s-embassy ‘Julian Assange’, who was even admitted by both Bibi Netanyahu & Zbig Brzezinski to be a fraud run by US intel
The perhaps upcoming massacre of Koreans on both sides of the border, with maybe some Japanese murdered as well, will be a satanic ‘sacrifice’ providing an excuse for the economic disaster that is the inevitable consequence of the usurious debt bomb that is far more ‘real’ than ‘nuclear weapons’, with China as likely ground zero for worldwide economic wreckage
Kim Jong-Un as a boy with father –
http://www.timpul.md/uploads/modules/news/2010/10/16310/658x0_kim-jong-mickey.JPG
This guy just came out of my conspiracy theory where governments spread extremely dumb conspiracy theories just to crowd out sane dissident voices.
Remarkably level-headed piece. So many people, of diverse viewpoints, find it advantageous to exaggerate the threat posed by Little Rocket Man. So really refreshing to find the contrary approach.
The idea that the Korean Political Caste System is undermining military effectiveness and ability to resist is not one I had encountered before. So Mr Unz is true to his logo.
Songbun is a legally-based caste system, not an economically-based class system, though the former does determine the latter. Its like something out of the Ancient World – the Hittites or even the Aztecs. North Korea is not a modern state. More like Aztecs with Nukes.
Will Rocket Boy act like Moctezuma ? Time will tell.
I don’t even know how to comment on this? LOL. I always thought (and was taught) that SIGINT is used on a broadness of frequency spectrum, from radio-waves to thermal (it is also radiation, you know), to whatever else. But live and learn, I guess,. I also wonder how can one “concentrate”, but I am being picky, of course, wink-wink.
60s air defense systems become ferociously powerful when their components are put on trucks, which the North Koreans have done. Zoltan Dani’s exploits were noted by everyone. No great SEAD revolution has happened since the late 90’s – there’s no way around scoot, ping, shoot, scoot for long range standoff methods.
North Korea has modern MBTs, ATGMs, and ammo for said MBTs. ‘Experience?’ The ‘experience’ you get from clobbering incompetents and insurgents might be considerably worse than nothing. Bad habits accrue from such duty. Including high reliance on vehicles from airfields that would be smoking craters in a war with an opponent like North Korea.
The US could do Syria-style cruise missile strikes, but nothing really comprehensive without invasion.
If there is one thing to remember over everything else, it is that the IQ of the operators of complex technologies matters more than the vintage. The US bigwigs realize the operators of the North Korean air defense systems are competent, and for all the public bluster know that their experience in Iraq signifies little. They may be overconfident, but not overconfident enough to invade under almost any circumstances.
Probability of cruise missile attack on test site… 10% or so in my estimation. Too afraid of escalation and misinterpretation. On the other hand generals might be frustrated with Trumps unwillingness to be hard on Russia in Syria, and this could be the outlet.
Let’s note that he is ethnically Hungarian.
North Korean capabilities or lack thereof mean nothing. What would be the Nork’s motivation to attack America or it’s “allies” knowing it would mean certain death? If Imperial Zionist Washington was not in the service of evil it would revoke sanctions and stop threatening North Korea. It would then send a delegation to seek opportunities for trade.
under the pretext of defending it from American aggression.
This seems familiar.
Cutting edge in the 50s? Come on, they are more advanced than that. They do have some newer weapon systems as well AFAIK and overall the military is much larger than the Serbian military of the 90s. (OK, South Korean military is large as well and just south of the border, but still.) Cutting edge in the 60s and (early?) 70s sounds more more accurate to me.
I agree with the article to an extent (to a large extent, tbf), but while many people overestimate North Korea, IMO I feel (yeah, that sounds convincing lol) that Karlin is somewhat underestimating NK. It seems that some parts of the article are easy to misunderstand, like the first sentence… So you’re saying that NK is atm not capable of delivering nukes to even SK? Not that they’ll never be able to do it? Because that’s how I read it at first and I don’t think that’s the case at all… Shouldn’t be too far off at this point.
And if I understood the China part correctly, you’re saying that China will not intervene if there is a a limited strike against NK, launch sites, etc.? I guess that’s quite likely, but if the Second Korean War breaks out and an actual invasion commences, hell no. Huge risks there, but I guess Trump has proved that that is something he could actually try…
They have superior firepower, manpower and more advanced tech.
You are missing two factors, past and future.
It was the PRC which saved the DPRK from complete destruction by American forces who killed millions. Later, the Mao’s PRC was their most important supporter.
http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/why-wont-china-help-north-korea-remember-1956
And people in the elite of the DPRK might prefer becoming clients of the Chinese to being dragged to RoK courts and send to prisons.
Not buying that. The Norks have a lot of experience with missiles. Only a reliable strike against American territory would be difficult to accomplish.
I do not doubt that they should be able to destroy the best target, Camp Humphreys.
http://web.archive.org/web/20171107132136/https://thediplomat.com/2017/11/camp-humphreys-the-story-behind-americas-biggest-overseas-base/
Fewer sites means fewer targets which is good news for the small nuclear arsenal of the DPRK.
Good point. American tanks and armored vehicles were useless during much of the Korean War because of the mountainous terrain. They were often easy targets for enemy infantry in the mountains shooting down on the narrow roads and paths. That’s why the Korean War ended up being about close quarters, often hand to hand, infantry combat, and saturation bombing by the US of North Korea.
It’s hard to imagine the US and its allies committing tens of thousands of infantrymen to another slugfest. Most likely the US would just try to bomb North Korea in a new Korean War and “shock and awe” it into surrender, which probably won’t work but may allow the US to save face and keep something close to the status quo.
Seems like an excessively optimistic piece; also quite speculative (two defections of border guards are hardly sufficient proof that morale is low in NK’s army). There are too many unknowns, and since even a small risk of North Korea nuking Seoul or Tokyo or some US city is too high imo, “preventive” war still looks like a very bad idea.
US attack on North Korea will never happen because Americans have no balls for it. It’s one thing for Trump to spew BS on Twitter and another to risk the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers, not to mention his own political future. If something goes wrong for Americans in Korea I do not see Trump surviving this politically.
The fact is NATO war machine is weaker today, than it was in the 1990s. Significantly so. American military spent the last 15 years training to wage counter-insurgency campaigns against sand people. That won’t help them against North Korea.
I see no one remembers TF Smith.
I know next to nothing about the Korean War, but searched for it. It was in South Korea, where the terrain is less mountainous.
I don’t think that applies to the Air Force.
They also will face an extreme terrain – most of the mountains are up north.
The Soviets were just as important, but Kim Il Sung purged from his party both the pro-China and the pro-Soviet factions. He was fiercely independent throughout his reign, as are all of his descendants.
That’s possible, but I’m not sure lower level commanders will think that way. Especially since there will probably be a propaganda war as well, I guess the South Koreans will be smart enough to try to lure the North Korean soldiers and officers to defect.
All in all I don’t think we can be hundred percent sure that the Chinese will be able to easily and quickly conquer North Korea in the event of a war. Nor can the Chinese leadership.
US was always going to enjoy air superiority over North Korea, but it won’t be enough to win a war against North Korea.
US game plan will be to launch a bunch of “precision strikes” on NK, and then hope that NK does not retaliate. If NK retaliates, Americans will find themselves in a world of hurt. They (US military and society) are simply unprepared for a war that will follow.
I also think something like this. Attaching a warhead to an ICBM is quite difficult even if you have a small enough warhead (I think the biggest difficulty is protecting the warhead during the re-entry phase), not to mention targeting etc., but attaching a warhead to one of their smaller, shorter range missiles is a problem they have had several years to work on, I’d be surprised if they didn’t manage to solve it.
Yes, Kim has successfully built up a reputation of being crazy that no one can really bet on him not retaliating in some crazy way, should the Americans attack him.
Not crazy. Delivering on your threat is a perfectly rational thing to do. Trump would be crazy to attack Kim. He would be risking everything for what, a reprieve from Russia investigation?
I can’t evaluate it myself (don’t know any East Asian languages), but there are also claims that North Korea’s nationalist ideology has some distinctly anti-Chinese elements; e.g. that argument is made in this article (the author is Chinese, so I trust his judgment):
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/kolumnen/aus-aller-welt/was-nordkorea-wirklich-will/
He claims the North Koreans in their view of history make a big deal of the kingdom of Goguryeo which repelled several Chinese invasions in the early 7th century; and more generally reject any traditional claims of Chinese influence on Korean civilization. Apparently Kim-Il-Sung had the tomb of the mythical king Gija (supposedly a Chinese sage) demolished already back in 1959, since he regarded Gija as a Chinese invention harmful to the sovereignty of the Korean nation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kija%27s_Tomb
So there seems to be quite a bit of tension in North Korea’s relationship to China.
Merry Christmas to Mr. Karlin and all!
Aum
While I generally agree there’s a good likelihood that various organized groups are using that tactic to taint and discredit “conspiracy theories,” even including on this website, I very much doubt this Brabantian fellow is part of that. I’ve noticed quite a number of his comments in the last year or two, and they just don’t strike me as sufficiently purposeful.
Instead, I think he’s just an honest and sincere nut. After all, there used to be thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of fervent “UFO people”…
I agree with this article and have some key points to add.
The US military can deliver a massive aerial blow, but requires weeks to get the machine rolling. In recent conflicts the USA had months to prepare a “shock and awe” choosing the time to start. This can’t be done in secret given all the movements required. Keep in mind the USA lost some 40 aircraft in the first attack against Iraq, so expect at least two dozen American aircraft lost with POW pilots on world TV.
The US Army and Marines will be not be players and won’t matter. Our Army only has 8000 combat troops in Korea and the Marines 4000 in Japan. The rest are headquarters, rear support, and base personnel. Half of these troops will be unavailable as they see to it their families are evacuated. The rest will be guarding bases from angry South Korean protestors sure to blame the USA for the mess. The Army loves to brag that it can deploy 5000 paratroopers in a few days, but a really a few weeks. Why even bother when 5,000,000 trained South Koreans are there ready to fight.
North Korea can unleash deadly artillery and it will be a couple weeks before it gets beat down. The North Koreans may try foolish World War I human wave assaults and gain perhaps a couple of miles, but they can’t move artillery and supplies forward and will end up starving and out of ammo.
The South Koreans will be reluctant to charge across the DMZ and lose thousands of men, the USA no longer has an ability to conduct major amphibious landings, and it would take a year to assemble the ships and personnel to try anyway.
China will not allow an American allied South Korea to take over North Korea, which will be suffering from mass famine. South Korea has no interest in losing 100,000 soldiers clearing every North Korean town and city from fanatical defenders. If US Army Generals demand to play, half of America’s volunteer force will unvolunteer and desert, refuse to deploy, or become “ill.”
All this is a ruse to cover the crazy 10% boost in Pentagon spending that Trump just signed. This was proven when Senators asked why we don’t remove the 20,000 military dependents in South Korea if war is inevitable. No one wants war and this problem would go away if not for crazed US Army Generals playing budget and power games.
If war breaks out by accident, there will be some bombing and shelling with a few thousand killed. The USA Air Gods will run out of munitions in three weeks and not get more for months. All sides will seek a quick peaceful resolution as business must resume. The crazies in the Pentagon will demand World War III, but taxpayers don’t give a damn about Korea and the Chinese and Russians will threaten to dump dollars, so peace will prevail.
The easy way to stop North Korea from threatening to attack the USA, is for the USA to stop threatening to attack North Korea. Stop the warmonger speeches and stop all US military activity north of Seoul. This is all the North Koreans have demanded after seeing the USA “free” Iraq and Libya.
But if the USA stopped threatening other nations US taxpayers might realise that their whole Military-Industrial Complex is just a gigantic money-making scam. US taxpayers might realise that they could their defense budget by three-quarters (at least) without the slightest actual risk to US security. They might figure out that nobody is threatening the US militarily.
They might even realise that all those defense contractors and generals and the neocons are actually the enemies of the American people.
It’s a nightmare scenario. Common sense must not be allowed to prevail.
China’s has two vital interests in DPRK. One is to assure that the US or aligned forces do not encroach on their border. The other is to prevent chaos in the DPRK from spilling into China. Both of those motives make direct intervention by China inevitable in the event that conflict breaks out, IMO. China could claim, with justification, that the mission would be a humanitarian intervention. They could also sell the move to whatever is left of the DPRK government as a deterrent against invasion from the south. The result would be Chinese suzerainty, probably with some face-saving sop for the DPRK’s rulers. That would no doubt be a bitter pill for the US to swallow, but a better alternative for ROK than continuing the conflict. The Chinese would be in a position to call a cease-fire then negotiate with ROK to get US forces off the peninsula in exchange for their security.
Saving face is everything in that part of the world. To not understand that is to invite disaster.
Korean dynasties have tended to come to power by gaining the support of China. The Kim Dynasty fits that pattern to a T. Syngman Rhee used the same strategy, only using US instead of Chinese support. Biting the hand that feeds you is not a good way to stay in power in Korea, despite whatever nationalist sentiments are in play.
Both the north and south have mountains to the east and a broad coastal plain to the west. An armored move towards Pyongyang would be feasible, but the Chinese would probably get there first.
Kim Il Sung purged pro-China elements from his party while there were still tens of thousands of Chinese troops on his soil. Mao accepted it because the pro-Soviet faction was also purged, he didn’t want a precedent for the removal of a god-king local ruler because of a “personality cult” (of which he himself was guilty), and he needed Phyongyang’s support or at least neutrality in his bid to become the undisputed leader of the socialist camp.
I always say or write this tongue in cheek, since there are many nutty people on their own. Governments might encourage or help these people in subtle ways, though, for example by giving them better rankings in Google searches, or at least by not censoring them (unlike reasonable dissident voices). And yes, it’s not totally inconceivable that they do employ some trolls to comment on sites like this, but it’s more likely in most cases (and in the case of Brabantian in particular) that they are just honest to God believers in the crazy theories spread by them.
Adding to that
https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=130693&page=archive-read
https://www.namibian.com.na/public/uploads/images/546c19ebf3b55/Untitled-3.jpg
The PRC would like to own a port on the Sea of Japan/Korea and North Korea could offer that.
I had another question I forgot to ask.
What does it mean? Road mobile missiles (and the Norks are developing those) are very difficult to destroy. They are quite survivable.
Or did you mean the full nuclear triad? Yes, it might be beyond the Norks to develop, but I’m not sure they need it at all.
It depends. For example if he really is as weak as Anatoly describes him in the article, then in case of an American attack it might not be very rational to retaliate. But by being crazy enough to retaliate even if by retaliating he brings about his own death, he might actually avoid being hit by the Americans in the first place. So in a broader, game theory sense it often pays off to be crazy.
Or rather, it pays to be perceived as such. Behaving (seemingly) crazily and recklessly is needed to convince the world that you really are reckless and crazy. This might make others avoid messing with you. The Norks seem to have mastered this game.
So many plans and assumptions turn out to be wrong in actual wars. Napoleon thought it would be a good idea to invade Russia. So did Hitler. All the countries of Europe thought the war in 1914 would be over in six months at most. MacArthur absolutely, positively assured Truman that China would not intervene in Korea in 1950. The 1916 Somme offensive was supposed to break through the German lines and win the war. The Japanese naval staff were convinced Midway would be a great victory for them. Singapore was supposed to be an impregnable fortress. The list is endless.
Anatoly seems to rely primarily on Western sources in his analysis, which naturaly causes him to overestimate US advantage over North Korea. (The same approach leads him to overestimate Navalny’s chances in a Russian presidential election lol)
The thing about Kim, it doesn’t matter how weak he is, when US bombs start dropping on North Korea, Kim has no way of knowing if this is merely a “show of strength” or an opening salvo in an American regime change operation. Kim has reasons to assume the worst. He has the examples of Milošević and Qaddafi before his eyes: restraint in the face of American domineering behavior did NOT pay off for these guys. Kim will likely conclude, that responding agressively might be his only chance at this point. Failing to respond agressively will only increase US appetites – that’s a reasonable assumption to make knowing US history.
I wonder how would Mister Karlin respond to Putler ordering an intervention into North Korea for the sake of supporting his Chinese partners.
https://twitter.com/ArtyomLukin/status/943081696815087617
Another NK article.
Things are getting there, apparently.
A very good article, overall, IMHO.
I’d just add (as several times before elsewhere) that ground advance into North Korea would, most likely, be just up to, say, 70 Kms, in order to neutralize that “artillery belt”.
Chinese would, most likely, come from the opposite side and, effectively, take over the country.
Better world for everyone.
Especially North Koreans. Save that hideous “elite”. Good riddance.
Well yes, sure, but I am assuming the Chinese didn’t bet everything on KJU’s uncle and didn’t lose all influence in North Korea after that.
Liquid-fueled = needs time to fuel-up = detectable by Americans, who can swat it with a cruise missile.
The USSR developed liquid-fueled rockets that could get prepped quickly, but very unlikely North Korea leapfrogged its way there.
Good points, but realistically speaking, only <20% of North Korea's military is on the Chinese border, and presumably none of the (few) crack ones.
It also does not have the logistics capacity to transfer masses of troops quickly. Especially by the time that North Korean airspace becomes dominated by South Korea and America.
They are not going to get “stuck” at that stage, but neither is it something that is going to happen instantaneously.
I should have clarified this, but I am speaking of the near future (i.e. the year 2018), and in particular of the next few months.
The Americans won’t, because they won’t have to. The South Koreans will – presumably, public opinion will harden once Seoul is getting flattened – and their 500,000 strong Army (+ reservists) is enough to the job.
According to elevation maps, eastern North Korea is mountainous; the west is reasonably flat (and leads straight to Pyongyang).
North Korea itself certainly doesn’t consider tanks and armored vehicles useless in their terrain – they have one of the largest armored forces in the world! (Granted, ridiculously obsolete – best they have is their own version of the T-72, also lots of T-55’s (!) which will only clutter up the roads – but still).
At this stage, I don’t think the tech gap can be overstated. I doubt they even have anything capable of destroying modern Abrams or South Korean Black Panthers. Their soldiers don’t seem to have bulletproof vests, apart from special forces, perhaps.
Well, I’d argue the chances of this happening is very close to zero wrt Seoul and Tokyo, and effectively zero for the US mainland.
Today.
But this probability will be creeping upwards with time. This is why this year or 2019 will be the most critical ones.
North Korea is an ultranationalist regime that looks out for the “purity” of the Korean race (Myers makes this argument in The Cleanest Race).
That said, from what I’ve read, they don’t demonize modern China.
Main enemy is USA. Can’t alienate China too much, too.
While you can still sort of dismiss America as a wretched capitalist hive, many North Koreans have now been to China (or gotten word from relatives or friends there). And living standards are far better there. Suppressing this fact would now be completely impossible.
One advantage the U.S. would have versus North Korea is that it’s a peninsula, so the sortie frequency by carrier-based aircraft would be higher than in Iraq.
I’m not sure if Anatoly overstates US advantage over North Korea. The agree button was meant for the second paragraph:
Road mobile ICBMs are great, though only after they finish developing the solid fuel KN-08.
Can’t do this with liquid-fuel missiles, which are the only working ICBMs they have now.
However, they already have a working solid-fuelIRBM, which is why a stated a nuclear strike on Seoul/Tokyo is now minimally feasible, whereas it is practically zero wrt the mainland USA.
I would estimate the ultimate peak of North Korea’s capabilities here are approximately those of Israel’s (nuclear gravity bombs on fighter-bombers, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on diesel subs). Though North Korea hardly has a functional air force, and I don’t know if their subs are advanced enough for this conversion (Israel gets theirs from Germany, and it’s a rich country that has spent around 10% of its GDP on the military until about a decade ago).
The Arabs, Iran, and even Turkey have zero chance of destroying Israel’s deterrent, no matter how hard they prepared for it. I bet the US could if it really wanted to, though.
Apart from nuclear mines, which won’t do much good other than pissing off South Korea/USA once SHTF anyway, I wonder if North Korea could build superguns to lob nuclear shells into Seoul. Now that would be one hell of a deterrent, very hard to control for if there are several such installations. It can’t be too hard, since the Germans managed superguns as early as WW1. But might be hard to hide from from US eyes in the skies.
I wouldn’t mind, so long as China was okay with it and went in first.
By that point the regime would be doomed anyway, and Russia would benefit from having a say in the postwar settlement (though Russia would be advised to defer to China).
You know what they say: there is only one way to find out.
All of this is immaterial to what I wrote.
If I were Kim, the moment a war broke out, I’d just assume I was dead, along with my family and friends. So I might not let the Chinese into my country. Instead I’d give orders to the 20% of the army on that border to just stand fast and fight against the Chinese.
Then the 20% of his army will defend the border against the Chinese. The Chinese might prove to be incompetent and so slower than the South Koreans against the 80% of Kim’s troops. It could be similar to how Mussolini was less successful against a few French divisions than Hitler against the bulk of the French army.
I understand that’s not the way to bet, but if I were the Chinese leadership, I’d consider it a risk. While it’s likely that the Chinese will easily take over most of North Korea, they cannot take it for granted.
Any chance South Koreans will just panic when the North attacks?
I think it’s too simplistic to approach the country’s military power as a function of its GDP. You have to consider the intangibles too. This is a society obessed with plastic surgery and computer games. They have no experience and no memory of war. The war will come as a huge shock.
Suppose South Korea suffers a rapid social collapse, and their military becomes disorganised. What the hell US is going to do in this situation?
A couple of points.
Israel could probably build solid fuel road mobile ICBMs if it wanted to. They don’t have the need for it. Israel spends a lot on its military, but their priorities are not so very lopsided. They maintain a strong and large high tech conventional military. Unlike North Korea, which pours almost all of its R&D budget into building a nuclear force.
Therefore, I cannot see how it would be impossible for the Norks to build road mobile nuclear ballistic missiles. I wouldn’t worry about submarines much, if I were them, though ultimately it needs to be done for absolute safety.
So I’d put the peak of Nork capabilities at road mobile ICBMs (and of course IRBMs) and some kind of submarine launched missiles (perhaps cruise missiles, as you suggest, I’m no expert so I don’t know if it’s that much easier than ballistic missiles from submarines). I don’t think the gravity bombs would make much sense, given their lack of an effective air force, and the fact that their enemies will have total air superiority.
I think that while South Koreans look effeminate, they are probably just as tough as their military’s reputation is. They won’t quickly panic and collapse without a very good reason, I’d bet my house on it. A very good reason would be if somehow Kim managed to lob nukes at Camp Humphreys and Tokyo and indicated he has a few more of those, while launching a successful offensive and overran half of South Korea already. Yes, then the South Koreans will panic. Until then, they will fight.
What if China was to offer sanctuary to KJU?
I think that’s plausible. If he agrees – yes, China has “beef” with him, but serious countries do tend to keep their word – he might even order the northern armies to just stand down.
Even if that doesn’t happen, the northern generals won’t be in any doubt about the ultimate outcome of the conflict. They can be offered money, and privileged (and safer) positions in the new Korean People’s Republic, or in China.
But I agree, this is all speculation.
Agreed.
South Koreans actually had better kill ratios than even Americans in Vietnam. (Though more war crimes per capita, too).
Admittedly, that’s the old, heavily indoctrinated anti-commie generation. But still, that should count for something.
I agree with all of that.
They can develop solid-fuel ICBMs, but this will take time. Perhaps another 5 years to a decade.
That the Serbian military could evade much of NATO’s onslaught was more the function of the generation of their equipment or of good defensive tactics evading NATO’s prying eyes? You tell me. Anyway,
https://twitter.com/nktpnd/status/944245563415023618
designs are various knockoffs of SCUD-B’s, R-27 Zyb, China’s JL-1. Not exactly 50’s, and in any case their recent tests are achievements that only select few countries have realized. I guess it should take more than a few successful tests to prove you have the capability Hwasong 12, 14, or 15 promise. I leave it to people like Martyanov to judge…
But their scud-B knockoffs with extended ranges are proved and are now an export industry for them. It’s indeed silly to overhype them and their ability to strike the US homeland, to field nuclear-tipped missiles etc… (for now). But, having several hundreds of the lower-digits Hwasongs they can contemplate a wealth of targets in the South, Japan and US military facilities across the region, beyond the much talked-of artillery threat on Seoul proper.
The premise of US Shock&Awe (that’s how it went down, concretely) is to mete out catastrophic destruction on the targeted nations while watching comfortably from home, carriers groups and bases in allied countries. Not so here, as Norks have enough to cause actual pain on the would-be aggressors and set off a global economic crisis, even with their conventional arsenal only
That’s kind of my point. I bet the old generation was not into plastic surgery either…
Think back to October this year, when the Iraqi military was launching an operation to take back Kirkuk from Kurdish militias, a lot of people, including you as well, expected Kurds to put up a good fight. That’s not how it went at all. There was a betrayal amongst the Kurds, some Kurdish factions made a deal with the Iranians, the others literally wept, then ran away in fear. In the end, the Kurds surrendered Kirkuk without a fight, they just folded.
My point is few observers expected this outcome at the time. Some unexpected shit might happen early in the Korean war that will compromise the South’s ability to fight. And Americans better have a plan for this situation before they attack the North. Performance of their South Korea ally cannot be taken for granted.
You’re correct, all kinds of things can happen. Historically, stranger events have happened.
But still, I don’t think there can be any meaningful analogy between these two cases.
South Koreans have the support of the United States, and have a vast technological lead. If North Korea wins, the South Korean elites and bourgeoisie get exterminated, and the rest will have to live under a totalitarian dystopia where most of them would end up on the bottom of the caste system. Say goodbye to the world’s fastest Internet and Starcraft.
I also don’t even know if you can necessarily treat face surgery as a sign of militarily crippling decadence.
They’re not even that far ahead of the United States:
http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2012/04/blogs/graphic-detail/20120428_WOC079.png
Incidentally, the US as you know now allows homosexuals to serve openly.
Here is South Korea’s policy:
Definitely less decadent.
That seems paranoid, i.e. typical of someone who would use the “Putler” epithet.
The Korean peninsula is a core interest for China, for Russia not so much.
A Chinese intervention would no doubt be accompanied by measures to deconflict with ROK and US forces engaged with DPRK forces. As stated in the article, China places a high value on relations with ROK. Chinese intervention would open options for ending the conflict that would obviate a bloody, grinding campaign up the peninsula.
The DPRK territory is going to be a burden for whoever ends up governing it. ROK has an interest in neutralizing DPRK’s offensive threat, not in occupying and governing DPRK.
You didn’t mention any of this (?) and you commented on it @ When Sanity Fails – the Mindset of the “Ideological Drone http://www.unz.com/tsaker/when-sanity-fails-the-mindset-of-the-ideological-drone/
from Erebus comment 57 When Sanity Fails – the Mindset of the “Ideological Drone”
Mackinder’s Heartland Theory – Explained!
http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/geography/mackinders-heartland-theory-explained/42542
North Korea is an Pentagon Vassal State
11-1-16
F. William Engdahl
. . .
Unfortunately for world peace, Kim Jong Un, while he is playing games with his rockets and threats of war, is serving the long-term interests of the USA, especially the military industrial complex, the Pentagon and State Department, whose priority increasingly is to make an Asia Pivot of military power projection to contain and isolate the Peoples’ Republic of China as well as Russia.
https://journal-neo.org/2016/11/01/north-korea-is-an-pentagon-vassal-state/
Say again!?
Like: Erebus point was/is ..in ONE SENTENCE.
On a related matter….overall good comments here. Helpful, insightful, measured.
Nice.
Now, there is a bit missing, actually.
Not a biggie, I suspect not many here have made a proper “combat document”.
A lot of discussion about the war; plenty of details and such.
In “real” life all starts with The Objective.
So, what is the objective here; for discussion and, well, what would be the USA objective here?
-Regime change?
-Occupation?
-Destruction of NK nuclear capability?
-Etc.
Different objectives demand different forces, strategy/operations/tactics and present different challenges and problems. Will also mean different casualties, own and enemy’s.
Just my two cents.
pogohere,
“The one power to gain from Kim Jong Un’s bellicose actions is the United States as geopolitical hegemon desiring to turn Japan and especially South Korea against China.”
This is how most Chinese netizens view the North Korea situation. By the way, Russia plays the same role of North Korea in Europe…
It’s probably happened already. Again, claims to know the contrary originate with proven liars.
Kurds are great warriors only in their own minds. Their go-to tactic is that of a small dog – go belly up and whine about being genocided/gassed/oppressed.
Both countries suffered nearly genocidal losses in WW II
Maybe Korea, but not Japan. The population decreased 1 million from the 1940 census to the 1945 census from 73 million to 72 million, scarcely a genocide.
Complete lunacy. I would recommend that the DPRK do a live fire test of an H-tipped ICBM to burst this bubble, but at this stage such a mental bubble is probably impervious to any evidence whatsoever. I guess he who was born to be hanged will never drown.
And would it not be possible that, the moment the regime was about to collapse, the people would shrug off decades of propaganda and perversely started believing the opposite? For example, I don’t know, maybe if there was another country (a superpower even?) where the people was extremely Americanophile just the moment that other regime was about to fall. I recently read about it a blogpost somewhere. The point is, the moment the regime is about to fall, people re-examine their assumptions, and they will think of the falling regime as a bunch of liars. Maybe there will be rumors about the benevolent South Koreans who would be willing to quickly raise living standards to South Korean levels?
On the other hand, the regime doesn’t demonize the Chinese, so it will stay roughly neutral in their minds, liars or not.
What about chemical and biological weapons? Can they deliver them to Tokyo?
According to John Kasich, more sanctions are needed and would likely be successful.
Americanophile was a huge thing in Russia even before the end of the USSR was certain.
It was not a response to it.
Well, it seems true. The DPRK wants a deal with the USA rather than depending on Beijing’s whims and for that shows their usefulness first.
Only if you mean Russia as a combination of Great Russia (aka Russian Federation) and Little Russia (aka the Ukraine).
China is an enemy too, though.
https://twitter.com/DougPologe/status/945276617005391872
Yes, too much by half.
IMHO, it’s all for naught until/unless one teases out the interests and objectives of the likely combatants, and who’s on who’s side. There’s wheels spinning within wheels in the ECS and it’s completely unclear at this stage (at least to me). Answering the question posed in pogohere’s mass quote would serve to narrow the number of variables and place some limits on the “military scenarios” and associated squabbling over unknowns.
Namely:
We know that the Hwasong-15’s boost phase rocket engine is a derivative of the Soviet RD-251, made in the Ukraine. The 2nd stage is a dark horse. Duplicating it from stolen/purchased plans is not a simple matter, so was likely obtained as a refurbishable/working unit. With who’s assistance and/or acquiescence? Russia’s, or the USA’s, or did they get them on their own? How many do they have? 1? or 10? or 10n?
Other questions can also be asked. Probably the most critical is:
“Has DPRK deployed the Kumsong-3 (KN-19) anti-ship cruise missile in any quantity?”
Its June 2017 tests indicate that it has the range and guidance systems to turn USN carriers into targets. That begs an addition clause to my original. Namely:
“How did a “starving nation” of 25M under continuous sanctions develop road-mobile launched, sea-skimming, waypoint manoeuvrable cruise missiles while simultaneously developing 10-13,000km ICBMs?”
I’m leaning towards Engdahl’s assessment, if only because it turns the popularly accepted power calculus on its head. Too many variables in that popular calculus don’t add up for me, making discussions about attack/defence scenarios on the Korean peninsula academic, at best.
The North Korean population watches pirated South Korean DVDs and probably Hollywood crap, too. They probably listen to South Korean and American pop music. What makes you think they hate Americans (and South Koreans) more than Russians did back in the 1980s? They have a lot of reasons to suspect that living standards are way higher in both the US and South Korea than in China. Actually, they probably know this, since it’s common knowledge in China and a lot of them have been to China. They also have a lot of reasons to suspect that their leaders are habitual liars. Why would the crude propaganda of the regime be extremely effective? I’ve read interviews with Chinese about Maoism, and they said they felt it was ridiculous, like a cult, but were simply afraid to step out of line.
I think North Koreans are probably proud of their military (as were Russians), but think that America is the land of opportunity and anything (any degeneracy) coming out of it is cool.
If one takes Engdahl’s assessment at face value and combines it with the USA’s Imperial Imperative, the answer becomes clear.
The USA’s objectives are two. The first is to justify the continued presence of their garrisons in theatre, and the 2nd would be to forcibly unite the 2 Koreas under US occupation. Both serve to isolate both Korea and Japan from Eurasian integration and the 2nd plants hostile power firmly at Eurasia’s eastern borders and in the ECS. That pins China between Afghanistan and Japan/Korean, which also explains the USM’s continued presence there. Without Japan/Korea, Afghanistan would make little sense, and would quickly become untenable.
They need a casus belli to execute, and Kim seems to be performing a yeoman’s service at providing it for the 1st objective, and with the Hwasong-15 he may eventually provide for the 2nd.
If Engdahl is wrong, then things get murkier. I can’t bring myself to believe that DPRK is capable of developing this technology without lots of outside help. Thus, I would have to suspect that the missile technologies recently exhibited came via Russia (with Chinese assistance, or vice versa) with the intent of prodding the Americans into embarrassing themselves, and to send a message to Korea and Japan that the security guarantees they hold are as worthless as their THAAD & Patriot systems.
The latter arms the large Chaebols (Korea) and Keiretsus (Japan), who have deep investments in China and are drooling over the BRI, in putting pressure on their respective govts to break with the US.
Engdahl has a poor track record, there are reasons to question both his competence and his honesty.
[How did a “starving nation” of 25M under continuous sanctions develop road-mobile launched, sea-skimming, waypoint manoeuvrable cruise missiles while simultaneously developing 10-13,000km ICBMs?]
Imagine that South Africa didn’t give up in 1990 but continued till now in increasing isolation and hostility. Do you doubt they could have achieved the same things?
Euh…because the Americans are their Nazis? A people obsessed with Kennan’s scribblings who came to kill 1 in every 7-8 of them during the last war? Dropping more bombs on Koreans’ heads than during the entire Pacific theater in WW2 (mostly on the north)? Every family was amputated and bled dry. I figure there is more than the personal graces of the Kim dynasty or repression to build support for the North Korean regime.
Not even the South Koreans like Americans much, and it has surprised me but there is even some respect for the northern regime in segments of the population there for this very reason. Koreans will never really hold their heads high under the Americans, no matter how many trinkets they can own.
Mitleser,
“Only if you mean Russia as a combination of Great Russia (aka Russian Federation) and Little Russia (aka the Ukraine).”
I mean the US use Russia in a similar way it use North Korea, to prevent Europe getting too unify. Do something to stimulate Russia, and Russia will react in some way to frighten other European countries. Europe in some sort of crisis is good for the US, just like Northeast Asia in some sort of crisis is good for the US. Just provoke Russia/North Korea a little.
Although Russia/N Korea will very much want a friendly relation with the US, it’s not likely to happen for real. They’re very effective “crisis generator” for the US.
That is an interesting question. Could V2 have been more effective with tabun?
Possible.
(Late) USSR was pro-internationalism and relations with USA became quite friendly during Gorbachev era. On the other hand, DRPK is nationalist and relations with USA remain tense and get worse.
There was a breeding ground in the late USSR for pro-Americanism that does not exist in the DPRK.
Hardly a realistic comparison, given ZA could bring vastly greater domestic human/physical resources & natural wealth to bear, and that in 1990 they would have been starting from a much higher base line.
By 1990 ZA had had nuclear warheads in hand for more than a decade, and had been producing Jericho long range ballistic missiles under license for a few years. (Both courtesy of Israel.)
Having a wealthy, industrialized, self-sufficient country helps a lot, but ZA didn’t do much with their nukes except to make (iirc) 6 gravity bombs. Of course, ZA didn’t have the motivation that DPRK has. If they did, they probably could have had a fully developed nuclear ICBM by, say 2000 if not 1995, but the comparison is useless. The disparity between the two countries’ motivations, wealth and starting position is too great.
The real issue is that DPRK seems to have done all this in the last 5 years, and at a startlingly accelerated pace. When the latest Kim came to power, they were successfully firing modified vintage ’60s & ’70s SCUDS of the sort Yemen’s been lobbing at Riyadh, and made various unsuccessful launches of longer range missiles such as the Taepodong and Musadan. From there, a quantum leap in understanding must have occurred as the Hwasong-12, 14 & 15 show staggering advances at unprecedented speed.
The advance is hardly unprecedented. The USSR managed to develop ICBMs in the first place in roughly the same timeframe, with no access to plans or scientists or engineers from elsewhere. The number of North Korean PhDs (usually awarded abroad, especially in China) has been growing very quickly in recent years, and there have been rumors of a Ukrainian rocket design falling into their hands. (I choose to believe this because it’d just be a perfect illustration of American foreign policy, support for regime change, but then failure to safeguard the dangerous technologies that regime had.)
I agree with this.
Myers makes the interesting observation that North Korean propaganda is far more reminiscent of Japanese ultranationalism than of late Soviet internationalism.
Differences:
North Koreans have readier access to outside information
Anyhow, if this works out to approximately the same degree of fanaticism, we can expect:
The South Koreans are also some kind of unknown. Maybe the Norks are willing to fight against the Americans (for which the propaganda prepares them), but not so much against South Koreans. Especially if South Koreans will be smart and will give wholesale amnesty to all soldiers and officers of the Nork armed forces who defect or surrender.
How homogeneous are the North Koreans? The Songbun caste system has been in practice since the 1950s. Since children inherit the lower ranked parent’s status, people tended to marry within their castes. It’s now been three generations. So upper caste people don’t really have relatives (except, well, disgraced relatives) from the lower castes, and that’s the case vice versa, how much do they like each other? Especially since the system is based on a kind of reverse of the earlier social system, so the casts didn’t have many relatives even at the beginning. (Though I guess a lot of exemptions were given to experts and revolutionaries, so that latter point might not be true.)
Possible. My comments are often just brainstorm ideas here.
US and their allies being true to their warfighting doctrines they will bomb indiscriminately- which will help mobilize the general population against them, and ruin any promises of benevolence they will try to propagate (through flyers, loudspeakers etc), as seen in other theaters. NK’s troops would ensure that this happens, very consciously, by hiding close to civilian infrastructures and dwellings. [Again, old guerilla tactics applied and formalized by Mao, then imitated in the Algerian war of independence and every recent Middle Eastern conflict]. At the same time, news of spectacular strikes on RoK and regional targets, and likely asymetric retaliations and sabotage, will continue to punctuate the conflict, helping the morale of North Korean masses while ruining the other side- complex economies easily ground to a halt by disrupting any numbers of chokepoints, populations long used to comfort and modern amenities.
The premise that Americans would bomb stupidly and massively is very founded. They have just done that in Raqqa for lack of better solutions and for being in a rush, as the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance was progressing faster than their expectations on the other bank of the Euphrates. As Konashenkov pointed out, destruction is absolutely huge and doesn’t pale in any way compared to the much maligned so-called “barrel bombing” by the Syrian government.
Why is “Europe” allowing itself to get played like this? Are they dumb?
Plastic surgery is a sign of severe narcissism. Narcissistic individuals are less likely to engage in altruistic behavior including self-sacrifice. Imagine you spent $20.000 (I’m not sure how much plastic surgery costs) to make your face look just perfect, would you risk taking a piece of shrapnel to that face?
True, but doesn’t this sound like a good reason for the elites to take a private flight to Australia when things get hot? You assume honour and unwavering partiotism on the part of South Koreans, but to me fleeing would seem like a rational thing to do. Especially, for a civilian.
Think about it. There is a non zero chance Norks could drop a nuke on Seoul, and you have a private jet that can take you to Australia, so why would you take that risk?
It’s possible, likely even, that the South Korean 0.01% (those with private jets and yachts) would take a flight. But most people cannot easily leave the country, for them it’s a life and death struggle. And again, Koreans are tougher than they look like.
That’s kind of what I’ve been saying: contemporary generation of South Koreans look like soft people, and completely unprepared for horrors of total war. How will the government prevent fake news and panic from spreading over the social media? Are they just going to disable the internet in the country? What if there is no internet? What happens if the Norks find a way to disable electricity in Seoul area, how will the government manage to avoid social collapse?
I find it rather odd, that Anatoly dismisses risks for South Korea in this scenario, given how vulnerable their society is.
They’ve still got conscription in South Korea, and they don’t even recognize the right to conscientious objection (so the only way to escape military service is to fake some illness or injury which most people would probably regard as shameful):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_South_Korea
Doesn’t seem that decadent to me.
Elites fleeing can have a demoralising effect on the population, and compromise the country’s ability to defend itself in some other ways…
I cannot understand, where your respect comes from. I’m noticing this strange admiration for Asian people among some members of this community, which I don’t get.
The way I see South Korea, it’s just another US-made proxy regime. Americans have a record of creating regimes, which are rather soft, break under pressure, and are therefore in need of constant support. Think about South Vietnam, South Korea in the first war, Iraq post-US invasion…The regime Americans created in Iraq got nearly overrun by ISIS in 2014. And South Korea despite its wealth looks pretty fragile to me.
Expect a degree of draft-dodging. Among the wealthier class many would indeed find a way to settle abroad for the duration of instability- their persons, their assets too? Having more means more incentives to decamp.
Not that any country would be exempt of this, but the question is whether the RoK would have more or less of this. My impression is that they don’t seem terribly warlike these days, I agree, it’s just an impression but…The legitimacy of their government has a strong foundation in the prosperity it has made possible- a resounding success assuredly. But their history as a very repressive dictatorship until recently and then the enduring corruption of a crony capitalism involving the same old families, a higher inequality than Japan- there are certainly grounds for tensions. My hunch is that endangering this prosperity will deal a heavy blow to the RoK’s legitimacy.
And again yes, a complex economy inherently means more fragility. There is now way around this.
The Americans didn’t give them weapons until the Norks attacked, so their army was several times weaker than the northern army. Yet they didn’t capitulate, but kept fighting until the Americans arrived months later.
As opposed to North Korea, where there’s no history of a repressive dictatorship, no corruption under the same old families, and little inequality. So there are no grounds for tensions.
Currently they aren’t fleeing. When will they start?
Felix Keverich,
“Why is “Europe” allowing itself to get played like this? Are they dumb?”
I can’t answer that, just like I can’t answer the question “why Mongolia bother with joined military exercise with the US”. I mean, it’s land locked with only 2 neighbors, Russia and China.
But I can reasonably assume that an unified Europe is the long term goal, the creation of Euro is a clear sign. And I can’t imagine the US very happy about that.
That’s an even more far-fetched comparison than ZA. The USSR had orders of magnitude greater resources than DPRK, and inherited Russia’s pioneering developments in rocketry.
After a series of failures of long(er) range missiles right up to 2013, DPRK’s HS12 showed up in April 2017 with 6 successive tests, the last 3 of which were successful. The HS14 launched successfully in September, and the HS15 in late November. Every one was a significant improvement in range, with the HS-15 being a clearly different design. In comparison, the USSR’s ICBM development program took 4 years from inception to 1st successful launch. The US’ took a little more than 3, and successfully launched a year later.
So has Ghana’s, Nigeria’s just about everybody’s. It takes a lot more than a few PhDs to put a nuclear ICBM in the field.
I think it’s much more than rumours. The photos released by DPRK show what is clearly the same unique design as the RD-251 rocket engine.
My question is how that got there.
The answer to that question will tell us a lot about the interests of the participants on the ECS playing field. I am not prejudging the answer. My point was that if China, or Russia, or the USA helped put it there, the playing field looks very different in each case, and very different indeed than if was DPRK (more or less) on its own. Any discussions about military scenarios (like what’s above) assume that DPRK are a more or less independent actor acting in its own interests, so are idle chat until we come to some conclusion, however tenuous, on how they got where they are. It may be fun, of course, but hardly advances understanding.
As soon as things get hot. Today all out war on the Korean peninsula seems unfathomable to most people. When the war comes, if it comes, people will react with shock and panic.
It will be too late. Airports will close immediately. Fight or flight becomes fight or die for the South Korean middle classes.
Some of them will fight. Some of them will try to hide. Things will get hectic. South Korean army advantages that exist on paper will be negated somewhat by chaos.
I can imagine South Korean army holding the line, but to actually go on offensive and push into North would be insane. South Korean middle classes did not sign up for this!
The conflict could then evolve into protracted, position warfare, and US will be screwed in this scenario.
Those “pioneering developments in rocketry” were considerably ancient and obsolete compared to North Korean Scud derivatives. Given how they weren’t very much richer than North Korea (we’re talking about the early 1950s, the USSR just barely recovered from the war), but had 10 times the population, I’d say they had exactly one order of magnitude more resources. But because they were also developing other state of the art technologies (like jet fighters etc.) including civilian technologies (like jet airliners), the discrepancy was smaller.
Let’s say three or four times more resources for development of ICBMs. But they had to develop it from scratch, without any previous or outside knowledge. Indeed, nobody even knew how to build such a missile, because nobody had done before. As opposed to the North Koreans, who used a lot of foreign designs.
Are you suggesting they are launching Ukrainian-built missiles? Or just building the same design by themselves? I think it’s the latter. In which case it’s obvious that only the technology (the design and perhaps a few engineers) went to North Korea. Which is small, and doesn’t necessarily need a lot of outside help. People and especially data can travel easily.
Why?
Because that’s one way to get yourself killed, and you will be dying for no good reason. Remember, we’re talking about South Korean middle class.
Population is quite Americanized and the elite is even more Atlanticist.
Did you know that the federal chancellor of Germany lives almost right next door to the main office of Atlantik-Brücke, the leading Atlanticist organisation in Germany.
We won’t convince each other. 🙂
https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/3lfl6h/hell_joseon_88_of_young_koreans_say_south_korea/
On the other hand, real hardship, like war, often alleviates these kinds of first world problems. During wars, suicide rates generally go down. (Except after having lost a war, when in some cases there’s an uptick in suicides – like Germany, 1945. That’s a different issue, and we might see something like that in North Korea, should they lose a war.)
Well….not necessarily.
The point is that “the enemy” has obtained a workable weapon system. “How” is interesting, but not that important.
The only important issue, now, is how to deal with that reality.
Reality being “the enemy” is threatening to use that system to attack US territory.
That brings us directly back to the “war thing”.
I still believe there is a timeframe to resolve all that peacefully. Hangs on that “nuclear tipped” ICMB.
And, should the “war thing” kicks off, everything starts with The Objective.
The confusion/debates here stem directly from NOT defining a clear objective.
“It’s impossible to occupy all North Korea”. Is the objective occupation?
“It will require zillions of troops and casualties to defeat zillions North Koreans fighting the invasion”. Why invasion in the first place?
Etc.
In my “scenario” the objective is to “remove the nuclear threat to US soil”.
That is what’s given to the generals do work on.
And I believe that’s achievable.
In case it is being attacked by the US. Why omit that qualification from the North Korean threats? “I will kill you if you try to kill me or beat me up!” is quite different from “I will kill you!”
Well…good post but, feels….”complicated”.
One word: OCCUPATION.
As soon as I read that I recoiled. Coward, I know. Old fart, shame on me.
Maybe that’s the objective. I don’t know.
If…IF…that’s the objective I believe it’s hard to achieve (understatement). Personally, I haven’t thought about it at all.
If I were a Lt.Col assisting a Brigadier, working for a 3 star general I’d very politely point to certain difficulties in achieving the objective. If I got a message THAT is the objective I’d start thinking about resigning and moving into Civy Street. Shame on me.
Now…if, as I posted before, the objective is “remove the nuclear threat to US soil” I’d do my best to achieve it.
Not impossible. I know next to nothing of this. But then why is no-one pointing that out, while they are whipping themselves into a frenzy over Russia supposedly having stolen the elections?
I invite you to place yourself into the shoes of a military-age South Korean man, and honestly ask yourself if you would be willing to make all these sacrifices. Didn’t you tell me recently to drop the idea of annexing the Ukraine? This is nothing, NOTHING compared to what the war in Korea will be like.
No one really wants to fight the North Korea, especially the Americans. They just assume that the South will do all the hard work. I see potential for this situation to backfire greatly for the US. It could become America’s Suez moment.
Disagree.
I’ll come clean here.
The Fat Pig.
The…………FAT……….PIG………
That character must not have an access to a nuclear tipped ICMB.
Simple as that.
If we were talking Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, even Libya, let alone Syria I’d agree with your approach.
Those were/are rational regimes with rational people/groups leading them.
Not in this case, IMHO.
This is a CULT lead by…just look at him.
That’s why I believe, say, 70 %, the Fat Pig will be out and all this will get resolved without (much of a ) shooting. Soft/hard coup if you will.
Smash that cult and make that society normal again.
Chinese protectorate in all but name.
Anyway…..
I don’t care what you think of him. I do care that in our discussion don’t use false facts. He never threatened the US with an attack. He threatened to hit back, if he is attacked.
No way to achieve this objective without removing the regime IMO. If the regime survives a military clash with the US, it will be even more incentivized to develop credible deterrent, so that it doesn’t get attacked again.
Futhermore, think about all the damage to US prestige in this situation. Enemies of America around the world will get the idea that you can go to war with the US and “win”.
In game theory seeming irrational is often a winning strategy, for example in a game of chicken.
Not necessarily.
I concede, not easy, but….possible.
Machiavellian example:
A deal is struck with the regime: “You save face, even strengthen your hold on power and we remove your threat to us. We manage our people and keep in power.”
US/allies execute a day strike on (wrong) leadership locations and (mostly empty) airports and sites “known” to be ICMB facilities. Heavy media show.
Result:
USA
“We achieved the objective. The regime can’t develop the nuclear tipped ICMB for at least 5 years from now after our strike. We’ll keep working with our friends and allies to keep resolving the situation peacefully…blah…blah…”.
North Korea:
…something about aggression…..spirit…victory….etc…..need for further sacrifice….fight against EVIL USA….blah..blah….
Everything goes back to normal.
The Fatso keeps up the rhetoric, but, in practice, stops developing that nuclear tipped ICMB and everybody’s happy.
Till next time.
Or Iran.
If one digs deep enough, Yugoslavia ’99 could be a good example of a similar approach.
Well, the USSR had developed successful ballistic missiles by the early 30s, and development continued, even through the war. By 1949 they had deployed multi-stage R2s with electronic guidance in large numbers, so I’m guessing they were pretty far along when the call came to extend their range to more than 5500km (demarcation for ICBM status).
I’m suggesting that that is a distinct possibility, and maybe even (>50%) probability, at least in part. People and data ain’t the half of what’s required, and to get it right first time on 2 new models is extraordinary. A lot of missile experts were surprised by both, but their quick succession shocked many. It shows all 3 were under simultaneous development, and that the initial failures were corrected quickly in midstream (meaning easily). A number of analysts have suggested that real, physical engines must have made their way to DPRK (along with “the design and a few engineers”) for this to have been possible.
Well, ok, but what do you base that on?
My point in all this discussion is that if that’s the case, knowing how they got there is crucial to understanding what’s really going on. EG: these discussions would be wildly off the mark if the US gave DPRK the motors.
“How” is critical if he got them from the US, for reasons even you could see, surely. If so, there is no “threat to US soil”. It’s a casus belli for invasion, or at least for holding ROK & Japan in thrall.
They did and some still are in more academic circles.
The difference between Yugoslavia 1999 and North Korea 2017 is that Kim is not a whimp. I heard he burned his uncle with a flamethrower! Also, there is no pro-Western opposition in North Korea, ready to stage a color revolution.
North Korea won’t accept any deal with the US that won’t let it preserve its nuclear capability. They simply don’t trust the US not to attack them, if they disarm.
“Complicated” is how things get at the end of Empires.
I meant occupation in exactly the same sense as ROK is currently occupied. This would be sold to the N. Koreans as “reunification”, of course. I agree with you that there may be but manageable resistance to this in the north.
Would your recoil be less visceral had I said “garrisoned” instead? For “security” against Chinese invasion, of course.
Anyway, in the ’50s they tried their damnedest, but today’s reality is that the Empire has no stomach for that, which is part of why it’s approaching its end.
That’s one way to look at it. Wimps that is.
OK
There is another, starting from some facts:
Serbs/Yugoslavs (European Whites, Orthodox) at that time: already 7 years of heavy ethnic warfare in Balkans (’91-95; 98-99). All structures of the State hardened by that experience.
The top man in his late fifties with wast political experience.
North Koreans (Asiatics…Communists…Cultists….of some sort?):
Haven’t been in any…any….war related activity since 1953.
Top man in his early thirties with zero political experience.
I’ve said plenty of times around here. People love to point how hard Norks are.
I think they are not.
They are delusional and brittle.
As for the rest, fine.
Then won’t be any Machiavellian deal but the real war.
And the regime will lose, IMHO.
Just how much remains to be seen.
Not really, sorry to disappoint you.
I am just a simple ex-soldier.
The very idea that US sold that engine to North Korea as a part of elaborate scheme to ..do something…there…nope. I do believe there are conspiracies in the World but ..not this one.
The Fatso got it somehow but not that way, IMHO.
Yes I would.
As I’ve pointed several times so far, the land invasion/attack/incursion/whatever would serve only to remove the artillery/MRLs threat to Seoul and similar. Worst case scenario (haven’t gone through maps, ,this isn’t War College or real stuff, just a Web chatter) up to, say, 70 Kms.
Perhaps your…idea…of the death of the Empire is clouding your thinking here. I’d suggest leaving that out of this very topic.
This has nothing to do with what happened in 50s.
Actually, should shooting start, that focus on 50s will, exactly, be Norks downfall.
Bottom line, US/allies will be quite capable of “clearing up” that “artillery belt”, IMHO.
Nothing more, nothing less.
An accurate assessment. However, I think an invasion of North Korea by an enemy army would be devastated by at least one (tactical) battlefield thermonuclear bomb, because China would clandestinely give them one ( and a crew) to use very quickly. Moreover, in the aftermath of such a battlefield nuking by Kim, no one is going to assume NK cannot have or get a strategic level capability.
That makes attacking North Korea less risky only if the ones doing the invading could be sure they would not run into a battlefield nuking. The weaker North Korea is the quicker a nuke might be resorted to .
There is no telling what they would in fact do, because we do not know what is on their minds. It might play into North Korea’s hands to “punch them on the nose”. They are being deliberately provocative towards the US.
How well will the South Koreans fight? Do the South Koreans actually want war? We know the Americans want war and they assume that their allies want war as well, but do they? Are South Koreans happy to accept the risk of being nuked? Is the push for war coming from Seoul and Washington or just from Washington?
What would South Korea have to gain? They’re extremely prosperous. War could spell economic ruin. The conquest of North Korea could spell economic ruin.
The South Koreans give the impression of being like the western Europeans – soft, feminised, obsessed with consumerism and hedonism, not exactly the sort of people who would be enthusiastic about fighting what might turn out to be a long, expensive and very messy war with at least the possibility of massive civilian casualties. Would they be happy to endure all that given that the only ones who will gain anything will be the Americans?
Would the South Koreans want to risk war given the near certainty of Chinese intervention?
What’s the state of public opinion in South Korea? Are they marching in the streets demanding war?
Is it possible the South Koreans might fight the way the French fought in 1940? Mass surrender as soon as things turn against them?
Have the Americans even considered any of this?
Look at the leaders they elect. Merkel. Macron. Theresa May. They have a corrupt political class that cares about nothing other than its own interests. They’ve had 70 years of relentless propaganda telling them that even the smallest manifestation of cultural pride or national feeling makes you a Nazi. They’ve had a century of being deluged by American cultural filth.
They’re like a dog that has been beaten so many times that when someone tries to kick it it just whimpers. And a dog that has grown fat and lazy.
But would they fight knowing that their elites had fled? And with their leaders gone?
Would the British have fought on in 1940 if the Royal Family and the political leadership and the top civil servants and the wealthier members of the upper classes had fled to Canada?
The EU is much easier for the US to control. There’s only one political elite that needs to be bribed, or cowered into obedience. It’s just like the US where there’s only one Congress that has to be bought.
Airports will close as soon as the elites are safely away.
Yes, probably not. But the Kim family in North Korea has been exceptionally adept at playing communist China and the Soviet Union against each other all those decades of the past, all the while ensuring that no internal faction that supported either became too big for its breeches.
Contrary to the buffoonish punditry about the “crazy” Kims in the West, they are actually hyper-rational people who are ruthless and deeply calculating. Anybody who even shows a hint of having any modicum of independent power base is swiftly purged, as is any who gets too cozy with foreign governments, even that of the PRC.
In the material sense, the Kim regime is very weak, so it is in the interest of the regime to keep the tension between North Korea and the outside world at high level, but without inviting an actual all-out conflict that would be the death of the regime.
By the way, North Koreans, by and large, know a lot about the comparatively extreme affluence that South Koreans enjoy and that even China is becoming well-to-do. South Korean dramas – which depict the glitzy life of Seoul – are readily available in the black market and quite popular. It’s not the lack of knowledge of the outside world that keeps the North Korean population docile – it’s the terror and the deprivation.
No, as soon as the shelling starts.
It seems to me that your racial prejudices are preventing you from assessing the South Korean military capacity objectively.
Unlike Iraq with its tribal, sectarian, and ethnic divisions held together by dictatorships and colonial power, Korea has existed as a unitary culture and people for thousands of years (albeit with occasional divisions). South Korea as an American creation is more like West Germany than it is like current Iraq or even South Vietnam.
Speaking of South Vietnam, South Korea sent the largest contingent of “Free World Forces” during the conflict excepting the United States. Its soldiers were extremely thorough in preparing the battle space (often multiple units would sweep the same areas independently to assure all was well) and were particularly noted for their willingness to close with the communist forces in close quarters (even hand-to-hand) combat unlike their Western allies (who liked to rely on firepower from distance).
They were so thorough and well-prepared that they often ambushed the Vietcong in the latter’s own territory. They typically had a sky-high morale and excellent cohesion, and their kill ratios reflected this – similar to that of the most elite U.S. forces. Most American liaison officers attached to the Koreans pronounced Korean AORs “completely safe” or “completely pacified.” Perhaps the biggest compliment was paid by the North Vietnamese command, which advised the VC to avoid contact with Koreans. And, yes, as Mr. Karlin pointed out, the South Korean contingent in Vietnam was accused of numerous atrocities, some of which were no doubt true.
While the current generation of Korean young men are not exactly their Vietnam War forbears, don’t let the hair coloring and video game-playing fool you. All able-bodied men undergo conscription, and discipline is quite severe in the South Korean military (you can hear about one man’s experience here: https://youtu.be/WsVQ7dyyc_A). There is an enormous level of social opprobrium and legal sanction against those who attempt to draft-dodge. Even famous actors and singers are not immune and are hauled into military service after trying to dodge the conscription with various excuses (usually some sort of medical exemption). Even during the heydays of the corrupt Chaebol dominance, the wealthy elites could not get their sons exempted from military service. Even today, South Koreans still have a bit of a “garrison state” mentality.
People who do this to seven year-olds are not as soft as they look: https://youtu.be/XmgNe7EK-ww
I’ve worked with various military forces in Asia. Only two groups of men unnerved me in Asia. One was the Gurkhas. The other was the Republic of Korea Army 707th Special Mission Battalion. They are some of the toughest, scariest killers I’ve ever met.
In my view, the main weakness of the South Korean military is not that their society is brittle or that their soldiers would cut and run. It’s rather that their military is quite rigid. Orders are to be obeyed unto death, no if’s and but’s, and their soldiers are not taught to improvise. Luckily for them, their opponent, the North Korean military, is even more rigid.
By the way, the main weakness of the North Korean military isn’t so much the low morale or the obsolete equipment (although those are very large handicaps), it’s that their military lacks the large-scale training necessary to mount significant conventional operations. AND they also lack the fuel and spare parts necessary to sustain high tempo operations deep into South Korean territory. As others have pointed out, Korea is generally quite mountainous with a few plains (rice-growing) areas. There is only a handful of corridors through which large mechanized forces can come through, and those are HEAVILY emplaced with layers of anti-tank defenses, even without factoring in overwhelming air dominance the combined US-ROK air forces have. Essentially, North Korea’s only capacity is to hurt South Korea, not conquer it, in the act of self-immolation… which is why nuclear weapons are a vital guarantor of the regime safety for the Kim family.
They will never give that up, and they will periodically increase tension with South Korea and the U.S. in order to strengthen domestic cohesion, without actually inviting war. And nobody knows how long this will last. Certainly South Korea, despite the unification rhetoric, don’t want it since the defectors from the North have shown utter inability to assimilate in the South and end up either destitute or become the criminal underclass. Both China and South Korea have a vested interest in propping up the current regime in the North since its disintegration would adverse affect their respective countries.
Why is no one using it in propaganda? By the way from what I’ve read the rocket engine looked like a modified version of an RD-250 engine. In other words, it was a variant of the engine which has never been produced in either Ukraine or Russia.
So again, it was either only data and maybe some people who traveled there, or it was a highly sophisticated engine which was transported there (without either Russia or the US noticing it, depending on who you accuse of complicity) and then the North Koreans modifying it themselves. But if they are capable of that, then is it a stretch to propose that they are capable of producing it themselves? As actually a lot of serious publications are proposing.
You are putting the cart before the horse when you propose that I have to come up with evidence of the Norks producing it themselves. Your theory is equally in need of evidence, actually more so, because it posits a vast conspiracy of one of the major powers supplying the engine but without any other major power noticing it or at least pointing it out.
Don’t Koreans wish for some kind of reunification? Or do they hope that the northern regime will eventually open up and develop on itself, eventually leading to a more gradual (and cheaper) reunification?
This isn’t as much of a prejudice against the Korean people as against the US. US-installed regimes have an awful military record. Current regime in Iraq is weaker than Saddam’s Iraq. Germany today is just embarrassing.
Americanization seems to make your society soft. To the extent that the Southern soldiers are Americanized it makes them weaker than their Nork counterparts.
They mostly want the troublesome issue hermetically sealed off and not bother them. The whole reunification thing became rhetoric-only some time ago, maybe 15-20 years ago, when it became clear that North Korean defectors didn’t adjust well to life of freedom. South Koreans were also spooked by the apparent cost of the West German absorption of the East.
South Koreans today will state some vague, generic statements of folk solidarity with North Koreans, but serious people will tell you, especially in private, that no one wants North Korea or North Koreans. They don’t even welcome ethnic Koreans from China anymore due to the perceived criminality of the latter.
It’s like the Japanese attitude regarding Japanese-Brazilians on steroid.
In other words, if I understand it correctly, there are basically two Korean nations now.
By the way, defectors are probably strange individuals. They cause enormous harm to their own families and friends back at home, so probably a bit more psychopathic than average.
But even if they are not very representative, I’d guess a reunification would need a kind of colonial regime in North Korea for several decades, until it reaches sufficient development levels (and a couple generations of indoctrination) so that it could be fully reintegrated.
Did you miss the part about the soldiers of this American-installed* “soft” regime kicking ass and taking down names in Vietnam? Where the VC was afraid to engage them on its own turf?
*Only the First Republic was US-installed. Since the Third Republic and on, the US has had limited influence on the domestic politics of South Korea, even during the military dictatorships. One book summarized the relationship as “Massive Entaglements, Limited Influence” as the actual title.
Modern South Korea is something of an American creation, but it has its innate, ancient culture (remaining independent in the face of supposedly 1,000 invasions in the last 2,000 years), and it was ushered into modernity by Imperial Japan, which left a profound and lasting influence. In some ways, South Korea is more like pre-war Japan than Japan itself is.
In its culture, there is a certain unhinged, single-minded pursuit of goals, that is incompatible with softness. My goodness, it is still a society in which teachers beat their students with fists and sticks for minor infractions. Expats often describe Koreans as “extreme.”
A little tidbit, by the way. The modal surname at West Point – the U.S. Military Academy – graduations is frequently “Kim.” And Koreans are a miniscule fraction of the U.S. population. Non-Korean Asian cadets at West Point often describe Korean cadets as “hardcore,” and the Korean-American Relations Seminar is legendary.
Very good post, IMHO.
Keep them coming.
You’ve made worth skimming “ambient noise” here for sure.
This is NOT good:
One would expect a bit more of initiative/mission-type approach in a Western trained military.
A couple questions of some interest for me, if I may:
How would you assess a feasibility of a “push” by US/South Korean forces into North Korea to “clear” that “artillery belt”? Conventional warfare, no nukes.
And, how would you assess North Korean military (low levels) morale?
I know this isn’t easy but would appreciate if you give it a go.
https://www.unz.com/efingleton/north-korea-why-trump-should-kims-feet-to-the-fire/
Trump gets elected promising to stop the Chinese mercantile blitz on American productive capacity, and Kim suddenly becomes more of a problem. It’s such a mystery.
The Chinese would not topple Kim, China wants a buffer state North Korea. NK regarded as a rogue state a problem for the US suites China because it gives them a wedge against American economic nationalism; the Americans are going to have to ask for Chinese help with Kim and in return China continues to get into America’s economic pants
The leaks about MacMaster and Trump wanting to give Kim a bloody nose are probably bluff. If the US tried a limited punitive raid on Kim, they will be giving him the perfect oppertunity to inveigle the US into something a lot more serious. North Korea is not behaving like it wants to avoid trouble at all, its trying to provoke something. Serbia started WW1. Deliberately.
Let me second this, I’d like to read more of Twinkie’s take on the situation.
Six hours ago
That was a long time ago. Half a century. Americanisation is a gradual insidious process. It’s the cultural poison you have to worry about and it works slowly but surely.
The Serbs would argue that they were merely responding to Austro-Hungarian expansionism. Vienna’s annexation of Bosnia in 1908 was a direct threat to the long-term national goals of Serbia. And it could be argued that the reckless and bloody-minded policy of Austria-Hungary started the war. There are two sides to every story. Austria-Hungary was a bullying superpower with ambitions beyond its declining military capacity.
On the other hand it is true that the Serbs didn’t care if their actions led to a general European war. If a general European war seemed likely to further Serbia’s aims they were OK with that.
But then the Austro-Hungarians also didn’t care if their actions led to a general European war. If a general European war seemed likely to further Vienna’s aims they were OK with that.
So there are similarities. Once again we have a bullying superpower facing off against a small power that is determined not to back down even if that means another world war.
What you’re forgetting is that the S. Koreans of Vietnam fame lived under Gen. Park Chung-hee’s regime, as socio-politically repressive as the one current in N. Korea.
After a couple of generations of living Gangnam style, I’m not sure I’d like their chances against the N. Koreans any more than I’d like them against the very different S. Koreans of the Vietnam era.
I have no real idea, but I wouldn’t if I was trying to establish a different narrative that allowed a more advantageous range of actionable options.
I’ve read both opinions, and opinions on what the modifications meant. All quite inconclusive given the unknown unknowns. The RD-250 is pretty old now, and there may have been various modifications made, even at the factory that are not publicly known at this point.
Boring out your Chevy is an order of magnitude (probably several) less complex than building an engine from scratch. Modifying car engines was a hobby long ago, but I wouldn’t contemplate casting an engine block and forging aluminium pistons myself.
I did? If I did (no time to re-read my posts) it wasn’t intentional. I’d be stunned if either of us had proof of any of this.
I don’t actually have a “theory”. I’m just trying to keep the “Ideological Drones” here off-balance by pointing out that a “Monkey with Nukes” view is much too simplistic to explain the history, the geo-political interests in play, or even what we see actually happening.
DPRK related discussions are actually going on in a few threads simultaneously, making it difficult to track what who said where, and leads to untethered side discussions like the one we’re having. I haven’t participated much in this thread, but quoting oneself from another seems distasteful.
That’s just incorrect. It’s akin to saying that the Francoist Spain was “as socio-politically repressive” as Stalin’s Russia.
“Auftragstaktik” is hard to do with conscripts, especially in a Confucian culture with a very high degree of deference to authority and an extreme aversion to mistakes. In this regard, it’s interesting that, unlike the regular army, the special operations units of South Korea use non-honorific language in combat training and operations in an effort to simplify communication under stress and to instill some sense of initiative and improvisation (in other words, an atmosphere in which junior officers and enlisted can voice up to their superiors).
The discipline in the South Korean military is EXTREMELY severe (I once saw an ROK Army colonel pistol-whip a captain really hard, because his company maneuvered away slightly and left a small gap on a flank – I thought the captain should get medical treatment, but he got back up, stood at attention with blood streaming down his face until dismissed and then returned to his unit, no doubt to beat the living daylights out of HIS subordinates – I could only imagine what happened to the conscripts in the company). The basic theory of discipline in the South Korean army is that the conscripts should be more afraid of their officers than they are of the enemy. This probably makes the South Korean troops stubborn and tenacious, but is not exactly the kind of environment that fosters “mission-type approach.”
I am not convinced that a majority of the 10,000+ tubes of North Korean artillery is at a high degree of readiness, let alone all that functional. Besides, I doubt that more than 5-10% of that can even reach Seoul (and, yes, that is enough to damage Seoul, but not destroy it). The ones that dare to emerge from emplacement and fire won’t survive very long, given the much more advanced counter-battery capability the combined U.S.-ROK forces have at their disposal as well as their complete and utter air dominance.
As for how well the combined forces can drive into North Korea really depends on what happened to the North Korean forces that invaded South. If North Korea’s regime were really unwise enough to fling that only bolt in the quiver and roll the dice – and engage in a massive invasion attempt of the South – I expect the bulk of its mobile forces would be destroyed within two-to-four weeks after wreaking some havoc. After that I think Pyongyang would fall quickly, as the remaining totally obsolete and unready parts of the North Korean military disintegrates.
If, on the other hand, North Korea chooses a more limited adventure of engaging in some missile strikes, shelling, and minor land incursions, any serious land-based counterattack into North Korean territory would be fraught with a very high risk of substantial allied casualties.
I think the intel is pretty clear on this. The morale of the regular North Korean forces is very low. Their standards of training have deteriorated dramatically since the end of the Soviet Union. Their readiness is very low too and the prospect of re-supply close to non-existent in war. Of course, no one knows until the balloon goes up and there is actual fighting, but my own sense is that only the North Korean special forces are adequately indoctrinated, equipped, and trained to put up serious resistance.
Again, the only thing that is guaranteeing the surviving of the regime at this point is the nuclear card… and the reluctance of the surrounding powers, i.e. China and South Korea, to assume responsibility toward the North Korean population.
So are you saying that Americanization turned South Koreans from panicky peasants into “hard-headed, tough little bastards” (to borrow P.J. O’Rourke’s characterization of them) in the first twenty years of their influence, but then subsequently turned them into sissies?
That’s roughly what Anatoly wrote. The “regular army” consists of work battalions who are mostly incapable of fighting, the 200,000 “special forces” are the regular army capable of fighting (but much worse equipped than their counterparts in the South), and there are probably some true special forces as well, with a few thousand men.
Yes. They are very different countries, to say the least.
I don’t know about that. They are generally extremely desperate people. Most have a great deal of trouble integrating into the South Korean society. They are usually given a certain amount of settlement funds by the South Korean government, but they tend to blow through it fast or are defrauded easily. The structure that governed every aspect of their lives is gone, and they just don’t know what to do with themselves or how to support themselves.
South Korea is just not interested. Outside communist agitators, the desire for reunification in the South was always the greatest with the older generation that remembered a united Korea (albeit under Japanese occupation) and also those who fled the North, and yet others who had family in the North, but most of them have died out or are dying out. The younger generation simply does not have any emotional attachment to the North in anyway and see it as nothing but endless troubles that would detract from their prosperity and safety.
Although they are used for labor, I am sure, I wouldn’t quite go as far as calling them work battalions. They are just a very low readiness army with obsolete equipment that is breaking down with no fuel, spare parts, or ammunition for serious training. I’d say more a shadow of a once large conventional mechanized army organized along Soviet/Chinese lines.
It’s a certainty. Even in communist Hungary, the family members and close friends of defectors to the West were punished in some form. At a minimum, their careers stalled or they were demoted, but they also received quite a bit of police harassment, and could be prosecuted if it was suspected that they could have known about the imminent defection but failed to notify the authorities. Being the relative or former friend of a defector was always a spot on one’s reputation, which was written into one’s personal dossier, which always followed everyone into any job, so your boss always knew that he was not supposed to promote you.
I can only imagine punishment to be much more severe in North Korea. Defectors essentially try to escape the North but by doing so throw their families under the bus. I guess family members left behind cannot be happy with what they have done to them.
In other words, all three parties have the same interest in maintaining the narrative that North Korea mostly developed those weapons indigenously. I have a hard time believing it.
OK, that’s a fair point. But we’re talking about someone who can already build a Camaro, but now claims to have produced a highly (or not so highly?) modified Corvette racing car.
Norks look idiotic from the outside, but they are no fools. It’s also well known that they have always been fiercely independent. The Kims repeatedly purged pro-Soviet and pro-China factions from their party, the latest of which probably happened just a few years ago, which means it’s quite risky for outsiders to give them anything. It’s also well known that the youngest and fattest Kim reorganized the missile program shortly after his father’s death, which makes it more likely that it’s now working better than before.
The alternative theories you proposed (missile received from the US or from Russia or from China) require some kind of implicit or explicit cooperation between China, Russia, and the US, plus you also proposed that the Norks are really just “monkeys” willing to do the bidding of anyone showing up at their doors. This in my opinion doesn’t have Occam on its side.
China is giving N.Korea crucial support with necessities like oil at least.
It certainly is, but North Koreans may be more subtle than they are given credit for. I think the chances of them just nuking out are zero, because they do not want to get destroyed and as you say,no one is going to risk giving them a real strategic nuke option anyway.
Historically, the Hermit Kingdom has been adept in playing the role of China’s rebellious ward, and then playing great powers off against one another, as they did with Russia and Japan before Japan got fed up and told Russia they could have Manchuria if Japan was allowed to dominate Korea; Russia said no and the result was the Russo Japan war (and WW1) .
North Korea may have a much more devious endgame in mind than anyone thinks possible. But if you doubt that another consideration is the effect of the ridicule that Kim is being subjected to (being called a fatso with a circle of sycophants). North Korea is a highly militarised society (that recent NK defector had antibodies to Anthrax) and absolute power in it is welded by a young man being mocked as insignificant: “unsatisfaktionsfahig” (see The Crisis of Masculinity and the Outbreak of the First World War).
Anthrax is an infectious disease for those working in unsanitary conditions with infected animals or their wool or skin. I think horses, sheep and cattle can infect someone with Anthrax.
But it’s a relatively rare disease even in the third world, so yes, it’s possible that it’s not natural in origin.
Good post, appreciate it.
A couple of comments:
agree, of course.
There are always exceptions. The one that comes up fast is IDF, although probably not much for raw conscripts but to (recalled) reservists. It also helps where there is a real combat going on.
ROK hasn’t been there for a while I guess.
In any case this is just………bad, IMHO.
Wasn’t aware of that and it does put a certain light on what and how would happen should real shooting start:
I believe it’s worse than that.
That works well in defense (more or less, of course).
Does NOT work well in advance/attack.
I guess that as soon as an officer (OC/CO) goes down the unit loses momentum.
This type of attitude is a beauty in peace/garrison; it’s unpleasant in exercises and downright bad in real modern combat.
I guess that partially answers my first question (advance northward).
Agree.
There is a well written document somewhere on Web about effects of (conventional) artillery on modern structures. And, well, available practical data from recent wars. The actual damage is surprisingly low there.
The real danger is for populace not in shelters.
Well, after reading that about “initiative”, agree.
Agree.
Now…I haven’t researched that much, but, my impression about those SF, they are actually, by Western standards: “adequately indoctrinated, moderately equipped, and sufficiently trained light infantry”, IMHO. Probably around a couple of thousands could be at level of, say, “real” SF.
I just have a feeling that they lack SF type sophistication and finesse (again, apart of those couple of thousands). I’ve seen clips of their training…nothing there but physical and mental toughness. That’s fine, of course , but not enough in “real”.
Agree.
Why would Kim risk his power and country if he was given an ICBM rocket engine by testing it? Unless he’s super cozy with the outside power who gave him the engine, he’d have every incentive to distrust him. And what would he gain by “testing” an engine produced by others? I mean, if it works, great, if it doesn’t, he got them for free anyway. What insight did he wish to gain by testing something produced by others?
Quite, but even if they have made everything to do with the missile nuke themselves in N Korea, though using outdated foreign designs (possible, as the North Koreans copied the Magnox reactor) why is Kim flaunting his incipient-at-best strategic nuclear capacity while he is still so vulnerable? This is not a search for insight but rather an extravagant flouting of American predominance, with the aim of producing a reaction, or maybe an overreaction.
I think Kim is going much, much father than is necessary to discourage any regieme change pressure, sanctions, or military action against him, and going so far he is actually bringing those things about. Kim is actually going out his way to make himself a giant annoyance and embarrassment to Superpower America and Trump. Kim has went so far that it is being floated that America may use military force against North Korea, but Kim just keeps on provoking the US. It makes me wonder if North Korea may be trying to draw the US into some aggression against North Korea. Kim could not attack the south and count on Chinese support, but if the US appeared to be the aggressor and the one escalating, then things might not be so simple.
The Chinese appear to be giving North Korea more support than is necessary to keep it going, but just enough to enable it to be a problem for the US, and thus make Chinese help in sorting NK out something America will be prepared to pay dearly for (ie forget the economic nationalism Trump was elected to implement). The North Koreans are the employees of China, so it thinks, but there is a principal– agent problem because Kim may have a highly ambitious project of his own in mind for the final moves.
Nuclear and missile tests are the only way to develop a nuclear deterrent. His strategy seems to be different from that of his father. While his father tested only infrequently, so development was slow, the young boy seems to be intent on very quickly building a deterrent capacity. This has two advantages: one, it probably helps him prop up his otherwise shaky internal position, building up respect for himself within the country. As Anatoly wrote, if Trump doesn’t do something within a year or two, he might have already built a credible deterrent. In five years, it becomes almost a certainty.
As long as he doesn’t have a credible deterrent, any new step along the road is fraught with danger: any new test (and eventually he’ll have to test, if he is about to build a deterrent, which is a decades-long policy of North Korea, since the early 1960s when they requested atomic bomb technology from the USSR). Essentially, by testing in such a quick succession, he is merging the whole thing into one big crisis. Maybe this big crisis is more dangerous than the many smaller ones which would be caused by the many smaller tests, but added together, the latter might be more dangerous. It might also give the American establishment more time to react, more time to discuss and develop strategies of containment or of invasion, etc.
In other words, why is a quick development less rational or more dangerous, than a slow one? And even if it’s not the wisest course available to him, is it not possible that he’s just younger and so less patient than his father had been?
By the way I find your idea not totally impossible that Kim wants to provoke a war (more precisely, an attack on himself) to lure China and maybe Russia into the war on his side and so reunite the country. Though I think it would be literally stupid of him to do so (the likelihood of him surviving such a war with his regime intact is not very high), but this is the kind of stupidity which you can occasionally find in otherwise cunning and successful leaders. But I don’t think that’s the case, just not totally impossible.
I think we agree on that, esp. re-the lack of training. What I wrote:
No, they may well have very different interests in maintaining it, just as they all maintain (EG:) the 9/11 narrative for different reasons. I believe Putin knows exactly what happened re: 9/11, but (afaik) he’s never said anything that would cast doubt on the official story.
This analogy is probably running out of gas, but they built lots of lawn tractors, and failed to get a reliable Camaro that didn’t usually blow up before it went anywhere. After that, they suddenly showed up at LeMans and entered successful cars in 3 different classes. The latter is what’s turning heads.
I did? Where?
Look, the “theory” that DPRK, or at least Kim, is an American asset isn’t mine, it’s William Engdahl’s.
The “theory” that DPRK’s latest series of missiles isn’t indigenous isn’t mine either. It’s virtually a truism in think-tank circles, which the NYT brought to the general public’s attention. Here’s an early article pre-dating the HS-15 launch: http://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices/blogsections/iiss-voices-2017-adeb/august-2b48/north-korea-icbm-success-3abb
All I’m doing, as I’ve already repeated a couple of times for you, is trying to tease out some of the ramifications of those “theories”, and show that it ain’t simply a matter of who’s army is better fit to invade who. Enormous geo-political issues underlie the tensions in the ECS which, in my view are more likely to determine what happens there than whether DPRK’s conscripts are/aren’t able to stand up to ROK’s, or whether DPRK’s artillery can hit Seoul, etc.
It does? How?
Fair enough. I was actually thinking more of Syngman Rhee’s rule, and the early days of Park’s, under which most of the Koreans in Vietnam would have been born and raised. Park was at least an economic reformer. Anyhow, this isn’t wasn’t a major variable in anybody’s geo-political calculus.
Noting your subsequent posts regarding DPRK’s & ROK’s, one gleans that you have considerable experience with ROK, at least, and with its opinions on DPRK. The sum of your observations on the relative state of the 2 militaries begs a question or 2.
The first is one wonders why DPRK are being so deliberately provocative while occupying a weak position. What drives their behaviour?
The 2nd is, given the enormous resources and investments that have obviously been expended in creating modern Pyongyang and developing other cities, one wonders how the regime came to so neglect their once capable military. I realize that much of that investment came from the ROK and China, but that should have freed up regime resources for maintaining their conventional military, no? Did those foreign investments form an “insurance policy” against invasion by their neighbours, and so opened the window to DPRK provoking the US directly?
What’s your read of why they would do this, given that almost any theatre nuclear capability would offer significant deterrent against invasion.
My remark was in regard to your speculation of higher psychopathy among defectors, not in regard to the punishment doled out to the kin left behind.
I don’t wish to go into it too much (or at all, really), but I interviewed defectors in the past. Setting aside the mid-to high-ranking government bureaucrats/party leaders and military officers, i.e. VIP defectors with useful intelligence to debrief, most defectors nowadays tend to be rather ordinary people who are simply very desperate. The same goes for North Korean women who are trafficked (often self-trafficked) across the Sino-North Korean border.
And, yes, those left behind are severely punished – executions, labor camps, torture/rape, starvation, etc. But in many cases, those left behind are already on the way to their deaths. And the defectors themselves universally express a great deal of remorse for those left behind, especially after they experience even a little bit of their new enhanced lives.
Yes. I think most of your post is right on the mark.
But in this case, it is not simply a matter of lack of time for training due to corvee labor (after all, it’s quite a ritual for SOUTH Korean soldiers to help out with harvests during the fall too).
It’s that the regular North Korean military doesn’t have the equipment/spare parts/fuel/ammunition with which to train. Training is very expensive (and very crucial), especially for the more technical arms, the easiest example of which is aircraft piloting. Low flight hours is just not conductive to making good pilots, let alone combat pilots.
Surely there are some genetic/IQ differences among various populations, but even sub-Saharan Africans can perform very well at high levels as soldiers if properly indoctrinated, trained, equipped, motivated, and led (e.g. the Schütztruppen in German Africa during World War I). Conversely, even soldiery of the world’s highest IQ population (which, arguably, the Koreans are) are liable to be panicky incompetents who break on contact with the enemy if poorly trained and led.
And, yet, because training is one of those intangible elements of war (along with leadership) that can only be accurately measured after-the-fact, it tends to be neglected when resources are limited and political leaders are more interested in building up nominal size (built to impress, not to fight) than actual combat power output. North Korea’s regular military is a very extreme and acute case of this. A very large and impressive (size-wise anyway) army on paper, but likely quite ineffective in actual combat, modern day cannon fodder.
Yes, the other explanation is that they are extremely desperate, often with family members already in the process of dying, or imprisoned etc. But since the vast majority of North Koreans are not on the way to their deaths (or else it would become empty quickly), this again raises the question of exactly how representative they are of the general population.
That includes the Korean War years when the South Koreans were uneducated, untrained peasant-conscripts who routinely broke on contact.
South Korea was NEVER a totalitarian nightmare that is today’s North Korea at any period. Not even during the Japanese occupation. Rhee’s rule was dictatorial near the end, but not oppressive. The fact that the police shooting of a group of protesting college students led to the mass demonstrations that in turn led to his resignation should tell you just how completely un-totalitarian his regime was. Also much forgotten today is the fact that, until the beginning of the Korean War, South Korea was intensely plagued by communist insurgencies, which the Rhee government had a great deal of trouble suppressing (which in turn led some observers to note that the biggest mistake Kim Il-Sung made was to invade the South instead of waiting for it to destabilize on its own).
Park’s regime was much more authoritarian, but it was also more orderly and less corrupt than the two previous governments. In the early years, his coup and the following military rule garnered a great deal of popular support who were sick of the chaos of the Second Republic. He should be compared more to Franco and Pinochet than Mao or Stalin, let alone the all-pervasive and all-controlling dynastic cult that is North Korea (especially in light of the fact that Park’s once much admired and sympathized daughter who was elected president was recently impeached for corruption).
Much of the vaunted reputation of the South Korean soldiers of the Vietnam War-era (in stark contrast to their embarrassingly poor performance* in the Korean War) comes from the fact that under Park, the South Koreans developed something of an Israeli-style “Never again” mentality about losing. In the twenty some year interval between the two wars, South Koreans immersed in an intense human material development campaign – for war, for industry, for education, even for sports and entertainment! That was largely successful, I think… though the price was a population that is objectively very stressed (the highest suicide rate in the developed world) and subjectively very cranky – as the Korean-American comedian Dr. Ken Jeong says, “Koreans are the angriest MoFo’s in the world”: https://youtu.be/yi6fX2Qbvvo
*There were actually quite heroic moments for the South Korean army in the early days of the Korean War. For example, lacking anti-tank weapons, young South Korean conscripts – some of them mere high school students days before – donned satchel charges and ran into North Korean tanks. In the east where the terrain was more rugged, South Koreans repelled the North Korean invasion well, but were only obliged to retreat (in good order) once their flank was turned by the collapse on the main invasion axis to their west.
But, absolutely the most humiliating moment for the South Korean military was the premature blowing of the Han River bridges. Once the scale and technical sophistication of the North’s invasion were clear, the relatively competent (and later unfairly maligned) South Korean military leaders decided to have the army retreat south of the Han River, use the natural barrier to dig in to halt the momentum of the North Korean blitzkrieg, and await American reinforcements. Unfortunately for them, the panicky engineers who rigged up the Han River bridges blew them prematurely, trapping two-thirds of the South’s army north of the river… which then predictably disintegrated from the North Korean armor/air onslaught.
Based on its past behaviors, I suspect two reasons: 1. The increased tension frequently brings rewards in new negotiations with its enemies. 2. The increased tension with outsiders enhances domestic cohesion and strengthens the regime’s political and popular standing, something that is valuable especially when there is leadership handover.
This isn’t the first time the North has provoked both the South and the U.S. (e.g. the Rangoon bombing and killing of half the South Korean cabinet, barely missing the president and the Panmunjeom axe murders of American soldiers). It’s a continuing and well-worn pattern.**
**Some knowledgeable traders frequently make nice profits by going long on South Korean stocks whenever the North increases tension and depresses the South’s markets temporarily.
Because at some point they realized that the conventional military race was effectively and convincingly won by the South, and any further significant investment into it (already by far the biggest item in their national spending) was throwing good money after bad. That’s why 1) they began to develop a nuclear deterrence and 2) buy off their elites with Western luxuries (i.e. life in Pyongyang).
Nice posts….
Especially this:
Another way to look at this is that the defectors are probably more “self-motivated” and “daring” than the ordinary North Koreans and that, if such self-selected North Koreans can’t function well in South Korea’s free society, the prospects for the more compliant and unmotivated general population of the North in a free, capitalist society – without government rations, regulations, and structure – is rather bleak.
You can’t go from that to this in a blink. Don’t forget that it took South Koreans 30 years of military dictatorship and controlled and gradual transition to freedom and capitalism in order to become what they are today. Although North Korea’s communist regime improved certain things from the Japanese colonial rule (such as universal literacy, in which communist governments in general seem to excel), in fostering a self-motivated populace, its rule regressed greatly from the former, so North Koreans actually have a far wider river to cross before they can resemble anything like South Koreans.
Couldn’t agree more.
Especially with the second here:
And this:
You appear to be on the subject, for sure.
So, what do you think it’s likely to happen here?
The most likely scenario for, say, now to next couple of years?
I wrote a lengthy reply (is there any other kind from me?), but Unz.com ate it, so I will try to recreate it from memory below.
Israel was the very first counter-example I thought of when I wrote earlier. But as was said of old Prussia, Israel is “not a state with an army, but an army with a state.” Israeli “reservists” are in fact professional soldiers who happen to be on holiday with families and day jobs.
I spent some time in Israel. The IDF is the most relaxed military I’ve ever witnessed – a veritable casual Friday* among the world’s militaries. As one of my hosts/bodyguard/minder said of his country and army, “We care about the result; we are slobs and don’t care about how we look.” My reply to him, “Well, y’all are the most slovenly military I’ve ever seen.” I had some friendly, yet sharp banter with my hosts while drinking together.
Me: You get results, because you fight Arabs.
My host: Yes, true. But we do better against them than YOU do.
Me: That’s because we don’t get to bulldoze houses of grannies.
Him: Maybe you should. Sure beats killing a million of them “collaterally.”
Me: Easy now. We are your uncles and give you money.
Him: Yes, but YOUR uncles back home are Jews.
Me: You have me there.
*My favorite scenes of Israel and its army: IDF girl soldiers with rifles and bikinis on beaches, IDF girl soldiers at a bus stop waiting for the bus while sitting on the ground trading Hello Kitty cards, IDF girl soldiers checking bags at market entrances, IDF girl soldiers doing… ah, you get the pattern.
I am of the view that the ROK army is probably not at its best in meeting engagements. But this lack of initiative is mitigated by several factors, namely, 1) the North Korean military is even more rigid and fearful of deviating from orders, 2) the terrain is rugged and military units per square km quite dense, so there is less scope for daring moves, and 3) the main goal of the ROK forces is the tenacious defense and protection of Seoul 30 km from the DMZ, not to engage in brilliant strokes of elastic defense. In the Yom Kippur War even the Israelis didn’t display all that much elan and mission-orientation when fighting on the Golan as opposed to the more open terrains (excepting the crossing of the Suez) on the Egyptian front.
Good thing Seoul has a huge subway system.
Yes, but even half-decently trained light infantry, if sufficiently motivated, can pose some problems in urban and rugged terrains. Not insurmountable by any means, but we are going to take some casualties clearing them out.
I can’t predict the future, because it has a habit of looking like the present and the recent past… until suddenly it doesn’t and kicks everyone in the ass for projecting from the present.
Agree.
My “angle” was/is their effectiveness in a reaction to shelling of Seul.
The scenario would be: shelling->incursion to clear that threat.
Something, as we mentioned IDF,incursion into Lebannon 2006, but with a better success, of course.
I believe that the incursion would be…..difficult…..with such military.
Agree.
Agree, especially if own forces are of that “rigid” type.
I read that report from the, I think, 2nd Battallion, US Marines in Faluja.
The key of success was squad leadership/initiative as I remember. As in any close terrain fighting. And that “artillery belt” looks like that. So, yes, should it come to that I guess it will be hard and with plenty of casualties on both sides.
I agree.
You are, obviously, the best of all of us commenting that possible conflict. You appear to be a trained professional and on top of it you are on the ground there. Nobody here comes close to that combination.
My interest is simple: I just have a…… feeling…… that the conflict can get BAD. As nuclear.
I guess you wouldn’t be commenting here (and multiple articles popping up here recently) if a lot of people don’t share the sentiment.
This is what I believe it’s the most likely scenario, in broadest sense:
A strike by USA/allies resulting in a change of NK leadership and China, effectively, taking over North Korea.
I think it’s the most likely and the least painful for all parties involved.
And, yes, I do believe it can escalate into nuclear devastation of North Korea. God help us all then, but especially the people there.
That’s a big stretch, and reminiscent of foreign attitudes towards China prior to its racking up 4 decades of breakneck economic growth, thanks to its position (at the beginning of its economic liberalization) in the bottom 5% of countries GDP per capita-wise, which was itself due to 3 decades of communist incompetence. Ultimately, the raw human potential is first rate, and the difficulty dissidents have adjusting probably relates in good measure to survivor guilt. On the one hand, defecting was the only chance they had to avoid the constant terror of a nightmarish totalitarian society dwarfing Stalin’s Red Terror phase and/or dying of starvation. On the other hand, leaving might have doomed their immediate families to execution, via starvation or worse.
Whereas a North Korea incorporated into the Republic of Korea will feature mostly intact families that will provide emotional support through the societal changes to come. Given the nightmarish qualities of the Kim dynasty, it’s a good bet that left-wing parties in South Korea fear the electoral consequences of unification. Note that the hoi polloi in the DPRK aren’t lazy – they’re just deployed towards providing goods and services whose nature and quantity are driven by economic planners rather than the marketplace. The Chinese economy has grown from strength to strength despite the continued incompetence of its Communist masters. I’d expect North Korea to encounter a similar massive economic boom from the end of communist rule.
Yeah, I suppose starting his rule by enacting laws making political dissent illegal, ordering extrajudicial executions of political prisoners, even mass executions such as during the Jeju Uprising, don’t really count as “repression” and “totalitarianism” if it’s “Communists” or “Liberals” being executed.
Here’s a list of other non-repressive massacres that occurred early in Rhee’s rule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_South_Korea
As you say, he didn’t really get “dictatorial (until) near the end”.
Interestingly, even mentioning the Jeju crimes was itself a crime punishable by beatings, torture and a lengthy prison sentence. It stayed on the books until the late ’90s. That wasn’t “repressive” either, of course.
Sarcasm aside, from the economic POV, the North outstripped the South until the mid ’70s. The GDP/capita crossover point occurred after 1975, as the South’s economic integration into the West’s began to pay dividends after the Vietnam war.
Anyhow, as I said, it’s a minor point in the scheme of things today. Like Mao’s and Stalin’s excesses, they colour, but no longer dictate events.
My point was that the pattern has been broken. Previous provocations have been limited to USM assets and/or S. Korea. Nuclear warheads on long-range ICBMs represent a quantum shift that the US cannot ignore. If the DPRK is going all in for a few “rewards”, it must be that Peter is right after all – they’re mad as hatters. Unless, of course all the players know where they got their fancy new ICBMs from.
Whatever the answer to that is, the rewards the DPRK has been looking for are a Peace Treaty, and cessation of the US/ROK’s military activity on the peninsula. That that is being recognized in the West now may be the real reward of showing off shiny new ICBMs. Plebian sloganeering aside, serious voices are calling for a re-think:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/libya-the-forgotten-reason-north-korea-desperately-wants-23129
https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/north-korea-why-its-time-to-double-down-on-the-double-freeze/
I agree that this no doubt plays a major role. After decades of national paranoia, Jongun’s is the first DPRK regime to have (or can plausibly claim to have) delivered a real deterrent against invasion. As for your mention of “leadership handover”, I suggest that ICBM development, both domestically and internationally, may be intended to serve as a prophylactic against any future, unwanted handovers.
The first is fair enough. Under various sanction regimes, they couldn’t hope to hold their place in a conventional arms race, and as their nuclear program matured it would be natural that they allocate resources in other directions.
Of course, they started their nuclear quest in the early ’60s, requesting aid from both the USSR and PROC, but were turned down. That was long before there was any realization that they were going to lose the conventional race. The loss of a conventional arms race was equally distant in the early ’80s when they began development of their own nukes in earnest, so the historical timeline dilutes your point.
As for the 2nd, it would appear that ROK and China were more instrumental in buying off the DPRK’s elites than the regime, given where the money and engineering that built modern Pyongyang came from. Do you think that’s part of a plan?
1) North Korea has an excellent deterrent: China. And unlike nukes, which no one can actually use, China has proven resolve to intervene in Korea to keep the North from being beaten. The US is not going to make the same mistake twice, it would not invade north Korea because if it did ignore China’s annoyance and try and conquer the North the Chinese would just send half a million so called volunteers to the aid of Kim. That might not be true but the US would never risk calling any Chinese hint of intervention a bluff. Not after what happened to MacArthur.
2)North Korea has always had an excellent deterrent to external interference or invasion, no one is going to invade it, and everyone knows it, yet they are screaming about their nuclear capacity and what they will do with it.
3)They are trying to draw South Korea and America into starting something.
1) China is no good deterrent against China. They have always wanted to be independent. The Chinese have a history of trying to meddle in North Korea, the most recent example being a few years ago. Besides, what if China gives them up as a part of some deal? It’s never good to be so totally dependent on exterior forces beyond your control.
2) Depends on how insane their enemies might be. It was insane of the US to invade Iraq. It was insane of NATO to topple Gaddafi. It was insane of them to try to topple Assad. Yet they did all three.
3) Maybe. But a simple posturing in a game of chicken would look more or less the same.
Its puzzling posturing, but not defensive. More like a mongoose, bait and draw to precipitate a committed strike.
http://fightland.vice.com/blog/the-mongoose-lessons-in-fighting-from-natures-greatest-outfighter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia) AKA “Unification or Death”
If there’s an embargo, there will be smuggling. Has always been true, will always be true.
The smugglers will mostly operate from the neighboring countries. That’s for obvious geographical reasons.
The more corrupt a country is, the larger scale the smuggling. So, Russia and China.
Being overly hostile to the country under embargo reduces the prevalence of smuggling. So, not much smuggling from South Korea.
It was obvious from the get go that there will be a lot of smuggling from Russia and China, but not from other countries. This is great propaganda against them.
They were really stupid to vote for the embargo.