I just gotta wonder (FYI I'm not an American) but would the UN and therefore the USA who usually sends in the most army/defense forces just say, Get lost we aren't interested?


The UN Security Council has to approve a resolution unanimously to go to war and the U.S only has 1 vote. It is highly unlikely that China would go along with any invasion and neither will Russia and most likely France. The thing people never seem to get about the UN is that it is not in and of itself an ineffective organization. The Secretary General only acts according to the Members Resolutions so if you want someone to blame when things go poorly, you have to look at the Members.

Incidentally, I read a long history of the UN and in many cases, countries (especially the U.S) often will vote one way because the votes are public but then act completely differently when it comes to action. There are numerous cases (Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, etc.) where votes were taken to send in either a force to monitor the peace or elections but the countries were very slow to act. The U.S also loudly condemned the ineffectiveness of the UN for years but at that time the UN was handcuffed because countries were not paying their dues and it was the US with the lion's share of the money that was withholding the money. On one hand they were a member and agreed to paid dues and on the other they didn't and then publicly dismissed the organization for lack of action.

It's a a very strange organization and really politics at it's worst and the blame is not on the UN but the countries who all act in their own self interest instead of doing what the UN was set up for and acting together to get things done for the good of all. I was very disappointed after reading the history, disappointed in the Members who just can't stop the politics and do what is right.

the states would go batshit, and fight back instantly - very, very hard. if china invades some minor neighbor. . .not so much. but the korea situation is basically more straightforward. they've got piles of top-shelf troops and gear in korea waiting for this. it would be a mostly-conventional ground war, with easy air and sea superiority. there would be absolutely zero bullshit in terms of IEDs, guerilla war, sectarian violence, etc etc. the north would be universally condemned and the states would have global approval. it would be an 'easy win' for them.

-mike

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The U.S also loudly condemned the ineffectiveness of the UN for years but at that time the UN was handcuffed because countries were not paying their dues and it was the US with the lion's share of the money that was withholding the money. On one hand they were a member and agreed to paid dues and on the other they didn't and then publicly dismissed the organization for lack of action.

The reason the US was withholding some of its dues was because it was protesting the fact that at the time, the US footed 25% of the entire UN budget. Seems a bit unfair given the size of the other economies in the world that one country was paying a full quarter of the UN's budget.

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

My limited understanding is that the main threat is not invasion, but bombing of the civilian population from missiles and artillery. They have thousands of such weapons which are in range of civilian populations. They would be nearly impossible to stop before they could fire at least a few times into cities, killing many people and causing much destruction.

Korean war is still legally on, we've had a ceasefire since 1953.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
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this

We're not at a ceasefire. We're at armistice, which really means that we're not at war.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

I would describe the armistice as a limited one ( 50+ years with a DMZ)


The terms read more like a ceasefire even though the document is titled armistice.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
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A ceasefire is usually temporary and with defined end date. The armistice with N. Korea is indefinite, and the terms specifically mention both armistice and cease-fire. The point being, we're not "at war" with N. Korea, and technically we (the US) were never "at war" with N. Korea. We were the largest provider of force for a UN police action on the peninsula.

Not that it maters too much, other than in legal terms, since N. Korea disavowed the armistice agreement several years ago.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

This is exactly right. NK has tens of thousands of artillery pieces within range of Seoul, and even with the tremendous airpower advantage the South and the US would enjoy, there is no way to knock out all those guns before they can wreak utter havoc on the city. Many tens of thousands of civilians could be dead very, very quickly if war erupted on the peninsula.

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

a bit OT, but is this something that has much impact on daily life in the south? do schools/cities/whatever have bomb shelters, evacuation plans, etc? it's sort of like living in a tornado zone. . .

-mike

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

I'm not stationed on the peninsula, so I probably don't have a good feel for the day-to-day impacts. However, I am over there a fair amount, and I will say that it's not a constant feeling of living under the threat. The people live their lives like any normal person would. They go to their jobs, watch baseball, fish, etc. If you were dropped down in the middle of a S.Korean city, I don't think you'd feel like you were in a potential war zone.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

I don't think it would be nearly as easy as you think. For one thing, the terrain is totally different...finding and killing targets in the desert from the air is a far different animal from trying to find targets in the relatively rough terrain on the peninsula. Secondly, we only have about 32,000 troops there, where we had well over 100,000 for DESERT STORM. We also had the luxury of pounding Saddam's army for 43 days before our ground troops took over, again on terrain tailor made for our mechanized units and their tactics. Thirdly, North Korea has hundreds of thousands of special ops forces trained to infiltrate the South and cause widespread havoc behind the lines. The notion that a fight on the Korean peninsula would be anything but a bloody slugfest is wishful thinking. I think the best that world can hope for is the North eventually peacefully implodes and it becomes a stabilization operation, rather than an all-out war.

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

   The UN would write progresively more harsh resolutions to express their displeasure.

While Seoul is not in range of artillery ( MIG's would be a bigger concern) some of your other points are just incorrect.

NK has the largest army in the world and its artillery is NOT WWII vintage. They also have SCUD type missiles.

ROK forces are not bad asses. Like any military they have their good ( some of theirs are quite good and quite dedicated) and bad but mandatory service is a cancer for any military.

You can't compare Sadams army to NK's forces.As was noted different terrain along with several other factors. One of those factors is that NK would have no problem breaking the normal rules of modern warfare and tossing out the old biological weapons.

To assume that NK knows it would go badly is to assume that they are not bat shit crazy and brainwashed. That's a dangerous assumption and the crazies in charge would have no problem sending their 1,000,000 man ( and woman) strong army off to die.

One thing that most people don't know is the emphasis that NK has put on special operations.( somewhere between 80-100k personnel) Also of note is that they have sympathizers in the south and some of the universities in the south are more than happy to rewrite history and fill the college students heads with weird ideas.

Would NK win? No. Would it be similar to Desert Storm? No to that also. The cost in civilian and military casualties would be extremely high. If the Chinese or Russians would back the operation that number goes quite a bit higher.

The south would have an advantage as the defender but it would be very ugly.

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"You lie!" The Prophet Joe Wilson

There would be a MAJOR problem with guerrillas and IED's ( they sort of go hand in hand) and as someone noted we only have a token force on the peninsula. Our air and ground superiority would be stifled by pressure to prevent civilian casualties. We would still win eventually but as I already said the cost would be high just based on how the NK military doctrine says they would fight.

One thing to note is that a warm weather ground attack is very unlikely because of the terrain. In the Western Corridor ( where US forces have traditionally been stationed) they would be bottle necked unless the rice patties were frozen. They have a massive amount of equipment to move but very few roads lead south from the DMZ. As someone said we have "rock drops" along with giant earthen walls to bottleneck their forces.

Without going to in depth there is ( used to be) a fall back plan that would stop them in their tracks but it was only to be used as a last resort.

I lived for a year at the last US camp before entering the DMZ. It is now in ROK hands but back then when you arrived they let you know that there were no less than 130 pieces of artillery aimed at the camp. The camp was about 300 meters by maybe 150-200. ( I'm probably being generous to be honest) Ask a gun bunny to do the math on that one :) We were affectionately known as the "speed bump" and we all carried maps with routes to get out of anything were to happen along with the most up to date maps of the mine fields that surrounded us. You were on your own and had to go about 25 miles south, including crossing a bitch of a river, to get to the assembly area where whoever was left would regroup.

Their doctrine says to "walk" artillery in front of the ground and mobile troops as they push south so you can imagine it would be pretty devastating since the vast majority of their forces are on the DMZ waiting for the order.

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"You lie!" The Prophet Joe Wilson

I wonder how "motivated" the NK military and civilian population would be to really fight after the initial exchange. Is the indoctrination so complete that they'd die for their country against an overwhelming force? Or is the nationalism a fascia that would crumble pretty quickly once the population could see the end of the tunnel?

It's a different world than Egypt, Syria et al, a surreal world out of a dystopian sci fi novel where information is much more tightly controlled. You have to wonder how completely and how long such a state can exist.

Apparently the state admitted that their launch failed, which is kind of surprising. Apparently all prior failures were "tremendous successes." You have to wonder if that's a tiny, tiny crack in the dam.

Theres is definelty more a crack than when I was there but its still very small.

To answer your first question I would have to say that an overwhelming majority would do as they were told. of course they wont have the full story and they would know they were overwhelmed until they were neck deep in the war zone.

Another reason that they do what they are told, just in case the brainwashing doesn't work, is covered in this new book that I meant to grab this weekend. I have heard a lot of stories and its not very well known that NK has these death camps but it is known by their own people.

I listened to an interview with him and its beyond sad. He told a quick story about seeing a couple of kernels of corn in a pile of cow dung and he dug them out and ate them because he was so hungry. I guess our food shipments didn't make it to the camp.


The harrowing true story of a defector's escape from a brutal North Korean prison camp was released in the U.S. on Thursday.
Journalist Blaine Harden's book, "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West", tells the tale of 30-year-old Shin Dong-hyuk. Shin is the only person who is known to have escaped from one of the famous internment camps after being born there.
He was born in Camp 14 as a child of two prisoners in 1982 and spent his entire life having his every move closely monitored before finally making his break for freedom in 2005.

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"You lie!" The Prophet Joe Wilson

There are a fair number of memoirs of North Korean defectors to South Korea that have been translated into English. I'll throw in a rec for this one:

http://www.amazon.com/...271&sr=8-1-spell

Though I'll note that it's somewhat dated now. There's apparently a huge black market now in the PRK for South Korean newspapers, DVDs, etc. and the Kims don't have nearly the control over the message that they had even five years ago.

At this point, China is rather tired of officially propping up the PRK, but they're kind of suck with that position now, not just for face-saving reasons, but because they remember what happened when the Warsaw Pact countries liberalized travel rules, and China would far, far rather try to have policies that kept PRK citizens in North Korea than to deal with an open border refugee stampede. At this point, everyone in North Korea knows that good Communist ally China has far, far better living standards for the average citizen, and it would be a case of the last person out of North Korea not even having to turn out the lights because of the PRK's non-existant power grid.

  

http://www.theonion.com/...nuclear-weapon,2638/

U.N. Acquires Nuclear Weapon
January 13, 2009 | ISSUE 48•14 ISSUE 45•03


NEW YORK—The United Nations, a highly organized governing body bent on world peace, has obtained a nuclear warhead and intends to use the dangerous device to pursue its radical human rights agenda, sources reported Monday.

The reason the US was withholding some of its dues was because it was protesting the fact that at the time, the US footed 25% of the entire UN budget. Seems a bit unfair given the size of the other economies in the world that one country was paying a full quarter of the UN's budget.


The reason it is so high is that the assessment is based on per capital income which is a little "fairer" than just looking at the size of other economies.