North Korea Threatens Military Strikes on South

@JeffJKowalski on twitter says "We're all ****:"

Kennymotown has alluded to the mindset required when facing North Korea. Because North Korea's leader has become the object of a certain amount of humor and derision in the United States, I am not certain that most people really understand the staggering resources North Korea has poured into its military -- one of the largest in the world and poised almost entirely along the border just North of the South Korean capital -- at the expense of impoverishing and literally starving its civilian population.

All military analyses I have seen anticipate that North Korea would overwhelm and overrun the combined South Korean and US military defenses between the border and Seoul within the first 10 to 20 minutes of an all-out attack. Here is a summary:

South Korea estimates that North Korea has stockpiled approx. 990,000 tons of ammunition most of which is already deployed to hardened munition dumps along the DMZ. Due to the current deployment of North Korean troops there would probably not be a significant increase in military traffic before the beginning of a full assualt. Estimates suggest that 70% of the North Korean forces are deployed within 100 Kilometers of the DMZ. Since the reunification assault is the primary purpose of the military the number of plans have been practiced repeatedly and are well understood by many of the oficers even down to the regimental levels. In short an assault on South Korea could begin at any moment.

Such an attack would be characterized by three stages. First stage: penetrate the DMZ, insert special forces to dissable command and control facilities as well as airfields, deep missile strikes, destruction of forces along the DMZ. Second Stage: isolate Seoul and consolidate conquered territory. Third stage: conquer the remaining territory and overwhelm remaining defenders. The whole general scenario relies heavily on strategic surprise and rapid achievement of objectives before South Korea can mobilize their reserves or heavy US reinforcements can land. Unfortunatly US land forces are limited by treaty to 37,500 servicemen in South Korea. Recently we have redeployed 10,000 of those soldiers to Iraq. Over the next year the proposal is to remove 2,500 more.

North Korea has approximatly 700,000 infantry, approximatly 8,000 artillery systems, and 2,000 tanks prepositioned within 90 kilometers of the DMZ. This number constantly is increasing as North Korea slowly redeploys their forces towards the DMZ. The active army in North Korea consists of 1,000,000 men perhaps as high as 1,200,000 men. The reserves are to the number of seven million. The active military is one of the highest trained in the world with special emphasis placed on large scale operations. North Korea's air force consists of approximatly 110,000 personnel but its emphasis is in operating the thousands of anti-aircraft batteries scattered across the country. North Korea's main strategy is to neutralize South Korea's airforce thus ensuring at least neither side gaining air supremacy.

To put all this in proper context it is important to note the current capabilities of South Korea. Active army is standing around 560,000. The Marine Corps has approximatly 25,000 men on active duty.

Sometimes i just have nothing to say.

North Korea is capable of just about anything with a starving population that would gladly go were the food is and in the form of a mass army it would suffer severe casualty's in it's human wave attacks. Having a stomach to stop such an attack takes a different mindset that I fear the South Koreans don't have. Two days too Soul is my best guess, without nuclear intervention or a 20 division's of tanks and infantry to hold them off till reinforcements arrive. And that comment by GodsnLiberals about not stomaching water boarding, It's torture and you don't know what the hell your talking about.

from Seoul I haven't seen any real tension, the North is always being belligerent. Meh.

The real story is still Roh, which I think paints of picture of just how dangerous the situation really is.

we are expecting a group of people who gets 'quessy" about waterboarding to deal with North Korea..

May heaven help us..

Why is NK still a country? They are like the short guys who think there 20 lbs of fury. get real, these guys talk shit and someone just needs to straight up and hit them in the mouth.

Part of me says that any war that is avoided is a good war.

The other part of me is just curious to see if N. Korea will follow up with its rhetoric if S. Korea were to carry out an act deemed hostile by the North.

What could the regime possibly do? Fire some of their missiles that aren't proven to accurate? Launch an all out invasion on their equally, if not better equipped brethren to the South?

Hmmmm...