North Korea 'tests two missiles'

Wow, i must say cztheday sounds really knowledgeable on this topic. I would ask about the nuclear capabilities of north korea. We've heard a lot about that on mainstream news, north korea has enough fissile material for 1-10 warheads etc...

I know that I have taken a huge amount of space on this topic already, but for those who are legitimately interested in looking at how to "solve" the puzzle of North Korea, this a helpful excerpt that (very) briefly describes the current system and philosophy of government in North Korea. Personally, I consider the regime to be one of the most evil and potentially deadly in the history of the planet. We HAVE to find a way to solve the problem -- even if that means simply containing it long enough for a soviet-style solution to occur in which the system crumbles under its own weight and rotten foundations. But that scenario is not in the cards right now:

The DPRK adopted Marxism-Leninism as its ruling philosophy when it proclaimed its establishment in 1948, but in a Constitutional revision in 1972, supplemented it with the juche ideology, or national self-reliance. The two philosophies were combined into one as "the juche idea of the Worker's Party of Korea, a creative application of Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of our country". In 1980, the official ideology was simplified as "the juche thought of the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung". According to the DPRK Constitution, juche is "a revolutionary ideology with a people-centred view of the world that aims to realise the independence of the masses, the guiding principle of its actions". Juche consists of two parts: the philosophical theory that claims the masses are the masters of history and the revolution, and the principle that the masses need the guidance of a leader (Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong-Il) to fulfil their destiny.

In practice, juche resulted in an inward looking economic and political system that ostensibly rejected international trade, but in reality became heavily dependent on the provision of goods on favourable terms from fraternal socialist states. With the demise of the communist bloc, the difficulties of this position soon became apparent. Shortages in spare parts, fuel, and food have grown but the isolationist ideology of juche continues to underlie all government policies and emphasis remains in advancing an independent road to national development. The population is motivated to pursue juche through an intensive ideological campaign and a pervasive programme of political indoctrination. Since its inception, juche has primarily stressed independence from external powers, but the regime now faces the dilemma of how to expand trade and investment with the outside world in order to resuscitate the economy, without jeopardising its political stability.

The "Military First" orientation has always been the heart and soul of the North Korean regime. It provides the only conceivable means by which the regime can survive and achieve its ultimate security through reunification. The military continues to grow in both conventional and asymmetrical forces with increasing emphasis on the latter. The military provides deterrence, defense, and a massive offensive threat, as well as leverage in international negotiations. The army is much more than just a military organization; it is North Korea's largest employer, purchaser, and consumer, the central unifying structure in the country, and the source of power for the regime.

iii. Underground Tunnel Warfare

North Korea is the world most-tunneled nation. North Korea's expertise in digging tunnels for warfare was demonstrated during the Vietnam War. North Korea sent about 100 tunnel warfare experts to Vietnam to help dig the 250 km tunnels for the North Vietnamese and Viet Gong troops in South Vietnam. The tunnels were instrumental in the Vietnamese victory.

North Korea's army runs on company-size units. Tunnel warfare is conducted by independent company-size units. Tunnel entrances are built to withstand US chemical and biological attacks. Tunnels run zig-zag and have seals, air-purification units, and safe places for the troops to rest. It is believed that North Korea has built about 20 large tunnels near the DMZ. A large tunnel can transport 15,000 troops per hour across the DMZ and place them behind the US troops.

iv. Special Forces

North Korea has the largest special forces, 120,000 troops, in the world. These troops are grouped into light infantry brigades, attack brigades, air-borne brigades, and sea-born brigades - 25 brigades in total. These troops will be tasked to attack US military installations in Korea, Japan, Okinawa and Guam.

North Korea has the capacity to transport 20,000 special force troops at the same time. North Korea has 130 high-speed landing crafts and 140 hovercrafts. A North Korean hovercraft can carry one platoon of troops at 90 km per hour. Western experts pooh-pooh North Korea's ancient AN-2 transport planes as 1948 relics, but AN-2 planes can fly low beneath US radars and deliver up to 10 troops at 160 km per hour. North Korea makes AN-2s and has about 300 in place. In addition, North Korea has hang-gliders that can carry 5-20 men each for short hops.

North Korea has developed special bikes for mountain warfare. Special forces use these bikes for fast deployments on mountains. Switzerland is the only other nation that has bike-mounted special forces trained for mountain warfare. The rugged terrains of the Korean Peninsula are ideally suited for special forces operations. North Korea's special forces will attack US targets in Japan, Okinawa, and Guam as well. Japan's self defense units are being reorganized to counter this threat.

How good are North Korea's special forces? In September 1996, a North Korean submarine was stranded near Kang-nung and the crew were forced to abandon the ship and land on South Korea. The sub had two special forces agents who had finished a mission in South Korea and were picked up by the sub before the sub ran into a rock. The two men fought off an army of South Korean troops and remained at large for 50 days, during which they killed 11 of the pursuers.
Would you now like me to discuss the enormity of their UNCONVENTIONAL programs? 'Cause in some ways, they are even MORE deadly...

North Korea has developed tanks ideally suited for the many rivers and mountains of Korea. These tanks are called "Chun-ma-ho", which can navigate steep slopes and cross rivers as much as 5.5 m deep. North Korea's main battle tanks - T-62s - have 155 mm guns and can travel as fast as 60 km per hour. The US main tanks - M1A - have 120 mm guns and cannot travel faster than 55 km per hour. North Korean tanks have skins 700 mm thick and TOW-II is the only anti-tank missile in the US arsenal that can penetrate this armored skin.

North Korea began to make anti-tank missiles in 1975 and has been improving its anti-tank missiles for the past 30 years. North Korea's anti-tank missiles are rated the best in the world and several foreign nations buy them. The US army in Korea relies on 72 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to kill North Korean tanks. Each Apache has 16 Hell-Fire anti-tank missiles. As shown in the recent Iraq war, Apaches are fragile and can be easily shot down even with rifles. North Korea has about 15,000 shoulder-fired anti-air missiles ("wha-sung") and Apaches will be easy targets for wha-sung missiles. On December 17, 1994, a wha-sung missile brought down an American OH-58C spy helicopter which strayed north of the DMZ.

North Korea has 4 mechanized corps and 24 mechanized brigades. Each brigade has 1 tank battalion (31 tanks), 1 armored battalion (46 armored cars), 4 infantry battalions, one 122mm battalion (18 guns), one 152 mm battalion (18 guns), one anti-aircraft battalion (18 guns), anti-tank battalion (9 armored cars with anti-tank missiles and 12 anti-tank guns), one armored recon company (3 light armored cars, 7 armored cars, and 8 motor-cycles), one mortar company (6 mortars), one engineer company, one chemical company, and one communication company. The US army has A-10 attack planes to counter North Korea's mechanized units. In case of war, the skies over Korea will be filled with fighters in close dog-fights and the A-10s would be ineffective.

The bulk of North Korea's mechanized and tank units are positioned to cross the DMZ at a moment's notice and run over the US and South Korean defenders. The attackers will be aided by SU-25 attack planes and attack helicopters. In addition, North Korea has 600 high-speed landing crafts, 140 hovercrafts, and 3,000 K-60 and other pontoon bridges for river-crossing. North Korea has 700,000 troops, 8,000 heavy guns, and 2,000 tanks placed in more than 4,000 hardened bunkers within 150 km of the DMZ.

) Artillery

North Korea has 2 artillery corps and 30 artillery brigades equipped with 120mm self-propelled guns, 152mm self-propelled mortars, 170mm guns with a range of 50 km, 240 mm multiple rocket launchers with a range of 45 km, and other heavy guns. North Korea has about 18,000 heavy guns. North Korea's 170mm Goksan gun and 240mm multiple-tube rocket launchers are the most powerful guns of the world. These guns can lob shells as far south as Suwon miles beyond Seoul. The big guns are hidden in caves. Many of them are mounted on rails and can fire in all directions. They can rain 500,000 conventional and biochemical shells per hour on US troops near the DMZ. The US army bases at Yijong-bu, Paju, Yon-chun, Munsan, Ding-gu-chun, and Pochun will be obliterated in a matter of hours.

The US army in Korea is equipped with Paladin anti-artillery guns that can trace enemy shells back to the guns and fire shells at the enemy guns with pin-point accuracy. However, it takes for the Paladins about 10 min to locate the enemy guns, during which time the Paladins would be targeted by the enemy guns Gen. Thomas A Schwartz, a former US army commander in Korea, stated that the US army in Korea would be destroyed in less than three hours.

ii). Blitz Klieg

North Korea has tanks, armored cars, and self-propelled artillery for blitz klieg. North Korea has one tank corps and 15 tank brigades. The tank corps has 5 tank regiments, each of which has 4 heavy tank battalions, 1 light-tank battalion, one mechanized infantry battalion, 2 self-propelled artillery battalions.

US tanks are designed to operate in open fields. In 1941, Rommel of Germany defeated British troops in North Africa with tanks. The largest tank battle was fought at Kursk in 1943, in which the Soviets defeated Germans. In 1973, Egypt defeated Israeli tanks with anti-tank missiles. All of these tank battles were fought in open fields. The Gulf War and the recent war in Iraq saw US tanks in open fields. American and Western tank commanders do not know how to fight tank battles in rugged terrains like those of Korea. Tank battles in Korea will be fought on hilly terrains without any close air cover, because North Korean fighters will engage US planes in close dog fights.

But even if all of the roughly 75,000 U.S. military personnel in the region were actually stationed along the DMZ, they would not make an appreciable difference in the event of an attack from the North. I have already posted a number of articles from the annual CIA threat assessments and from the various U.S. military branches that show just how gravely concerned they have been for years about North Korea's capacities. It is good to be proud of our armed forces -- we have certainly spent enough taxpayer money making them the best in the world. But we are not invincible -- especially when we are already engaged on two fronts.

There are three countries in the world that would pose legitimate challenges to the U.S. I have little doubt that we would defeat any of the three over time in an all-out war, but the cost in personnel and dollars would be ungodly -- especially if we had to take the fight to them on their home ground. Those countries are China, Russia and North Korea. Again, most Americans simply refuse to include North Korea, despite the enormity of their military capacity. I am persuaded that it is simply a matter of people's opinions regarding North Korea's leader...that he is just a weird little tyrant with false dreams of glory. While there is a nugget of truth in that, this analysis fails to recognize that NK has been preparing to invade the South for GENERATIONS.

Here is yet another article about their capabilities. Obviously you are free to ignore it -- the truth is tough to take sometimes. But there is a very good reason why the U.S. has simply swallowed all the shit NK has shoveled down our throat for the last 20 years rather than just taking them off the chessboard:

One cannot fight war without military preparedness. North Korea's regular army is for offensive actions whereas its militias are homeland defense. North Korea's regular army consists of 4 corps in the front area, 8 corps in the rear area, one tank corps, 5 armored corps, 2 artillery corps, and 1 corps for the defense of Pyongyang, South Korea has 19 infantry divisions whereas North Korea has 80 divisions and brigades.

A North Korean infantry division has 3 infantry regiments, 1 artillery regiment (3 battalions of 122 mm rocket launchers and 1 battalion of 152 mortars), one tank battalion of 31 tanks, one anti-tank battalion, one anti-aircraft battalion, one engineer battalion, one communication battalion, one light-infantry battalion, one recon battalion, and one chemical warfare battalion.

North Korea's militias consist of 1.6 million self-defense units, 100,000 people's guards, 3.9 million workers militia, 900,000 youth guard units. These militias are tasked to defend the homeland. The militias are fully armed and undergo military trainings regularly.

i

extblues,

Well naturally now that someone who knows even less about the military situation in on the Korean Peninsula than GodsnLiberals (congratulations, I didn't even know that was POSSIBLE) has confirmed his analysis, I must just tuck my tail and retreat...except, perhaps for the following:

As I am sure you know because of your declared expertise in the area, the troops we have stationed in the area are actually divided between the South Korean side of the DMZ and Japan -- with the bulk of those troops in Japan. Neither country's citizens, as you know, are particularly thrilled (at least the majority of them) to have ANY U.S. troops in their countries.

Now why do you suppose the bulk of our troops are in Japan, a country with which we have one of the best and most peaceful relationships of any in the world? Do we secretly pine for conquest there? If not, why are those troops not in South Korea where they could actually be of some use as a deterrent, deterrent or the core of an offensive unit if we ever had to support South Korea in an attack on the North? Do you suppose the document described here could have anything to do with it?

In 2004, agreement was reached on the return of the Yongsan base in Seoul--as well as a number of other U.S. bases--to the R.O.K. and the eventual relocation of all U.S. forces to south of the Han River. Those movements are expected to be completed by 2016. In addition, the U.S. and R.O.K. agreed to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Korea to 25,000 by 2008, but a subsequent agreement by the U.S. and R.O.K. presidents in 2008 has now capped that number at 28,500, with no further troop reductions planned. The U.S. and R.O.K. have also agreed to transfer wartime operational control to the R.O.K. military on April 17, 2012.

Yes that's right. We are woefully understaffed in South Korea in proportion to the threat from the North. But the presence of our often loutish troops in South Korea has been so deeply unpopular for so long (might have better relationships with them if we would stop raping their women, but what can you do when your policy is to accept not just the smart and honest but also the criminal and dim-witted into service?) Because of this, the bulk of our forces in the theater are cooling their heels in Japan, where they are just slightly better than completely useless. In the event of an attack by North Korea, Seoul would be overwhelmed before our Japan-based troops could even get airborne. With luck, they would arrive in time to help SK hold the North back from taking the entire Southern peninsula.

GodsnLiberals,

"...defect...re-scaring the weak..."

Your analyses are, as always, wonderfully amusing. You would never deign, for example, to rely on anything so mundane as mere "fact" or "logic" or even "common sense." Far better, of course, to shoot from the hip...the stakes, after all, are only genocide and fratricide rolled into one miserable little conglomeration.

re-scared? I wasn't scared then, and I am not scared now. NK cannot reach the United States directly, regardless of their leader's posing. I am simply concerned for the innocent men, women and children on both sides of the DMZ who will be swiftly killed shortly after the fighting starts.

Your prediction that the U.S/South Korean side would prevail in five minutes is also laughable and reveals your utter lack of any knowledge of the military and how wars are fought. NK's dictator has spit in our fact time and time again. He is counterfeiting U.S, currency to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. He is running drugs and guns to some of the most corrupt, anti-American organizations in the world.

Yet it does not occur to you to think for even 30 seconds as to why we have put up with this conduct when we would not put up with a tenth as much from virtually any other country on the planet. Google the issue. You will find reference after reference to the unavoidable conclusion that there is no viable military solution to the North Korean problem. That assessment has been made by the Joint Chiefs, the Directors of the CIA over the years, the Secretaries of State over the past several Administrations, and so forth. I know you won't take my word for it...

short-sided nonsense. They could try it if it suited them, but this is sabre rattling. If they want respect, fine; they're wonderful fellows. Getting in a pissing contest with the US is another matter. Just let them rant.

With all these weapons tests, North Korea is just saying: don't invade us like you did Iraq, or else we'll blow something up.

I will agree that it is a test. A test of whether Kim can get attention. Like any spoiled child acts out when they think that they aren't getting the attention that they deserve. The big difference is that when he throws his toys people die. We can thank the U.N. for this legacy. You never solve problems with inaction. This is a dangerous person facing his mortality. Does anyone remember what history taught us that Hitler did with his country when confronted with his demise?

I wish they would fire so we all can see them, it is the 4th you know !

ROK on

There won't be a war.

How funny are these guys, they are launching missiles to celebrate our nations birthday. A country with 600 scuds in it's inventory, how pathetic.

North Korea isn't quite the bugaboo that most want to make it out to be based on the following facts and educated guesses:

1) Realistically the North Korean military can barely feed itself and cannot maintain logistical support for the extended operations necessary for a protracted battle with western forces equipped with modern weapons and updated styles of warfare.

2) The North Korean military can only move tactically and strategically in one direction: south. And, when your enemy (...that is the 50,000+ US and over 700,000+ ROK forces in place today) has had over a half-century to prepare an in-depth defense, it doesn't give them too many options on the battlefield (..hence their desire for short-range, nuclear-tipped missles as a "force multiplier")

3) Politically, if the North Koreans happen to launch a preemptive attack against the south, their traditional allies in the region, Russia and China, probably won't come to their aid (...at least not right away). Economic and social pressures from the west might be enough to force these two powers to take a hands off approach in regards to the entire situation.

Granted, western forces would be stretched awfully thin if the ongoing conflict in the region suddenly heated up again...but the fact remains that a "Korean War: Part 2" will most likely have a very different outcome than its predecessor in the '50's.

So really are your saying is we couldn't fight back because there is too many people in the Middle East.
That doesn't mean they couldn't start something.
I am NOT saying they will.

What mini war? The one between North and South Korea? If it does start, it will make six years in Iraq and Afghanistan look like the high school prom. 100,000 people would easily die the first DAY -- unless somebody uses a nuke, in which case it will be ten times that many... There CAN'T be a mini war between the U.S. and North Korea We don't have enough personnel outside the Middle East left over to fight it...

@BenZee on twitter says "@smileysejalee She might have heard about this missile test today"

@bang_dong on twitter says "North Korea 'tests two missiles': North Korea has tested two short-range missiles, South Korean media re.."