Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sheb]

Yeah, we can agree on that. But it's still going to be civilians casualities in the tens of thousands, plus of the North Koreans that will die.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Tens of thousands is way too high an estimate. I grant you that Seoul has high population density, but there are a lot of factors that mitigate this.

A. Old equipment of an unknown reliability (they can't exactly test it).

B. Supply lines that can't function even in peacetime, greatly limiting the amount of fire the artillery can put out since they'll run out of shells sooner rather than later.

C. The Seventh Fleet. Just the Seventh Fleet. NK's side of the DMZ will cease to exist by the time they're done bombarding it.

D. The North Koreans are going to have far more important targets than Seoul. Seoul isn't going to be shooting back at them. The joint ROK-USA forces will be. Even if they're ordered to prioritize Seoul, it is hard to ignore people attacking you.

In total, I'd put Seoul's casualties at the single thousands at most, and zero if everything goes according to plan (I'm assuming 50 years was enough time for us to come up with a plan).

As for the North Koreans, the sad fact is that this would be war. Worrying about your opposition's wellbeing just isn't on the table. The upside is that it wouldn't take long for the mass surrenders to start, with or without the approval of NK's government. No bullets, no rations, no war.

[Skyrunner]

Reunification is going to be terrible >_> SK's economy might collapse what with the current stresses. I mean, we can't even handle the small numbers of families who aren't of pure Korean blood and their social acceptance. <_<
I'm pretty sure the gov't has no good idea what to do if it does have to happen.

[sneakey pete]

I fail to understand how this magical 7th fleet is going to bypass the north's AA network.

[Max White]

How does NK even have an AA network? Heck how can it even field troops? Do they produce anything useful as far as global trade goes? Where does a country like NK even get arms?

[alway]

Here you go: http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-how-north-korea-could-destroy-seoul-in-two-hours-2010-5?op=1
And the source post, a very in-depth analysis of NK strike capability. http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?162240-Bluffer-s-Guide-North-Korea-strikes!-%282009%29
It's a good enough analysis that I think I recall seeing it linked from news sites like CNN at one point.

As for why they have so much military equipment... Yeah, that's kinda a big part of why they are so poor.

Here's the image of AA emplacements' range around Pyongyang

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And those are just the ones he spotted by hand combing through google earth data and similar.

[sneakey pete]

Whoops, i meant Anti air missiles, not guns.

What i'm saying is, the north has a lot, I just don't see how 300 US aircraft are going to manage to completely avoid being at all shot down themselves (old missile equipment doesn't make them immune, look at Iraq 1 or 2 or Bosnia, though to be fair the US shot down more US aircraft than iraq did in the second war there), and then manage to destroy the entire north korean Armour and artillery force.

[Boea]

I don't suppose they can shoot down bullets, are bullets going to work? Can we get Shrapnel/Flechette Missiles? Or were those illegalized.

[DJ]

Serbs shot down a stealth bomber during NATO combing campaign, so yeah, I wouldn't completely dismiss North Korean AA.

[Guardian G.I.]

I don't think that North Korea will actually start the war by launching a full-scale invasion of South Korea. It's a pretty suicidal desicion, and it is likely that Kim Jong-un knows that.
There are two possible scenarios for the start of the war:
a) a escalating border incident;
b) USA and South Korea launch a full-scale invasion of North Korea, aimed at overthrowing the North Korean regime.

The threat of American invasion is why  North Korean nuclear program exists. It is aimed to deter possible invasion attempts by the USA, not for the purpose of randomly launching nukes at Seoul/Tokyo/Washington for the evulz.

[mainiac]

they have nuclear weapons. It is literally the foundation of their regime.

No they don't.  They have the ability to create an nuclear explosion in a stationary location inside North Korea.  They have exactly zero capability to use that as an offensive weapon.

[jimboo]

I just looked at this thread and, wow, what an amazing number of different viewpoints -- which is to be expected, I suppose.  I've been lucky enough to have visited Seoul several times so let me tell you some things the people who live there are concerned about:

1) approx. 25% of all S. Koreans live in Seoul.  That's a lot and it's because most of the country is quite mountainous.
2) all of Seoul is within simple artillery range of the northern side of the DMZ.  No one in the south actually expects an invasion although there have been some truly amazing tunnels discovered (one was filled with T- tanks, 3 wide and that's some tunnel).  The ballistic missles are an ego and PR exercise/demonstration much like the Red Square parades.  S. Koreans are concerned primarily with a first strike by conventional artillery and short-range surface-to-surface missiles -- of which the North has a lot.  A simple artillery shell doesn't have to be filled with explosives: when the US and former Soviet Union signed on to the Biological Weapons Convention, the majority of biological weapons that were destroyed from stockpiles were American -- ingenous design artillery shells, two-chambered with a shear-unstable separation film that allowed the sprial trajectory to mix two chemicals and then explode 200 feet in the air as a cloud of Sarin gas.  N. Korea has acceded to the treaty but ...
3) it is, by definition, hard to predict the behavior of whackos.  Even China is presently concerned with the military in N. Korea and that's significant.  China's interest is purely self-serving; the part of China that borders N. Korea has more ethnic Koreans than Han Chinese living there and it's in Beijing's interest not to have an immigrant flood of foreigners.
4) Ever seen that old movie, "The Mouse That Roared"?  That's the frightening scenario (the first part of the plot, not the comedic twist) 

[Skyrunner]

Did you read what the other people posted above? XD Only the northern half of Seoul is within artillery range.

This here link. Mentions that the missiles are more dangerous than artillery, and a bunch of other interesting facts.


Also, it happens that I live in Seoul...

[Sheb]

Still, the 7th fleet would take hours at best to destroy the North's artillery capabilities. That's enough time to rain thousands of shells on Seoul.

But yeah, NK ain't going to attack for real. They just know they'd loose. As I said before, I'm more worried about the US/SK deciding they need to strike while they can, before NK get working tactical nukes. Since NK's main export is casus belli, god know when it'd happen.

[jimboo]

This here link. Mentions that the missiles are more dangerous than artillery, and a bunch of other interesting facts.
Also, it happens that I live in Seoul...

It’s an interesting link, thanks for that.  It isn’t 100% factually correct but not even the different branches of the same military ever agree on everything, so …

Living in Seoul -- Yeah, I figured that.  But we’re of different generations; some of the people I deal with in Seoul are veterans and many grew up learning Japanese in school.  As it was once explained to me, “you can tell whether someone remembers the time of the war just by asking their opinion about keeping American troops in S. Korea.”  Most of the world believes WWII started in 1939, some nationalist Germans say 1936.  Some historians argue (with some merit) there was actually only one war with an interim between WWI and WWII. Neither date makes much difference to people in Korea, however, since the occupation by Japan dates to 1876 and was finalized in 1910.  Americans, we are for the most part a provincial people and not particularly well-schooled in world history; I remember being taught in grade school that the first “iron-clad ships” were the Monitor and the Merrimac from the American Civil War.  Nobody teaches Americans about the Turtle.

As to “only northern Seoul is within artillery range” – that’s a matter of semantics and what one defines as “artillery.”  Many people think of battery guns or something that can be pulled behind a truck.  As a practical matter, any block of Seoul is within range of a projectile coming from the other side.  Thinking of modern “artillery” reminds me,

Multiple-tube launchers are actually a Korean invention too, aren’t they?  This is really stretching the limits of memory but – Hwachaa?    (Strong memories from Korea are things like bulgogi, Han dresses and Nakji.  Especially Nakji.     )