Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan • Hacker News Board

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#71

Post by AcerbicZero » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:15 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #26

local breakthroughs on the major routes towards Seoul—their first operational objective. Playing devil's advocate: How do we know Seoul is the operational objective? It seems obvious (capital city located near the border) but what if DPRK went for something not so obvious? i.e. "Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected" (classic Sun/Mao approach) Also, what if Pyongyang tries to draw in a…

Seoul is required primarily due to the way the SK road network is setup. An argument could be made for pushing to the west of Seoul, crossing the Han, and trying to end around through Inchon, but that would almost certainly be a one way trip.

The eastern side of Korea has lots of issues for an attacking army to overcome, especially an army which would be depending so heavily on a quick operational breakthrough.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#72

Post by smacktoward » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

tcoppi wrote: post #56

etheric wrote: post #48

I found this article to be an interesting read on what a war with NK might look like http://defconwarningsystem.com/2017/03/25/what-a-korean-war-... Essentially NK would use every weapon they can and China would be the only winner.

This and the OP both discount the small, but very real possibility of conflict escalation with China, completely unintended by both sides. If China enters militarily(big if, given recent statements) on the side of DPRK and the conflict has escalated to using nukes, it will be very hard for it to not spiral out of control into a full-on regional, if not worldwide, war.

It's important to note as well that Chinese intervention isn't a binary, fully-on or fully-off kind of thing; it's possible to imagine various degrees of intervention.

One that seems likely to me in this kind of scenario, for instance, would be for Chinese forces to move in to uphold the integrity of the pre-war border. Allied forces would be free to push the North Koreans out of South Korean territory; but if they tried to push beyond that towards Korean reunification or some kind of territorial gain at the North's expense, they'd have to fight Chinese troops to do it. This would let the Chinese get involved but still pose as a neutral arbitrator rather than a direct combatant or contributor to escalation, since their nominal goal would be resumption of the status quo ante bellum.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#73

Post by Theodores » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #15

The key thing here is the geography. Seoul is only 20 miles from the border with North Korea. It's within artillery range, and North Korea has the necessary artillery. If there's a war, Seoul gets clobbered in the first minutes. Few countries have their capital that close to a hostile border. Syria does. Look where Damascus is.

I think the key thing is history. The UK developed the nuclear bomb with no help from the USA. As a consequence the UK was not part of the Marshall Plan and as well as enduring a 'rebuild from nothing' there was also the phenomenal cost of Windscale and all of the rest of the infrastructure, a cost borne without the industrial base the USA had - ruins vs. vast and intact. The Manhattan Project was a similar cost to the moon landings. Sadly the UK invested in their own version of the former rather than the latter. But nobody else had the bomb apart from the USA and the USSR so having the bomb was the UK's ticket to being a world power rather than entirely under the sphere of influence of one superpower or the other, directly or by proxy.

The Kim family stepped in for Japanese Emperor as far as being divine father figure for the nation, at one level the 'world power' rationale is the same as what the UK had to play post WW2. Much like it has been in other parts of the world the enemy is the USA and it is quite clear that the goal of the North Korean programme is to be able to get some missile with some nuclear weapon at least as far as a big city in the continental USA.

I am no defender of the crazy kid, however, there is some serious stuff behind the attitude of North Korea. They do not want their culture to be Americanized, they do not want advertising and they do not want to be yet another consumer society. A whole smorgasbord of Western beliefs are just not wanted by them. There is also the matter of unification. Their idea is to have a federation, one country with two states, governed by their respective leaders and with the one seat for the federation at the UN. That is what they want and without any outside interference. So those nuclear weapons are pointing outside of the Korean peninsula and that would be the situation of a Korea united on the North's terms - 'without outside interference'. A unified Korea with weapons of the nuclear flavour would keep all the neighbours at bay on the MAD basis so a unified, federated Korea (which sounds reasonable to some in the South) is just not going to happen.

Seoul is not going to get annihilated by the North. Ignore the Kims for a moment and look at what the Koreans could achieve. A united Korea would be second on the stage after the USA in terms of GDP+population+trade+influence and if you add the nukes then they are totally deserving of taking the UK seat or anyone else's except the Americans in the security council. That might sound far fetched, but I believe that this is an obvious prize in Korea and destroying Seoul goes against that.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#74

Post by treebeard901 » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #49

pm90 wrote: post #4

This is a pretty reasoned article. One thing I have never understood: why can't China and the US join forces and militarily overrun DPRK? I know they fought each other in the Korean war, but the world has changed so drastically since then. From what I've read so far, DPRK is a source of dangerous instability for everyone involved. Wouldn't having a more stable regime on the Korean peninsula serve the interests of all…

The transition itself would dramatically increase the dangerous instability which is reason enough to try to put it off. "The horse might learn to talk" and all that. A lot also hinges on what sort of deal China could work out with SK and the US. Would US forces come all the way to China's borders? Would the US leave the peninsula entirely after the war? Maybe China could be bribed with a lease for a nice naval base…

How about the U.S. agrees to help integrate Taiwan back into mainland China (similar to the British and Hong Kong) in exchange for China helping with the North Korea situation?

EDIT: changed 'we' to the U.S.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#75

Post by dmix » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

AcerbicZero wrote: post #58

A reasonable, if somewhat short, overview of the topic, although a bit generous when discussing the air power situation over Korea. Smashing older Russian SAM sites is almost an American pastime at this point, and I have serious doubts the KPAF would put up anything beyond token resistance in the air. The author also skims over the massive leaps in lethality on the modern battlefield. It's difficult to stress this en…

Indeed, all of those tanks will be pretty useless against an array of modern anti tank, see javelins https://youtu.be/wrhybKEzb-0

The primary concern is the use of artillery and multi barrel rocket launchers devastating any ROK ground forces. Russia demonstrated their long distance lethality in Ukraine.

I'm also curious at the quality of DPRKs SAMs. The new S400 ones definitely pose a problem even for modern American planes. I've heard even the 90s model S300 could still be a serious concern.

I remember hearing the War Nerd talk about a couple of war hawks who wrote a series of articles about intervention in Syria totally glossing over the real threat they pose. And these guys apparently had a lot of influence in Washington among the establishment neocons and Clinton types. These SAMs are apparently very underrated. We just assume America has the best tech but real world combat is quite different.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#76

Post by panglott » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

panglott wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Allowing the regime to continue to exist" is a backwards way of looking at things that serves to legitimate invasions. The US is a superpower, but that doesn't mean that other nation-states exist because we deign to suffer their existence—that's a very colonialist way of looking at the world. Invading the north (or provoking it with special operations) would be a positive action for which the US would be responsible…

The flip side of your argument is it accepts the Kims' ownership over North Korea's land and population. The concept of legitimacy is fuzzy. There is gray area between defense and colonialist conquest.

It's implicit in your statement that the moral repugnancy of the Kim regime makes any acceptance of its existence intolerable. But that clearly implies we should remove the Kim regime; but invading countries is also generally immoral and the consequences of Korean War II are also morally repugnant.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#77

Post by AcerbicZero » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

pdelbarba wrote: post #63

AcerbicZero wrote: post #58

A reasonable, if somewhat short, overview of the topic, although a bit generous when discussing the air power situation over Korea. Smashing older Russian SAM sites is almost an American pastime at this point, and I have serious doubts the KPAF would put up anything beyond token resistance in the air. The author also skims over the massive leaps in lethality on the modern battlefield. It's difficult to stress this en…

It's in many ways similar to the first Iraq War in the sense that all the old eastern-bloc equipment is specifically what the following generation of US equipment was precisely designed to destroy with great speed. The US was worried about Russian tanks rolling across Europe in greater numbers than their anti tank missiles could handle so they developed the A-10 and various other systems to stem the flow and support…

I agree. The only comparison I could come up with, when trying to explain the lethality of the modern battlefield was the "highway of death" situation during the Iraqi retreat from Kuwait. I'd expect this to turn out much the same, but worse, as that kind of destruction would occur during the attack, and then be continued during the inevitable rout.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#78

Post by einrealist » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #33

Animats wrote: post #15

The key thing here is the geography. Seoul is only 20 miles from the border with North Korea. It's within artillery range, and North Korea has the necessary artillery. If there's a war, Seoul gets clobbered in the first minutes. Few countries have their capital that close to a hostile border. Syria does. Look where Damascus is.

This is a common misconception. 1) Artillery isn't actually that good at 'clobbering' a city. 2) North Korea doesn't have THAT much artillery, and even less of it is working, nor do they have the supply lines to keep them constantly resupplied 3) Seoul has quite a bit in the way of bomb shelters Seoul has has 10 million people in it, and most experts think that at most 30k or so would die if NK was able to shell them…

In addition, long range artillery is not agile. It is easy to locate and to be destroyed by airstrike or counter-battery fire.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#79

Post by smacktoward » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #21

Animats wrote: post #15

The key thing here is the geography. Seoul is only 20 miles from the border with North Korea. It's within artillery range, and North Korea has the necessary artillery. If there's a war, Seoul gets clobbered in the first minutes. Few countries have their capital that close to a hostile border. Syria does. Look where Damascus is.

> If there's a war, Seoul gets clobbered in the first minutes. Alternatively, that artillery gets clobbered in the first minutes.

The artillery pieces aren't sitting around in the open waiting to be bombed; they're deeply dug in, inside fortifications the North has been building on its side of the border for decades. It would be very difficult to neutralize it from the air before it could do real damage without resort to something like nuclear weapons.

Re: Thunder Run to Seoul: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan

#80

Post by AndrewKemendo » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #68

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This almost always goes unsaid so thanks for saying it. The general conditions of North Korean population is staggeringly bad. Eating grass and bark soup [1], iterant cannibalism [2] etc... When you consider the Prison situation without sounding glib, it's near holocaust levels of horrors [3]. [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2010/07/starving-nort... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/201…

> but if the moral argument for entering WW-II for the purpose of liberating those in the concentration camps Hugh? Sorry, but who told you that someone entered the WW2 to liberate someone from the concentration camps ? Liberating the camps was a consequence of the end of the war not the reason any country entered in the conflict.

To be clear - I'm not making the point that the US entered WW-II predominantly for the humanitarian reason of liberating the camps. In fact we didn't know much about them when we entered in 1941.

Rather, one of the strongest used moral cases for WWII (post facto) was the liberation.

We have even stronger evidence of this same moral case in Korea, than we did in WWII, so if we're consistent then there is a good case to be made here.

One could argue however that this post facto moral back patting in WWII is just how we justify it. So if that's the case you're making then I got nothin for ya.