Drama made in Korea 9 APR 2013

Drama made in Korea. Have you ever wanted to peacefully nap & a mosquito kept dive-bombing you? North Korea’s young punk dictator (called “Dear Leader”) might be funny if he weren’t for real; he keeps putting out photos of his overweight debouched body w/ binoculars to show he’s serious about starting a war. South Koreans have lost track of how many times the North has threatened war. If war comes, there is no doubt he will lose, but lots of people on both sides could suffer, not a happy scenario at all.

Several people have wanted my comments on the drama North Korea has created. Here it comes.

Would he start a war he would lose? No one puts it past him. Although he went to school 2 yrs. in Switz. under a false I.D., he is not a well-educated, balanced, in touch w/ the world guy. He has a reputation for getting drunk. He is surrounded by military men who live in the surreal self-proclaimed “paradise” of North Korea; its capital’s main square sports a propaganda sign, “We have nothing to envy in the world.” I think these leaders may believe their own groupthink lies. History has seen crazier things. As a rational sentient being I can’t see anyone being that stupid, but then, since when has Kim Jung Un been rational? He has grown up like a god in his isolated world. The North Koreans have grown up hearing that Amer. is an aggressor, & that the south needs liberated & unified. Dictators love this kind of tension, it gets their people’s minds off other things, like how several million North Koreans starved in famines in the 1990’s.

What would war be like? Korea is a peninsula with 70% of it granite mountains down the center. Not easy country to invade across, yet China successfully crossed it in the face of our marines & airforce by ignoring enormous casualties. North Korea would immediately strike hard in the soviet style without regard to losses. Any success would be incredibly reinforced to sustain momentum.

The U.S. (if we have air assets available from carriers & land bases) will begin to est. air supremacy, & if we have moved what we have to the theater, it will take about two days with the AWACS, Stealths, etc. to establish air supremacy. Once air supremacy is est. there is no way for North Korea to make any progress invading the south. Seoul is only 30 miles from the DMZ, which is a 2.5 mi. wide strip that runs between the North & South), but there are many defensive lines/belts of a defense in depth that can only be breached with control of the air. All the roads, railroads & avenues of movement have been prepared with mines, obstacles that will fall & block them, as well as anti-tank obstacles. South Korea’s airforce has the F-15K, which has a proven record of excellence as a fighter. (It will be worse for the Korean commies than the northern prong of Kursk for those who know military history.) South Korea’s military has a history of excellence, and has an eastern & western army on the border. We have 2 brigades & various misc. support personnel. Our combat engineers & artillery would go into combat; but if the South can do the job, U.S. infantry might be held in reserve along with So. Korea’s reserve forces. We have fast reaction forces in the area for emergencies. I would assume our carriers are headed for Korean waters. We have a joint training exercise Foal Eagle going on now in Korea w/ 200,000 South Korean troops & 10,000 U.S. troops.

Can he nuke or missile anyone? He can certainly try. A few of his missiles reportedly have a 2,100 mile range. As you may have heard, the U.S. military claims they can stop him & has two anti-missile destroyers off Korea, plus our side has anti-missile defense systems. Should those fail & Seoul gets nuked, we might make a limited nuke strike back aiming for some command & control center (perhaps in the capital area) w/ in-theater nukes or ones from sources farther away. The B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers can fly to the theater from their AFB in Missouri.

North Korea has over 15,000 underground structures. He has hardened some in the style that the Taliban did in their Afghani mtns. He thinks some are impregnable. Perhaps that will give the U.S. an excuse to use a nuke! He has been caught making large tunnels under the border, & it is safe to assume they have tunnels all over North Korea (taking lessons from the Vietnamese!). If war comes, will the U.S. feel a need to invade the north like the 1st Korean War? Then we will see a buildup like prior to Iraq’s 2 defeats. But this war would be worse on the ground.

Soon summer arrives with 2-3 typhoons per year & then monsoon season, and then winter like our northern Midwest. Hopefully, the weather will be the only major concern, because this latest round of bullying will have de-escalated, and joined a long list of provocations that year after year North Korea has violently made…they captured the U.S.S. Pueblo spy ship in ’68, shot a U.S. copter down in ’69, fired gunfire across the border in ’01, ’03, ’06 and then again this last year. Obviously, time will tell if this drama will de-escalate.

In summation, everyone is taking this young bully seriously, but if he tries to do anything, he will get seriously hurt & destroyed. The Powers will be able to write off another one of Bush’s “Axis of Evil” nations. Regrettably, South Korea may have to do some serious suffering, Seoul esp. is vulnerable. And if we take the war north of the DMZ like we did in the first Korean War, America will face serious military obstacles. I wonder who has been promised contracts for rebuilding North Korea, anyone we know?