The new old war in Korea

[Jester]

That's the thing, they do have enough artillery within range of Seoul that within 15 minutes Seoul could be devestated before aircraft could be on station. And NK's military is smart enough they would place enough AA equipment in with their artillery to make air strikes painful.

What do you mean by "devastated"? Flattened? Annihilated? Shelled heavily? I have no doubt that hundreds of thousands would die. Maybe even a few million. But South Korea has a population of over 50 million, and no doubt they've been planning for precisely this contingency for half a century. Outdated AA equipment is not going to stop a full-on air strike by one of the world's most modern air forces, when their whole country is at stake. The casualties would be fearful, but this would be total war.

According to Wikipedia list of Armies SK isn't in the top 5, may not even be in the top 10 with respect to active forces (although they do have 3 million reservist, but NK had 4.5 million reservists). Now, the big question is, what percentage of SKs reservist are in the vicinity of Seoul? A potential artillery first strike could severally degrade SKs reservist forces if enough of them are in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Perhaps 40% of the population of Korea is in the vicinity of Seoul. In the apocalyptic scenario where 100% of them died, then South Korea would have about 400,000 active troops, and about 2 million reservists to call up, vs. the North's 1.2 million active and 4 million reservists. That would leave them at about a 2.5 to 1 deficit in manpower, assuming zero contribution from Seoul.

However, remember that South Korea spends 4 times as much total on their troops, and almost 10 times as much per soldier. They have access to the world's most modern weapons, many of which they make themselves. North Korea, by contrast, is an economic and technological basket case, with outdated everything going back to Russian junk from the 1950s. That's a huge advantage in arms quality. I have no problem believing that military casualties would run 3 to 1 in the South's favour - even without US military intervention, which would be both inevitable and immediate.

It isn't devestation they would be after, it would be terror. They would do it just to see if a bloody nose is enough to make the US to turn tail and run.

Then they are idiots. The spiritual descendants of Curtis LeMay have been waiting to turn some Commies into craters since WWII, and this would be just the opportunity. The US public would be *furious*, and retaliation would be a political necessity. There is absolutely no way that a nuclear strike killing maybe 0.001 of the US population is going to break the morale of the world's superpower. Rather the opposite, I would imagine.

In essence, you don't need much of a pop to create a weapon that makes an area uninhabitable for many years to come, simply building the warhead's skin out of a high absorbtion neutron material that becomes a radioactive isotope after neutron absorbtion (typically becoming a gamma emitter) can cause no end of trouble due to dispersion from the bomb. Co59 is a perfect example (although NK couldn't use it because Cobalt is a fairly dense material, they'd probably use something else, but I don't have my Sergei chart handy to take a look for other possibilities). A 2.5 kt to 5 kt weapon is more than enough to cause longterm issues.

Okay. Let's say they manage the improbable, and they kill a million people in Hawaii, and force the evacuation of the rest, with the islands rendered uninhabitable. That would be far beyond their capacity, but running with it, what then? Where would that have gotten them? North Korea would be officially fracked. The US would have suffered a "bloody nose", but North Korea would burn to the ground within the week.

-Jester