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I simply don't think that the NK administration has lost their sanity. Even now I think it's much more likely that they've simply reached a new level of desperation.
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On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here...  It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/
Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation?
If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment.
If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success?
So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse.
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1019 Posts
On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_<
The people there have heard that kind of rhetoric since the end of the korean war so they are used to it. It only seems scary now because north korea is using the word "nuclear bomb".
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I thought it was a bit new with the cease-fire thing, not the "nuclear bomb" thing. They've been implying the nuke possibility for years now but voiding the pact is a bit of a novelty, isn't it?
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People seem to be forgetting that North Korea have the capability to lauch a lot of damaging cyber-warfare attacks on South Korea. They already launch cyber attacks every now and again, and the South cannot really respond in kind because North Korea is much less vulnerable to cyber attacks.
North Korea have been training people for at least a decade in cyber-warfare, and their primary focus has been in planning operations targeting South Korea by disrupting military defense networks, sabotaging power grid infrastructure, and disabling communications capabilities. Economic targets such as banks and other financial institutions are also at risk. In the event of an escalation, you can bet North Korea regime hackers will be using all their tools to do as much damage as possible.
South Korea is aware of this threat and attempted to put in place measures to help defend themselves from these attacks. No-one can really know how the South Korean defences will hold up in the event of a full-scale cyber-attack. I think very badly. Cyber-warfare is definitely something that North Korea will utilise as an asymmetric warfare strategy. No doubt they have already been running cyber-espionage operations to gain lots of knowledge about South Korean defence plans and infrastructure. It is public knowledge that North Korea demonstrated it's capability to jam GPS signals of planes in South Korea last year.
It is common for cyber-attacks on South Korea to escalate when tensions with North Korea rise.
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On March 08 2013 14:11 SirKibbleX wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/ Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation? If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment. If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success? So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse.
1. Yes I think they are willing to sacrifice a great load of troops.
2. I don't think anyone thinks they have any chance of success, even NK themselves... it's more about the amount of damage they can cause before being stopped.
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No matter what, the only outcome where NK can win is to not play the game. Unless they believe that laying in ruins along with SK is a win, then there's no outcome that can be positive for them. It's simply a hostage situation all along, if anything happens to SK, then NK loses their hostage card and all hell will probably break loose.
The only winning move is not to play As probably mentioned a billion times before.
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On March 08 2013 15:02 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 14:11 SirKibbleX wrote:On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/ Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation? If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment. If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success? So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse. 1. Yes I think they are willing to sacrifice a great load of troops. 2. I don't think anyone thinks they have any chance of success, even NK themselves... it's more about the amount of damage they can cause before being stopped.
I find it hard to believe that there are people who truly think even NK is capable of just throwing away tens of thousands of men for literally no reason just to clear a mine field. No nation goes into a war saying "well, we're going to get completely obliterated in this war we are going to start but let's just spite them for no reason and see how much damage we can do"
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On March 08 2013 15:02 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 14:11 SirKibbleX wrote:On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/ Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation? If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment. If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success? So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse. 1. Yes I think they are willing to sacrifice a great load of troops. 2. I don't think anyone thinks they have any chance of success, even NK themselves... it's more about the amount of damage they can cause before being stopped.
I think what he is trying to say with point 2 is that the willingness of your average NK 1.1m soldier isn't at suicidal levels, most of their "army" are just poor underfed, under-trained, and not motivated enough to risk their life.
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On March 08 2013 15:02 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 14:11 SirKibbleX wrote:On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/ Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation? If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment. If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success? So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse. 1. Yes I think they are willing to sacrifice a great load of troops. 2. I don't think anyone thinks they have any chance of success, even NK themselves... it's more about the amount of damage they can cause before being stopped.
And this makes absolutely no realpolitik sense. Shoeing in NK as irrational and insane is naive because it is completely ignorant to the fact that NK has managed to succeed in preserving the boundaries of their nation and the rulers have retained the power structure that allows them their power. Stopping at surface ideology is really crass and unrealistic.
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On March 08 2013 15:14 Fawkes wrote:No matter what, the only outcome where NK can win is to not play the game. Unless they believe that laying in ruins along with SK is a win, then there's no outcome that can be positive for them. It's simply a hostage situation all along, if anything happens to SK, then NK loses their hostage card and all hell will probably break loose. The only winning move is not to play As probably mentioned a billion times before.
I totally agree. And in the normal course of diplomacy most countries would think that way as well. But like some of my Korean friends, I wonder if NK actually thinks that way.
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I don't know, maybe the US should back down it's sanctions.
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On March 08 2013 15:14 Fawkes wrote:No matter what, the only outcome where NK can win is to not play the game. Unless they believe that laying in ruins along with SK is a win, then there's no outcome that can be positive for them. It's simply a hostage situation all along, if anything happens to SK, then NK loses their hostage card and all hell will probably break loose. The only winning move is not to play As probably mentioned a billion times before.
Not so sure... I think their best strategy at the moment is to play slick politics. It is probably desperate and futile, but if they are somehow able to create a rift between Washington and Beijing, this would open up many possibilities. This isn't Kim Jong Il at the end of his reign, rather I see this as smart political posturing for the future of the new regime.
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On March 08 2013 15:39 screamingpalm wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 15:14 Fawkes wrote:No matter what, the only outcome where NK can win is to not play the game. Unless they believe that laying in ruins along with SK is a win, then there's no outcome that can be positive for them. It's simply a hostage situation all along, if anything happens to SK, then NK loses their hostage card and all hell will probably break loose. The only winning move is not to play As probably mentioned a billion times before. Not so sure... I think their best strategy at the moment is to play slick politics. It is probably desperate and futile, but if they are somehow able to create a rift between Washington and Beijing, this would open up many possibilities. This isn't Kim Jong Il at the end of his reign, rather I see this as smart political posturing for the future of the new regime.
You call this slick? Beijing and Washington just agreed on something...
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On March 08 2013 15:48 ddrddrddrddr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 15:39 screamingpalm wrote:On March 08 2013 15:14 Fawkes wrote:No matter what, the only outcome where NK can win is to not play the game. Unless they believe that laying in ruins along with SK is a win, then there's no outcome that can be positive for them. It's simply a hostage situation all along, if anything happens to SK, then NK loses their hostage card and all hell will probably break loose. The only winning move is not to play As probably mentioned a billion times before. Not so sure... I think their best strategy at the moment is to play slick politics. It is probably desperate and futile, but if they are somehow able to create a rift between Washington and Beijing, this would open up many possibilities. This isn't Kim Jong Il at the end of his reign, rather I see this as smart political posturing for the future of the new regime. You call this slick? Beijing and Washington just agreed on something...
Yeah slick is probably not the best adjective there, but I still disagree that their best option is to not "play" at all. :D
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On March 08 2013 15:35 RedTerror wrote:
I don't know, maybe the US should back down it's sanctions.
I thought that it was UN dictated sanctions? Not just US.
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On March 08 2013 14:36 revel8 wrote:
People seem to be forgetting that North Korea have the capability to lauch a lot of damaging cyber-warfare attacks on South Korea. They already launch cyber attacks every now and again, and the South cannot really respond in kind because North Korea is much less vulnerable to cyber attacks.
North Korea have been training people for at least a decade in cyber-warfare, and their primary focus has been in planning operations targeting South Korea by disrupting military defense networks, sabotaging power grid infrastructure, and disabling communications capabilities. Economic targets such as banks and other financial institutions are also at risk. In the event of an escalation, you can bet North Korea regime hackers will be using all their tools to do as much damage as possible.
South Korea is aware of this threat and attempted to put in place measures to help defend themselves from these attacks. No-one can really know how the South Korean defences will hold up in the event of a full-scale cyber-attack. I think very badly. Cyber-warfare is definitely something that North Korea will utilise as an asymmetric warfare strategy. No doubt they have already been running cyber-espionage operations to gain lots of knowledge about South Korean defence plans and infrastructure. It is public knowledge that North Korea demonstrated it's capability to jam GPS signals of planes in South Korea last year.
It is common for cyber-attacks on South Korea to escalate when tensions with North Korea rise.
Sure there are a lot of vulnerability in cyberspace, but jamming/communcation disruption has always been part of warfare, in fact all these has always been taken into account, not something out of ordinary. Even North Korea some how win the war in cyberspace, but it won't win them the war.
South Korea's defence plan and defence infrastructure aren't as secretive as you think, infact the capability of South Korea's army and the US army stationed there are publicly available.
It was visioned a few decades ago that North Korea armors will able penetrate into Seoul, that now has changed. With the technological difference between the two armies, you will find that scenario very unlikely. With complete air domance of South Korea and her allies, mountainous terrain, and average of force-to-space ratio of 1 divison for every 10km, peneteration would be very very difficult with all those intels.
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Im amazed how people is talking about "clearing minefields or troops movility" like they were banelings and marines or a Sc2 mech army. Its more probable that NK generals have some plans to dissable/avoid minefields and SK defenses, they have had years to study SK defenses.
From here, its like NK doesnt have anything else to do, they just train their army and get ready to war. The thing that I fear the most its that its really really hard to read what NK wants.
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On March 08 2013 15:20 koreasilver wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 15:02 FabledIntegral wrote:On March 08 2013 14:11 SirKibbleX wrote:On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/ Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation? If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment. If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success? So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse. 1. Yes I think they are willing to sacrifice a great load of troops. 2. I don't think anyone thinks they have any chance of success, even NK themselves... it's more about the amount of damage they can cause before being stopped. And this makes absolutely no realpolitik sense. Shoeing in NK as irrational and insane is naive because it is completely ignorant to the fact that NK has managed to succeed in preserving the boundaries of their nation and the rulers have retained the power structure that allows them their power. Stopping at surface ideology is really crass and unrealistic.
Eh, I disagree. Sure, the seemingly prevailing notion is that they are not insane, but that's a very liberal belief. The more conservative belief is that they are batshit insane. That's an entire argument in itself, which really doesn't have a place on TL imo, because it will be pretty much instantly decided by the users that they are calculating, not necessarily insane.
Although by the same token, by your thought process we shouldn't bat an eye that they are pursuing nuclear weapons or whatnot. On that note I think you'd find more people disagreeing with you that we shouldn't have to do much.
On March 08 2013 15:20 DonKey_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 15:02 FabledIntegral wrote:On March 08 2013 14:11 SirKibbleX wrote:On March 08 2013 13:55 heroyi wrote:On March 08 2013 13:48 SirKibbleX wrote:
People always act like military combat still works in a 1:1 way like it did circa the 1800s. Let me tell you something: one sniper in a good position, or one good machine gun crew, can essentially kill INFINITE numbers of men if their military force-multipliers are effective enough. German air power was able to hold off superior Russian ground forces for a long while because they were able to achieve 100:1 kill-death ratios in air combat, because of their superior training, tactics, and equipment.
I suspect that if the North Koreans tried to invade SK on foot or in simple vehicles their losses would be utterly catastrophic.
If you don't understand how a defensive army with cutting-edge technology and thinking that has had 50+ years to prepare for a linear, one-dimensional invasion can hold off said invasion, you aren't very creative. I'm sure the SK military has doctrines and battle plans for a variety of invasion scenarios (tunnels, airborne, nuclear attack, mine-clearing, etc. etc. etc.) You severely underestimate NK. They have approximately 1.1 million troops. If they wanted to charge and surge at the DMZ, they WILL break through. That is not the question. There is nowhere nearly as many troops needed to defend the DMZ. The question is how far, long will they stay and how much damage are they gonna do in the short time they are there before reinforcements pushes them back. Also, NK special forces really aren't something to scoff about. edit: On March 08 2013 13:51 SoleSteeler wrote:Funny how South Koreans themselves never seem to worry about this kinda stuff. I've been here for more than 3 years (not that long, I know) and no one is ever phased when this stuff happens. It's on the news, but there's never any state of "panic" and people just don't really... react. That said, I wish there could be some peaceful resolution, and the threat of war is always a bit scary to think about as a foreigner here... It's easy for everyone to talk about "blowing Seoul to shit" but it's hard to read that when you... live in Seoul. >_< Would hate to be in Seoul when the air raid alarms go off :/ Do you realize how long it would take to actually mobilize a 1.1 million man army? How long it would take to put that many people in vehicles to make them mobile? Do you think they'll just human wave over landmines losing tens of thousands without anything by compensation? If NK were to mobilize en-masse, SK/USA would know about it days in advance, and then they would be able to counter such an obvious attempt at incursion via extraordinarily massive and uncontested aerial bombardment. If they don't use their whole then what hope do they have of success? So, either way you look at it, their numbers are useless. Either they inherently give away their battle plans or they are useless because they cannot be mobilized en masse. 1. Yes I think they are willing to sacrifice a great load of troops. 2. I don't think anyone thinks they have any chance of success, even NK themselves... it's more about the amount of damage they can cause before being stopped. I think what he is trying to say with point 2 is that the willingness of your average NK 1.1m soldier isn't at suicidal levels, most of their "army" are just poor underfed, under-trained, and not motivated enough to risk their life.
There's a pretty strong belief that there are many many unmapped tunnels underground that could penetrate into Seoul regardless. And there's a pretty strong belief the soldiers are indoctrinated enough to do anything. I mean, I don't necessarily think so, as I think they'd have a terrible morale, but they also generally take into account worse case scenarios.
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EPT
