EPTThe Korean side of things erupted on June 2nd of our alternate 2009.
The North Korean army started off by bumrushing the South Korean army. And by bumrush I mean commit mass suicide against the DMZ. This was not what I wanted. I planned on trying for a truce with the South Koreans shortly before the invasion of Japan happened, so that I could have Japan safely subjugated with the Koreas severely weakened and still locked in mutual hatred while I redeployed everything away from China for the final invasion of the USA. (I was not planning for, or even hoping for, a successful North Korean invasion.)
Unfortunately, I was busy invading Taiwan and planning for Poland when this happened, so I didn't pay enough attention to make this happen. I also don't have many screenshots. However, HOI2 includes a resource titled "manpower", which lets me paint a rough picture of what went on.
Each unit of manpower represents ~2000 men fit for military service. By seeing how much manpower a country has burned off, you can get a rough estimate of total combat casualties (dead + wounded + captured). I loaded up a May 25th savefile (the night before R-day) and a June 25th savefile (shortly before I handed South Korea over to North Korea for
Here they are:
May 25
Before the attack on South Korea:
Land Divisions - ~510 MP* (this represents their nominal strength as determined by the number of divisions in their Army; see (*) for details)
Navy - ~6 MP
Air Force - ~20 MP
Divisions in Production - 40 MP
Spare MP in the population: 50 (guess this means North Korea mobilized all males between 18 and 60 or something)
*MP needed to reinforce: 0 (basically how much MP is needed to bring damaged divisions back up to full strength again; subtract this from their total MP)
Total MP: 510 + 6 + 20 + 50 + 40 - 0 = 626 or about 1.25 million men
June 25
After most major combat activity on the Korean peninsula is over
Land Divisions - ~350 MP* (this means they completely lost 20 whole divisions in the war)
Navy - <1 MP (every North Korean ship with the exception of 1 submarine was sunk)
Air Force - ~15 MP (most of this was based in NE China, having fled North Korean airfields in the first 12 hours of the war)
Divisions in Production - 0 MP
Spare MP in the population: 0
*MP needed to reinforce: 240
Total MP: 350 + 1 + 15 + 0 - 140 = 126 or about 252,000 men
So basically North Korea had nearly 1,000,000 killed, wounded, and/or captured in the space of 1 month. That works out to over 34000/day. And given that most of the North Korean army essentially stopped fighting and just ran for China/Russia after the first week, this means that the casualty rate for the first week was probably even higher.
For comparison, I looked at the South Korea numbers:
May 25
Land Divisions - ~350 MP*
Navy - ~10 MP
Air Force - ~30 MP
Divisions in Production - 50 MP
Spare MP in the population: 450
*MP needed to reinforce: 0
Total MP: 350 + 10 + 30 + 50 + 450 = 890 or about 1.78 million men.
Then I realized that the June 25 numbers would be meaningless given that by then China held everything except Jeju Island (a fraction of the MP of provinces under the control of an invader go to the invader's MP; the rest is not counted for anyone). So I looked at total MP available to Korea in August:
August 10, Total Korea
Land Divisions - ~350 MP
Navy - ~10 MP
Air Force - ~15 MP
Divisions in Production - 50 MP
Spare MP in the population: 520 (higher due to the number of demobilized SKorean divisions and released South and North Korean POWs)
*MP needed to reinforce: 200
Total MP: 350 + 10 + 15 + 50 + 520 - 200 = 760 or about 1.52 million men. Subtracting the 126 NK MP gives us 634 MP or about 1.27 million South Korean men, or net casualties of about 510,000. Most of these likely came against the Chinese Army, in the Battle of Seoul-Inchon.
Now in real life (and in the game) South Korea's total population is about 2x North Korea's. Why is NK's starting MP so much higher than it should be? It's because this mod did a neat trick.
In HOI2 you can choose general governmental policies. All governmental policies lie along a set of 7 sliders. One of the sliders goes between "Professional Army" and "Drafted Army".
![[image loading]](http://img.bhs4.com/c0/7/c07444422f6f5592e4737d8eb92b3272a7ba0497_large.jpg)
Should be under the text box below the cursor
In the vanilla game, shifting to a Drafted Army gets you cheaper, faster, production with worse unit exp/morale while a Professional Army gets you vice versa for both.
In the mod I'm playing, as you shift your sliders towards one extreme or the other, you also get two additional effects. First, your total manpower pool increases if you go Drafted, and vice versa for Professional. This is to demonstrate how fully you are tapping into your nation's manpower pool--are you only selecting athletic individuals between 18-25, for example, or are you recruiting anyone with a pulse? The second effect comes as your divisions get reinforced: being selective means that each replacement unit of manpower comes in with the "expected normal" morale and experience (presumably to reflect their physical condition matching peacetime recruits) while being totally drafted means that replacement manpower often drags the average morale and experience of your military way down.
One of the awesome things about China in this mod is that China is one of the few countries that can get away with a max Professional army and not feel low on manpower. As you can see in the picture below, I'm sitting on 3500 spare with over 1000 MP locked up in divisions, with another 200 MP in divisions under production.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mvdND.png)
Fuck yeah China.
This picture also neatly encapsulates what happened in the 2nd Korean war. North Korean divisions suffered horrific casualties, and retreated all the way to the Yalu, while at the same time, the Chinese Shenyang Military Region and its associated Group Armies crossed the Yalu as quickly as they could, before South Korean and American airpower shifted their attention from the retreating NK divisions.
Because I was pretty alarmed at the speed of the South Korean advance, I decided first to do a hasty landing at Busan with the entire Taiwan garrison, 8 divisions and two regiments, and putting some extra subs and strike bombers on patrol by Taiwan to sink any invasion force before it landed. The landing at Busan forced the South Korean army to hesistate and pull a few divisions back toward Seoul and Chunchon (those provinces were previously nearly empty.)
A sidenote: the reason I didn't land at Seoul at this moment was because I knew that the South Korean army would immediately hit that force with everything they had and push me back into the sea. I wanted to threaten Seoul but not so much they committed everything to kill me.
Then, the Shenyang Military Region and the 16th Group Army made a push into Wonsan, captured the city (and province around it). While that battle was happening, I loaded up the Jinan Military Region and the 28th Group Army into transports heading for Inchon, while also sending the East Sea Fleet up from Taiwan (temporarily) to assist.
The East Sea Fleet and the Shenyang Military Region air force contributed 6 carrier air wings, 12 squadrons of close air support aircraft, and 4 squadrons of tactical strike bombers. A squadron is ~18 aircraft, and each CAW is ~50-60, so that would be about 500-550 fighter-bombers and ~70 bombers working on the city round the clock. On top of that, I had the 8 squadrons of fighters flying air superiority missions over South Korea diverted to bombing as well, as well as the surface ships of the East Sea Fleet launching hundreds of cruise missiles into the city.
One of the key components to this air campaign was that my subs and South/North Sea Fleets were busy keeping the US and Japanese air forces occupied while they sank everything with a Japanese flag on it off Tokyo Harbor; the South Korean air force tried to help, but was vastly outnumbered.
As soon as the invasion fleet left harbor, the Shenyang MR was fully deployed in Kangwon province and ready to move. The fighters, bombers, CAS, and CAWs went to work on Seoul. I won't comment on the morality of bombing a city full of people, but it's not hard to envision the kind of carnage that close to 700 airplanes loaded with incendiaries and HE bombs can do to a modern city. Regardless, I am a little pissed that I had to kill e-Sports because my North Korean ally couldn't even keep its pants up.
The invasion fleet landed at the same time that the Shenyang MR hit the northern edge of the city. The battle raged for five straight days, during which the 8 divisions from Busan also advanced to Daegu and then joined in the fray.
At the end of the battle, the original 19 divisions holding Seoul had been reduced to 12 divisions, with 6 retreating to Chunsong, and 6 retreating to Gwangju. Thanks to the relentless bombardment and multidirectional attack, casualties for China were comparatively light. All Chinese divisions survived with over 50% combat strength.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BjM7U.png)
At this point, the war was essentially over for South Korea. 6 divisions were trapped at Hamhung, 21 trapped at Chunsong, and 7 at Gwangju; all under relentless bombing; all without fuel (since my subs were sinking every fuel convoy the US/Japan tried sending in); all running low of ammo and later food.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fBMag.png)
The Gwangju Pocket surrenders
Each pocket would surrender over the next few days, and I began to redeploy my forces away from Korea for renewed offensives in the European Front.
