I keep posting North Korea news in the Trump thread, which makes sense in a way, but it doesn't seem entirely right. So let's start a North Korea thread. Also, craziest Korea. -- So, what's happening today? Also this: What could possibly go wrong?
China has lost control over both Korea's with unilateral economic sanctions on S. Korea failing to stop it from deploying the THAAD anti-ballistic missile defense system and it's belief that giving N. Korea's economy a boost having phenomally backfired. Instead of moving N.Korea away from brinksmanship, it has instead given N. Korea the ability to fund the development of its nuclear program and embolden N. Korea to openly defy China. https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ea950am:homepage/story&utm_term=.096dc0892a54
What I'm not totally convinced of is the capability of the DPRK armed forces. Given 2 decades of intermittent famine, increasing involvement of the armed forces in commerce, various trade embargoes and emphasis on nuclear and missile programs and the army especially becomes a force not trained enough to do what it is supposed to do.
In a lot of ways, what is going on in N. Korea has been a massive failure of China's economic power diplomacy and puts China in a position it hasn't really encountered before.. It either has to stand aside and allow the US and S. Korea to step in and steamroll N. Korea (with some scary casualty numbers) and/or maybe having to do something militarily on its own to stop N. Korea's nuclear program and put in a more malleable regime.. All in all.. I'm not sure China is going to be able to put the N. Korean nuclear program back into the bottle via economic pressure..
BigSoccer 2002 Reset Loaded Shit like this will get you doxxed by angry trollers from SoKo back in 2002
However untrained or incapable they may be, they've still got sheer numbers. Including reserve and paramilitary, North Korea has the largest military (measured by personnel) in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...r_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel#List
Those numbers suggest that large numbers at least of their totals including paramiltaries are not effective. If correct the numbers say that a third of the population is in the armed forces. It number is true a country can't really run. For instance the total labor force participation in the US is around 50%. I'm reminded of the 4th largest military in the world numbers attributed to Iraq before the first Gulf War. True or not it didn't take into effect that the forces had been chewed up in the war with Iran.
As Song219 eluded to, the size of a force is nothing more than an arbitrary number. When you have an untrained force you get nothing more than the tactics you see insurgents using...run forward and dump mags until you get cut down by return fire. You can only throw bodies forward so long before the inevitable demoralization sets in. The British, Americans and Israelis pretty much wrote the book on how fire superiority is far more important than force superiority. Controlled accurate shooting in conjunction with sound tactics...being a true believer only takes you so far. Assuming the scenario involves the US and NoKo which I couldn't see why it wouldn't be, the US has one huge advantage if push came to shove. Our troops have been fighting for 16 years so we know how they'll perform. North Korea not so much.
My point isn't that NK's military is formidable -- though they can do unreal damage to SK and probably also Japan. Which, in a way, is plenty formidable enough. The point is that, even if it's just wasting lives for no gain, they have a lot of military personnel to waste.
On paper I agree with you, we just don't know how well maintained their armaments are. What they allow us to see looks to be fairly up to date but how much of that trickles down to more junior units? As I also said in my post, they will reach a point where they will run out of the true believers. PR and propaganda will play a huge and effective role in any confrontation.
Depends? A largely untrained force is going to be highly dependent upon a strong command and control structure.. Break that connection and they aren't going to be a very effective fighting force.
One unknown is how good is NK's officer corp. Some top officers were purged because of political reliability. I those purges went much lower North Korea is in trouble in a war. On the other hand a numerous army can cause trouble if they are fairly well lead and numerous like China's was in Korea. Of course they had been at war almost continuously, an advantage the North Koreans don't have.
I've heard speculation that if war breaks out they won't be able to literally level Seoul. They will kill about 30,000 people in a matter of minutes, but that kill rate is going to decrease dramatically once SoKo citizens shelter and return fire starts neutralizing NoKo's offensive weapons. That's just conventional warfare though. It's unclear what their unconventional warfare capabilities are. They are suspected of having a chemical/biological weapons program. And of course the nuclear program ...
I have read different speculations from various specialized sources, US or international. By all accounts, Seoul may be pretty much leveled and casualties will be in the hundred of thousands. The more important aspect, rarely mentioned in the media here or even on this board, is that South Korea (and generally East Asians) totally oppose any first strike vs No Ko. They don't want to have the US start a war in the peninsula in which they may see their country largely destroyed.
And well, South Korea's capital and largest city, whose metro population is roughly half of the entire country, happens to be only 30 miles away from the border. They don't have to be terribly well-trained or capable to destroy Seoul, kill millions, and destroy South Korea's economy.
They oppose it because they don't think it will be effective at neutralizing the NK offensive weapons. South Korea, mostly Seoul would definitely suffer the most un the early stages, so any strikes should have the approval of SK (they are having an election right now). Would Trump even care about what seoul says? 2 crazy people with big egos having an argument can be really bad.
Gotta admit, this is pretty strange: Breaking News: Aircraft carrier wasn’t sailing to deter North Korea, as U.S. suggested https://t.co/728xm496H9— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 18, 2017
While it's strange that they didn't mention the stop in the Indian Ocean and training exercise with the Australian Navy, the Carl Vinson and Co are now headed to the Sea of Japan for training operations with the S. Korean Navy.
Park, Park, Wherever You May Be You eat dogs in your home country! It could be worse, you could be Scouse, Eating rats in your council house!
This is a pretty good backgrounder on North Korea's nuclear program. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-missile-program.html