(Contributed by Mike Walker, retired USMC Col.)
All,
Sent e-mail below back in January. My opinions have not changed.
But here are a few amplifications about miscalculations and how wars begin:
The highest ranking N. Korean ever to defect was on the road from the airport to downtown Seoul in the late 1990's. He was convinced that the S Korean gov't had taken every car in S Korea and put them on that few-mile stretch of highway as a propaganda gambit.
This official, one of the best informed/educated senior leaders in N Korea, could not believe that S Korea had even a fraction of the industrial might it possessed to produce not only cars for S. Koreans but cars that were sold worldwide. He probably had a fit of apoplexy when he saw the world's largest steel mill in Pohang.
My nightmare is that the less "worldly" N. Korean military thinks that the S Korean reserve armed forces are still using 1950's F-86 Sabre jets and 1940's M-4 Sherman tanks just as their reserves are using 1940's T-34's and 1950's Mig-19's. And that the primary means of communication in an infantry battalion, as is that in N. Korea, is the "runner" soldier, not 21st C4I commuter technology.
The list goes on and on but the truth remains. The South Korean armed forces is better trained, equipped, and physically superior to any of their N. Korean counterparts. And do not let the soft living in the South confuse you. Underneath the facade, there is real steel in the will of the S. Korean army.
Semper Fi,
Mike
(Earlier writing, 1/18/2009)
All,
A very short note.
Worked intelligence on Korea off and on in mid/late 1990's into 2000. Trained/deployed there in 1982, 1991, 2000 in the infantry and in intel.
The South Korean military is almost as superior to that of North Korea as we were to the conventional Iraqi Army in 2003.
With the US as allies they will clean N. Korea's clock.
This allied role is "doable" for the US as S. Korea does NOT need a lot of ground troops but could use high tech air power etc.
Those are the very forces (especially carrier battle groups) that are NOT heavily committed in the current war on terrorism.
The big difference is that the N. Koreans will fight long and hard in their defeat so the casualties will make our fights in Iraq/Afghanistan pail in comparison.
Civilian casualties in the South, if N. Korea decides to target them, will also be appalling.
The problem is that all wars are started by miscalculations on the part of one or both parties.
There is not a more dangerous government in the world that makes more decisions based upon a self-imposed vacuum of ignorance that the one in N. Korea.
That makes the odds of a horrific miscalculation on their part that much higher.
Semper Fi,
Mike
