North Korea vs South Korea - What happens next?

In the news today was the story that North Korea had shelled a South Korean island in retaliation for what it saw as provocative training exercises being carried out. The rhetoric has stepped up to the point where North Korea is saynig the nuclear war could start at any time and Seoul would be the first target.

China has asked for the six nations summit to restart comprising North/South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the USA. North Korea has said it will only rejoin the talks if it can have face-to-face talks with the USA first, which have been rebutted.

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So, what would happen next if North Korea did fire a nuclear weapon at South Korea destroying Seoul for reason or reason unspecified?

It would be the first example of a nuclear attack since Nagasaki.

I think The UN would immediately call for sanctions and disarmament of North Korea as they would be considered unfit to have them. Would they go as far as to authorise military intervention in the area?

China would have to decide between propping up the regime or letting them go to their fate. The USA would have to open up another front because South Korea would want revenge and possibly try to invade but are unlikely to be able to go it alone.

Would countries like Iran support the act calling it a blow against tyranny or would they see it differently. Would this force Israel to step up any program of preventing Iran from gaining the same kind of power.

What are you thoughts? Would the world step back or would it throw itself into another war?

If North Korea shows itself willing to use a nuclear weapon, Japan will have a total and complete shit-fit. And be completely justified in doing so, IMNSHO. I don't imagine Japan would give two figs for the South Koreans killed, but the environmental effects they'd face would be a concern, and far more would be the fear that they're #2 on any list that Pyongyang might have.

I think the local nations that would be most affected by this would be impossible to restrain. North Korea is tolerated, in part, because the cost of cleaning it up is so much higher than the cost of letting it continue. In South Korea that's changing already after the sinking of the Cheonan. If North Korea shows itself willing to engage in wholesale slaughter of civilians (Instead of just retail killing and kidnapping of fourteen year old girls) I cannot imagine that either South Korea or Japan would be willing to let the situation continue. Whether they'd have the military might on their own to affect the changes they'd want, is another matter - but the pressure would be immense to support their goals.


God damn MacArthur to the lowest levels of Hell for scaring the Chinese enough to make this whole situation possible.

North Korea only has one card to play, the destruction of Seoul.Either through the 10,000 big guns that are dug in just across the border. Or now through nukes. If they play this card China will drop them like a hot rock. They cannot defend themselves against a modern air campaign. Take off their head and if the next government they put together doesn't act right take them out too. Once they put together a government that will talk, aid for the people can start.

:smack http://au.news.yahoo.com/odd/a/-/odd...korean-allies/

There are no words vile enough to express my disgust. What a bad joke that woman is.

I'm waiting for her to say that Texas is really part of Mexico.

Well, I can see Mexico from Queensland, in Austria.

I had hoped the new generation fellow, once he gets some actual power, might be more amenable to opening up to their southern neighbour. I don't know if this attack has been related to the nominal ascendency of Kim Jong-Un, but if so, it bodes badly for his reign.

At some point ISTM that people are going to have to accept that we've been training the successive North Korean regimes that if they're obnoxious enough we'll pay 'em danegeld. Certainly that seems to be the pattern that I've been noticing for the past 15 years.

While I don't agree with all of Kipling's positions, I do find it damned hard to argue with this one:

Dane-Geld
A.D. 980-1016

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: --
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"



Counting upon successive North Korean regimes to become reasonable ignores that for the elites within North Korea, they've got several factors that suggest that extorting payments is a rational, even necessary, policy.

First off, let's begin with the simple fact: It works. For chrissake, they've got the US, and even South Korea's own government (as distinct from their press), pussy-footing around about whether the fucking bastards sank a warship with an unannounced attack during a time of peace. I can't think of any sabre-rattling they've done within the past 15 years that did not result in them getting aid in the form of food, hard currency, and even technical support.

North Korea's economy is fucked. Just look at that monstrous hotel they started building in Pyongyang, the Ryuyong Hotel. They had to suspend work on it from 1992 to 2008, because they couldn't continue the work. And even when it started there were reports of chronic starvation in the North Korean masses.

One of the likely effects of the various agreements that have resulted in payoffs to Pyongyang has been supporting their domestic economy. And given the apparent priorities of the government in Pyongyang, I believe that the money the US and the west often sends them is going to fund their security apparatus. In a very real way, I believe that much of our aid is being used to support one of the most callous and evil governments on the planet.

We're talking about a government that was perfectly willing to kidnap teenagers to train their own deep penetration intelligence agents. That was willing to torture, rape and kill said kidnapees. And when the truth finally came out, they allowed one of the survivors to visit her family, but kept her own children hostage to make sure she wouldn't take advantage of her visit to try to return to her homeland.

This is what they're willing to do out in public where anyone can see what they're doing. I see no reason to assume that they're any less callous towards their own people. Not to mention the various underground communications across the DMZ that indicate the horrors that go on.

Finally, for most of the elites within North Korean society, there's a very real reason to believe that they've got to keep riding the tiger or the consequences for themselves and their families will be catastrophic. If North Korea goes through a popular revolution, after more than fifty years of oppression, the odds are that the elites are going to be destroyed. With that kind of threat being held over their heads - why shouldn't the North Korean elites keep using a policy that works, for them?





Having said all that. While I object to paying danegeld, the cost of a new Korean War would beggar anything we've seen in the Middle East or Afghanistan. Further, while the US military is occupied in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't believe that there is the excess capability available to even begin to plan for an offensive ground campaign on the Korean peninsula.

Paying danegeld as part of a coherent long-term strategy to allow diplomatic and military strength to be gathered for a later blow seems to me to be a reasonable tactic. Dealing with North Korea will require huge investments in diplomacy to see it through. And without those investments, I think any pre-emptive use of military force would be worse than useless. As an absolute minimum, China has to be in a position where it will step away from North Korea: which means to me that they have to be confident that the planned endgame will be acceptable to them.

Such diplomatic negotiations in support of a long range military strategy are hugely difficult for the US (or most democracies) to manage: As governments change, new policies come down from on high, and months or years of negotiations often get thrown out. Counting on the sort of combined diplomatic and military effort seems to me to be unlikely, in the extreme.

It just seems orders of magnitude more likely than that a new generation of elites in Pyongyang will stop trying to take South Korea hostage.

I think it may only be a matter of time before there are skirmishes between the two countries.

The main reason the USA has not intervened is China is still propping up the government there and I can't see that changing any time soon.