High cost of a war between Koreas

SJ Mercury News ^ | 1/4/06 | Michael Dorgan

[Thud]

The NKPA is so big because it's a prison camp without walls for young men who might otherwise be troublesome. The NKPA's primary mission is political, not military. It ceased to be an effective ground combat force long ago.

The most it can do now is defend fortified positions. And most of North Korea is a fortified position - they've poured enough concrete in the past 40 years to make Japan's Yakuza green with envy.

And they can fire artillery at pre-planned targets, i.e., Seoul.

[Thud]

The NKPA was beaten on the Pusan perimeter. They'd have been routed anyway by the time of Inchon. The Inchon landings just meant that few of their cadres farther south escaped.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Thud, you sound like a CIA analyst I used to know. Had a zillion reasons why the North Vietnamese could not continue that war for more than a few months longer...

[Kevin Curry]

Their command structure and logistics are both weak, but the individual soldier is willing and able to put up a hell of a fight.

The North Korean soldiers--especially their special ops people--are nasty, tenacious, tough, and well able to live off the land. When I was there the South Korean forces discovered two or three infiltrations (which always made me wonder how many weren't discovered). The South Korean forces hunted them down like dogs, and took none of them live as far as I remember. They fought to the death.

These are not Iraqis.

[Steel Wolf]

Same as the battle-hardened Iraqi hordes which threw the Americans into the sea in 1991. "... famed 'special forces' brigades are ready to infiltrate deep and quickly."

These guys are the only real wildcards. I grimace every time I tag the word 'special forces' to them (hence the quotes) but I've heard too many first hand accounts of dealing with them to dismiss them out of hand.

I think comparisons between the Iraqis and the North Koreans are bound to fail. My area of focus is on the Chinese, and even they don't offer as much insight into the NKs as I'd like.

From what I've been told, the first week of fighting would be like nothing we've ever seen. Their soldiers, as you know, are extremely hardened to suffering, and would fight savagely at first. As they fought for a few days, moving south, and their supplies in all categories dried up, their units moving south would likely suffer mass desertions. There is a very great chance that the invasion would quickly collapse into a humanitarian disaster of fleeing NK troops.

[NormsRevenge]

And with that, I'm gonna go prepare for bed... 8-)

Its been a long holiday. Salute to you and the Northern Lights.

Semper Fi

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

"The ROK Army has a reputation for severe treatment and even brutality with its own troops..."

While that was certainly correct during the time of Park Chung-Hee (and the treatment of ROK Airborne trainees made Fort Benning look like a girl's finishing school!), there was a wave of public disgust about this brutality in the 1970's- and I doubt that discipline in the ROK Army is anything like it was then. (But then, there are probably a LOT fewer "fragging" incidents than there used to be when the troops were treated like animals...)

[Kevin Curry]

There is a very great chance that the invasion would quickly collapse into a humanitarian disaster of fleeing NK troops.

This makes sense. You may well be right. I pray you are.

[fogarty]

Well, I pray you're right. Irregardless of the famine and their combat effectiveness, their sheer numbers are daunting. And their willingness to see their millions killed and their own countryside to be laid waste (along with a pyscho manian as leader) makes it a dangerous situation. The artillery is going to hurt no matter what.

[Thud]

I am familiar with South Korean civil defense preparations. They're fairly well prepared against bombardment with conventional explosives only - IMO 100,000 civilian dead and one to two million injured is a reasonable estimate in the first three weeks, almost all within the first 36 hours.

They have no chance against nerve gas bombardment - two million dead and 10 million injured in the first week is a reasonable wild-assed guess. After that it depends on how much short-term radioactive fallout from what had been NK drifts over the Seoul area.

Koreans are not Japanese. The former will obey planning directives. The Japanese showed they wouldn't in the Kobe earthquake. All the ganjin obeyed the earthquake drill instructions and evacuated damaged buildings for relocation centers. The Japanese stayed in burning and falling-down buildings until police or fire personnel came by and ordered them to evacuate. It was pretty strange. Hundreds of Japanese civilians died that way.

But ROK civilians will obey the civil defense plans. Most of the males served in the ROKA.

[Steel Wolf]

The NKPA is so big because it's a prison camp without walls for young men who might otherwise be troublesome. The NKPA's primary mission is political, not military. It ceased to be an effective ground combat force long ago.

This is the crux of the North's problems. The NKPA, as it exists now, is not a force that could pursue US/ROK forces down to Pusan. It is a one shot sledgehammer that would destroy Seoul and most of central Korea, and then shatter. Whether South Korea would survive the chaos is unknown, but their military would, and we'd chase the NKs back north and decapitate them, collapsing the whole deck.

[Thud]

Building nukes is one kind of irrational. Attacking South Korea is another.

[Thud]

Your personal experience with North Korean infiltrators is not identified by date, and confuses specially trained and politically reliable personnel with line troops. Arabs make great assassins and lousy soldiers.

[Steel Wolf]

But ROK civilians will obey the civil defense plans. Most of the males served in the ROKA.

Their civil defense is definitely not bad, but the South Koreans never struck me as particularly hardy. Especially given the character of the younger crowd, I can't imagine them sticking to the plan for long. I think panic during a natural disaster is one thing, but panic before an advancing enemy is quite another.

Expecting military units to hold under such intense fire is sometimes an iffy thing. Expecting civilians to hold may be expecting too much.

[Thud]

Read the whole thing

[Thud]

The NKPA won't advance. They'd lose control over their own forces once those leave their fortifications. There are military reasons too, but that first political reason is decisive.

[Kevin Curry]

They're fairly well prepared against bombardment with conventional explosives only . . .

I know what you're trying to say, but when I read this sentence the images that popped into my mind were of the high-rise department store and main river bridge in Seoul that collasped in utter heaps and ruin under the weight of ordinary shoppers and traffic six or seven years ago, killing thousands. I have never been impressed with Korean structural engineering and building practices. They are spotty at best.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

My personal experience is mid-1960's with occasional deployments to the ROK in the 1970's.

I certainly take your point that the soldiers chosen to infiltrate the South were bound to be among the best they had- equivalent to our own Rangers, although without the extensive technical training and lavish logistical support. However, that does NOT mean that the rest of their army is chopped liver!

I believe that the vast majority of NK soldiers would obey their officers and fight very hard- I do not see "mass desertions" as a real probabilty (until the war is lost for them, anyway).

You obviously have considerable knowledge of the area and the people- but I think you underestimate the threat.

Let's all pray that we don't have to find out which of us is right!

[Happy2BMe]

"A conventional war on the peninsula could kill a million civilians in the first few days . . "

Try the first few hours.

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[RANGERAIRBORNE]

"I have never been impressed with Korean structural engineering and building practices."

I was going to mention that very problem- Korean (as many other Asian engineering projects) look impressive- but they are invariably built "on the cheap", with the minimum amount of reinforcing steel, poor-quality concrete (sand is cheap, concrete is not) and often just plain bad design- like adding floors to a building that was not originally designed for that. (That would be the department store that fell down...)

I think that the soaring towers of Seoul would be heaps of rubble on Day One of the war.