WI: Blue House Raid Successful

What if the North Koreans' Blue House Raid had been halfway competent and managed to assassinate President Park Chung Hee in 1968?

Does the DMZ conflict become a full scale Second Korean War? Who becomes the new President? Does Korea become a more hard-line dictatorship? How does the US handle Korea and Vietnam at the same time? How does it affect the Cold War more broadly? How is Korea's subsequent history changed?

Rush Tarquin said:

What if the North Koreans' Blue House Raid had been halfway competent and managed to assassinate President Park Chung Hee in 1968?

Does the DMZ conflict become a full scale Second Korean War? Who becomes the new President? Does Korea become a more hard-line dictatorship? How does the US handle Korea and Vietnam at the same time? How does it affect the Cold War more broadly? How is Korea's subsequent history changed?

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No idea on who would take over however the US would have no option but to respond. My guess would be that they would try to bomb North Korea. The US would take fairly heavy losses I would guess. The reaction to that may be missiles with conventional war heads. You certainly can kiss good bye to any trip to Peking by Nixon

How would Vietnam be affected? Would the NVA/VC gain?
(Of course, with Nixon or LBJ at the helm, it could lead to escalating tension everywhere- which might lead to wider draft riots or WWIII.)
The only positive would be more industry in the USA and keeping the US tied to the RoC.

Pangur said:

No idea on who would take over however the US would have no option but to respond. My guess would be that they would try to bomb North Korea. The US would take fairly heavy losses I would guess. The reaction to that may be missiles with conventional war heads. You certainly can kiss good bye to any trip to Peking by Nixon

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In the broader context, this was near the height of USSR-PRC tensions, and while DPRK was definately on the PRC side, PRC was not nessisarily on theirs. So, you could have a case where the PRC give massive support to the DPRK, and Korea looks like Vietnam.

IMHO, more interesting would be China throwing the DPRK under the bus and blocking any imports from the USSR. That, combined with a US blockade and bombing campaign would mean the South Koreans could do most of the grunt work in capturing the North.

Why would China do it? In 1968, they were broke, scared of the Soviets, and not all that interested in fighting someone else's war. Some smart diplomacy from the US could end up with containing Chinese support for the North in 1968, and then more public diplomacy after the US election. Nixon will get the credit, and the Soviets will be seriously pissed...

The Korean Prime Minister and next in the line of succession was General Chung Il Kwon, who led the South Korean Army for much of the Korean War, including at Inchon. He was also a close personal friend of Park's, and like Park served in the Imperial Japanese Army in China, and then he joined the Chinese nationalist army after the Japanese surrendered.

Even in 1966-68, a number of the US still subscribed to the Sino-Soviet monolithic communism theory though by the time of the Sino-Soviet border skirmishes of 1969, they would finally be awoken from the dream.