North Korea invades South Korea Dec 17, 2012

The Norks could probably for the first day or so, devastate the front lines with an artillery barrage. Expect heavy civilian casualties and major casualties among front line units. Once US Air Power gets involved and starts crippling their communication lines, logistics, and ability to move, which admittedly isn't that great to start (they are still mostly using surplus ChiComm gear from the Cold War), they will start unraveling. Unless China really does have that NeoMaoist revolution people keep talking about, the Norks are on their own, and they will quickly find that feeding and supplying troops is going to be impossible (not that they do a good job of it anyways) once their infrastructure, which is really quite lousy, is caput. Expect millions of refugees going both North over the Yalu and South trying to brave the DMZ, with hundreds of thousands of deserting soldiers in the mix. An invasion of the North, due to the sheer depth of forces the Kim regime can line up, won't be a total cakewalk a la Baghdad 2003, but it would be pretty close as the North collapses.

How do you think the Chinese would feel if Kim died and someone outside the Kim family was chosen? Personally I think the Chinese would be happy they wouldn't have to be linked with someone so embarrassing.
 

ben0628

Banned
How do you think the Chinese would feel if Kim died and someone outside the Kim family was chosen? Personally I think the Chinese would be happy they wouldn't have to be linked with someone so embarrassing.

Probably replace Kim with a military junta
 

ben0628

Banned
Better than Kim. If it was up to me, I'd just let China invade and conquer North Korea and make it part of China (like Tibet).

I doubt China would be down for that though. A military junta would be easier for China to control than a crazy man.

Also, doesn't Kim have a child?
 
As long as they're willing to disarm their nukes and open up trade Deng-style, they wouldn't care even if it's Kim IV.

So you agree with me that they would prefer a different government but aren't willing to something drastic to change it? That they would be quite happy to see the current regime gone.
 
So you agree with me that they would prefer a different government but aren't willing to something drastic to change it? That they would be quite happy to see the current regime gone.
Yep. :3

Because quite frankly, a nuclear-armed North Korea is as much a threat to China as it is to South Korea and Japan. If the Chinese wanted to tighten the screws then, Kim could go all out to threaten Heilongjiang. Better to have a compliant puppet than an armed wacko in charge.
 
That's not how the North Korean leadership operates. Everyone likes to say "OMG THE NORKS ARE NUTS" but in reality a lot of their political grandstanding and threatening rhetoric is to preserve two things.

One is the grip on their own people, by acting antagonistic towards the West, they can manipulate responses into propaganda which is easy to shovel onto the populace. They spin the misery of their people as being a product of Western antagonism and Imperialism. Without the Juche, their misery would be worse (whether or not that is believed is irrelevant the people cant leave anyway).

The second is survival, the regime knows that on a whim the US or hell even South Korea could cross the parallel and probably dust the North Korean military. They are technologically backwards and most of their equipment is horrendously outdated. They have numbers yes, but they know they could never sustain a war with the West, it'd be measured in weeks or months. What they do however know is that the economic cost of rebuilding the country would be immense and the military cost would be unacceptable that unless really provoked, the West won't follow through. No-one wants the burden of rebuilding the North Korean backwater, nor do they want to deal with the politics of negotiating with China to resolve the issue. Nukes add further complications that make attacking North Korea even more unattractive. The North Korean regime is well aware of this.

All of this basically comes down to maintaining the fucked up life style of the North Korean elite. All the kicking and screaming that the regime does is usually indicative of needing resources from China or the rest of the world so the leadership can build shit like ski fields. The Kims and the army leadership have an entire nation to exploit for their own selfish ends, they don't want to start a war because that will ruin everything for them. They don't want to be hiding in bunkers commanding their drones hoping a group of US or PLA Marines don't come busting in, they want to be in their palaces drinking Western liquor, eating Western food, watching Western television and fucking hookers.
So they're Hollywood with political power.
 
That's not how the North Korean leadership operates. Everyone likes to say "OMG THE NORKS ARE NUTS" but in reality a lot of their political grandstanding and threatening rhetoric is to preserve two things.

One is the grip on their own people, by acting antagonistic towards the West, they can manipulate responses into propaganda which is easy to shovel onto the populace. They spin the misery of their people as being a product of Western antagonism and Imperialism. Without the Juche, their misery would be worse (whether or not that is believed is irrelevant the people cant leave anyway).

The second is survival, the regime knows that on a whim the US or hell even South Korea could cross the parallel and probably dust the North Korean military. They are technologically backwards and most of their equipment is horrendously outdated. They have numbers yes, but they know they could never sustain a war with the West, it'd be measured in weeks or months. What they do however know is that the economic cost of rebuilding the country would be immense and the military cost would be unacceptable that unless really provoked, the West won't follow through. No-one wants the burden of rebuilding the North Korean backwater, nor do they want to deal with the politics of negotiating with China to resolve the issue. Nukes add further complications that make attacking North Korea even more unattractive. The North Korean regime is well aware of this.

All of this basically comes down to maintaining the fucked up life style of the North Korean elite. All the kicking and screaming that the regime does is usually indicative of needing resources from China or the rest of the world so the leadership can build shit like ski fields. The Kims and the army leadership have an entire nation to exploit for their own selfish ends, they don't want to start a war because that will ruin everything for them. They don't want to be hiding in bunkers commanding their drones hoping a group of US or PLA Marines don't come busting in, they want to be in their palaces drinking Western liquor, eating Western food, watching Western television and fucking hookers.

I looked up Juche a couple of days ago when I overheard someone talk about North Korea and then I remembered this thread. Am I the only one who thinks this resembles Fascism more than Communism, this being said who despises them both.
 
Probably the major reason the Chinese support the DPRK is they do not want a united Korea allied to the USA to have a common border with them. This was a reason they intervened in the Korean War, although supporting another revolutionary government was part of it. If the DPRK is collapsing, whether due to implosion or losing a war like the one here, it is highly likely the Chinese will advance in to North Korea some distance "to manage the humanitarian crisis and prevent DPRK military forces from entering China". This incursion is, of course, temporary until the crisis passes. One week before the sun goes nova millions of years in the future China decides the "temporary" crisis is over and leaves.
 
Yeah, im real sure that will stop people laughing at Kimmy and his merkin hairsty...
THIS USER WAS SUMMERILY EXECUTED FOR TREASON. LONG LIVE THE DEAR LEADER AND THE IMMORTAL SONGUN REVOLUTION
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Joseph Stalin said "Quantity has a quality all of its own" and I suspect the North would basically hurl human waves south. The war would essentially be fought on the western side of Korea between the current DMZ and Seoul. In that limited area fuel shortages may not be as big an issue as some assume. The North holds its armor and mechanized divisions in teh second echelon to exploit any breakthrough by the cannon fodder.
For the North speed would be critcal. They don't have the resources for a war of more than a few weeks. The US would deploy the USS Ronald Reagan carrier group based in Japan and they would presumably be in range within a couple of days. Figure it would take 10 days to move a carrier from the Persian Gulf. I also assume the III Marine Expeditionary Force would be committed. I also would assume the US would surge air power to Korea.

Ultimately it probably comes down to how crazy is the Pimple Faced LEader?
 
Joseph Stalin said "Quantity has a quality all of its own" and I suspect the North would basically hurl human waves south. *snip*

The North Korean Army consists of nearly 5.9 million men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Army while the South Korean is only 3.5 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea_Armed_Forces *snip*

The Nork dont even have 3:1 ratio with South Korea, plus the burden to cross a DMZ and its fortifications.
Human wave wont suffice.
 
It depends what North Korea's goals are. Do they just want to kill as many people as possible or are they trying to remove the US from the peninsula?

If they want to kill as many people as possible they shell every city in range of their guns with VX and GB. They use whatever nuclear weapons they've scrounged up on the cities out of range of the guns. North Korean troops attempt to pour over the border but fail when the US uses a few dozen nuclear weapons to destroy NK launch sites, silence NK artillery and wipe out the units attempting to cross the border. At this point US and South Korea troops hold in position until US military units from Japan, Guam and the States can get to the South. Depending on how fast they move will determine how much of North Korea China annexes. Civilian causalities are horrific, maybe 50k to 100k US and South Korean troops die.
 
It depends what North Korea's goals are. Do they just want to kill as many people as possible or are they trying to remove the US from the peninsula?

If they want to kill as many people as possible they shell every city in range of their guns with VX and GB. They use whatever nuclear weapons they've scrounged up on the cities out of range of the guns. North Korean troops attempt to pour over the border but fail when the US uses a few dozen nuclear weapons to destroy NK launch sites, silence NK artillery and wipe out the units attempting to cross the border. At this point US and South Korea troops hold in position until US military units from Japan, Guam and the States can get to the South. Depending on how fast they move will determine how much of North Korea China annexes. Civilian causalities are horrific, maybe 50k to 100k US and South Korean troops die.

There goal is to remove the US from the peninsula and to reunite Korea under the Juche banner.
 

missouribob

Banned
In 2012? It would be a curb stomp for RoK and USFK but with heavy losses. The NK's didn't have miniaturized nuclear technology so their weapons program will be fairly ineffective. Also their missile program wasn't as advanced as it is now. And they didn't have as many devices. In the end a few locations in South Korea are nuked with ground level burst. Maybe the top of the South Korean civilian government is wiped out but not the bulk of it. South Korea from: conventional missile attacks, chemical attacks, radiological attacks, biological release, the artillery attacks on Seoul is reduced to a third world nation, but would with U.S. support push the North Koreans back and with U.S. air superiority take North Korea in a bloody campaign.

China wouldn't directly intervene but would mobilize their military, guard their border to intercept refugee flows and enact covert operations to aim for a Chinese client state Korea in the end.

We are talking millions dead, a third-world rump South Korea, a global depression and Kim hanging at the end of it all.
 
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