How North Korea Would Attack South Korea

Robert Farley who is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce shares his views on how North Korea would try and attack South Korea:

north korea nuke

The clearest path to North Korean victory in war depends on a quick defeat of South Korean forces, providing the United States and Japan with a fait accompli that Pyongyang will expect Beijing to back.

The North Korean attack would likely involve a classic 20th century combined arms assault, using artillery to disrupt RoK defenses and soften up positions (as well as create civilian panic), infantry to break holes in the South Korean lines, and mechanized forces to exploit those gaps.  The North Koreans could well add special forces (potentially deployed to South Korea before the initiation of hostilities) and regular forces deployed by tunnel to South Korean rear areas.

The Korean People’s Air Force is ancient, and has received no significant infusion of Russian or Chinese technology in years.  The force has very little counter-air capability relative to the Republic of Korea Air Force, and its fighters would find themselves easy prey for well-trained South Korean pilots flying sophisticated aircraft.  The KPA can expect very little ground support, either on the tactical or operational scales, and would likely struggle under South Korean air attacks.  [The National Interest]

You can read the rest at the link, but North Korea’s success during a war with South Korea relies heavily on the use of ballistic missiles to attack airfields and seaports in an effort to deny reinforcements from the US military.  Is it any wonder why the THAAD missile defense system is such a hot topic in South Korea right now for the US military and the North Korean stooges in South Korea are trying so hard to stop its deployment.

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Bruce K. Nivens
Bruce K. Nivens
8 years ago

I’m always fascinated at the level of detail provided in scenarios of a new North Korean invasion, especially because we’re told that we have very little intelligence coming out of North Korea. Yes, we have spy satellites taking pictures, and analysts poring over every little detail to create assessments and estimates, but that only lets us see what’s out in the open. We’ve been told that North Koreans are masters of tunneling and building underground facilities. North Korea knows we can see them from overhead. It stands to reason that they’re hiding as much as they can from prying eyes, thus making accurate assessments and estimates nearly impossible. In a perfect world, we could have some intelligence sources inside North Korea who are feeding us information. The problem is that we’ve also been told by defectors that the North Korean government bureaucracy is highly compartmentalized. Our network of internal operatives would have to be huge, as each one of them would only be privy to a tiny little piece of the intelligence we’d need.

One thing we have working against us, historically, is our repeated tendency to underestimate our adversaries. Even if we used a liberal “fudge factor” in estimating capability, equipment and troop strength, we’d still come out on the low side. We always have. Even the author of this article talks about the “ancient” North Korean air forces. Ancient planes can still do damage, as can antiquated tanks and missile systems. Artillery still exists to this day in modern armies because it is effective, and North Korea has more artillery (based on concentration) than just about anybody. Even knowing this, we are probably still low on our estimates of just how much they actually have. Think about it — North Korea has had more than 60 years to work on this problem. Time is on their side, and it always works in their favor. They know that no one wants to start a war with them, so they just swing back and forth between belligerence and conciliation, keeping the diplomats busy trying to make sense of it all, while they continue to improve their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities. And let’s not forget that North Korea is supposed to have extensive chemical weapons capability. It might be dated, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

The complex geopolitical situation in Asia keeps anyone from accomplishing anything toward resolving the North Korea situation, diplomatically or militarily. Sanctions and restrictions have been applied, yet somehow North Korea manages to squeak by. The regime in power continues to prop itself up with outside help, and it continues to build up its ability to threaten its neighbors as well as the United States. This situation can’t be sustained indefinitely, and eventually something will have to give. While we hope that North Korea will never invade the ROK again, we are forced to prepare for what will happen if they do. It would be really nice of them to play by the 20th century combined-arms playbook, as is projected in the article, but it’s a safe bet that North Korean military won’t invade unless they feel they can somehow level the playing field. An invasion wouldn’t be simple, and it wouldn’t be by the book. It would be bigger, messier, and uglier than anything we’ve ever seen in modern history, and while we would no doubt prevail in the end, the collateral damage would be horrific.

ChickenHead
ChickenHead
8 years ago

If I was in charge of planning North Korea’s invasion of the South, I would engineer a famine (and blame the South).

Then word would spread that South Korea was giving out free kimchee or something.

Pathways through the DMZ would be cleared within hours and a couple million refugees, mixed in with no-uniform soldiers, would pour across the border in the mother of all epic clusterfukks.

USFK would dare not use any of the bigboy weapons as it would make No Gun Ri look like a picnic.

USFK and South Korea would be helpless while hungry North Korean civilians looted everything and unidentifiable North Korean soldiers picked off police and military one by one as they sat around wondering who to shoot back at.

A much less organized version of this appears to be working already as Mexico slowly invades America.

Leon LaPorte
Leon LaPorte
8 years ago

I’m thinking the most likely scenario would be another brinkmanship style provocation that spirals out of control with no plan at all.

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