Impressive numbers, but they're just human resources, literally boots on the ground. You can't have an army vs war machine conflict. Armies lose against cruise missiles, drone / air strikes. However, the end game (unified Korea) will be very similar to the current state of the middle east. Lots of insurgency and sectarian violence.

inb4 slanted PressTV rhetoric courtesy of CiC.

Just what I was thinking, NK doesn't have nearly as much technological firepower

It's not really so much about the numbers as it is about the amount of decimation that can be rained down by North Korean conventional weapons. Keep in mind that North Korea isn't like most other countries where they'd have to mobilize in order to get ready for wars or strikes or counter-strikes. They've been on a war footing for fifty years.

When I was in Korea a few years ago, I drove with a friend of mine from Ilsan (the Greater Seoul version of Yaletown) to Hyeiri (a small artist's village about 40 minutes drive away). We drove along next to a river that had a barbed wire fence and guard posts every 500m or so. I asked my friend what that was.


Yep. That's the DMZ. That's right. Next to a major Metropolitan Centre of nigh-on thirty million people is "the bad guy" right there. Sure, the South Koreans and the Americans might come back in a surge to take the greater peninsula...but the homes of half the population are gone, along with most of the business and commercial centres with them.

lets see here...vietnam and the korean war...both failures
people win wars...not firepower.

Hence why they want to get nuclear weapon cuz the end game will/ is already different. N Korean is no Russia, and wont be a pussy when it comes to nuking the hell out of USA. They have nothing to lose and every bit to gain anyways. Beside if USA is having trouble in Iraq/ Afgahnistan, what makes them think they can walk in and occupy N Korea.

Lets pretend US walks in and win the war and occupy it. What will happen? Wait another 10 years and pull out after getting bankrupted?

Russia weren't pussies in not launching nuclear weapons. They exercised great control.

Had the USSR launched nukes the Americans would have launched them right back. And vice versa. For many years they lived in a harmony of mutually assured destruction which was what kept their fingers off of the buttons.

The USA may have some trouble initially mobilizing its own troops in North Korea but when they're there, they're there. North Korea's cold war tech against automated drones, remotely fired missiles, and precision bomb strikes wouldn't likely last long.

The USA left Iraq entirely in 2011 and is transitioning Afghanistan to domestic control after a decade of bringing the Afghani government forces up to a level where they won't be walked all over by local terrorists. The US has a generation of war-hardened veterans who can be recalled to war against a country that can't afford to feed its own people.

Should the USA enter the war and find themselves against the combined forces of North Korea and China somehow you'll see China enjoy the same economic isolation that the USA has put on Cuba since the 1950s. For an economy that is building cities full of empty houses to keep people employed thats not a risk they can afford to take because, like it or not, China needs Americas money more than America needs coffee cups and kitten figurines made in China. Prior to World War 2 the great depression in America saw some of the hardest times that country faced. But they got through it. If it happened again they have enough infrastructure and enough resources to do it again.

So you have this country, alone and outmatched. Sure they can detonate one or two bombs. But where? Where are their rockets going to travel to? The middle of the Sea of Japan like their last failed launch? The best they can do would to be to hit the US base in Okinawa. Since WW2 Japan has agreed not to have a standing army that can be used for aggressive purposes, only a self-defense force. But they'd take that as an attack on their soil and activate their 300,000 potential troops.

So now North Korea is fighting with two traditional enemies of their country. China may be itching to join in on this fight but they know that their million man army, winning whatever victories they may, would come at a price they're not willing to pay.

As I said earlier, this isn't 1956 and these nations need to think of the long term ramifications of their actions. Iran is too far off from developing their own weapons program to be a serious ally. They created a model stealth plane and passed it off as the real thing at a hilarious press conference very recently. And just a few years ago we were all laughing at their photoshopped missile launch.

North Korea may start a fight but they'll pay dearly in trying to finish it.

that's a pretty fun site lol
who else tried blowing up their house first

If we're talking about dropping a Tsar... It wouldn't matter which house you hit, lol.

Aren't those both before super computers, smartphones, internet, smart bombs and drones?



The Korean war ended in 1953.
30 years before I was even born.
Do you really need to bring up obsolete examples?


If you want to see what a contemporary war machine looks like, search up videos from the start of the Iraq war, it looks like a video game.
It's identify, point and click. Tank gone.



I'm not much of a fan of the US military industrial complex, but I have to give them recognition for their capabilities. They can essentially cripple a nation's ability to wage offensive war within 3 days (1 week tops).

Everything after that is how much you want boots on the ground (and that's the problem with Afghanistan and Iraq right now).

You weren't born then...but Im pretty sure you learned "history repeats itself"
Have you even studied the vietnam or korean war? Or has video games taught you that it's all point and shoot.

More bombs were dropped in vietnam than world war 1 and 2 combined. It's widely accepted that vietnam gave America their first defeat. Just dont tell americans that.

Korean War became a stalemate. It's not over...they're still technically at war. You have 2.5 million North Koreans standing at attention ready to invade on a moments notice with their own radar systems detecting any American movements.

America has high tech arsenal but their own generals and computer simulations tell them it'll be a catastrophe for both sides if they'll wage war.

I know it's cool to flex your muscle and brag about superior fire power. But it aint simple and it's not a video game. There are no winners in war.

did not expect to see this word used considering the topic of the thread lol

The thing is that the USA is great at conventional warfare. It's when it comes to guerrilla and urban fighting is that things start to crumble.

Yes, but who says this would be a guerrilla type of encounter? A guerrilla war implies small numbers of people hiding out and making strategic strikes here and there. You don't fight a guerrilla war with 2.5 million troops.

On the other hand, if North Korea was stupid enough to nuke someone (and it won't be a missile since they can't hit shit, but would likely be a smuggled bomb) then the gloves would come off and the US could retaliate with their own nukes. A couple well placed tacticals and its game over.

Bottom line is all North Korea can do is play a game of Sabre rattling to try and look tough. Any conflict they get into would end up with them losing.
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Nuke the hell out of the US? With what? Those fly swatter nukes they have? This discussion came up before on RS. People hear "nuclear weapon" and think "OMG they can level our cities". Wrong. The nukes that North Korea has (and that Iran and others would like to acquire) are pitiful. You'd need dozens of the test nukes they just detonated to take out a major city in the US with large cities like LA needing over 100.

Meanwhile a single missile from a US sub with its multiple warheads could make half of North Korean cities uninhabitable. I don't think people realize the huge difference in nuclear abilities between a rogue state and the US. It's mind boggling the amount of destructive power the US has (and their ability to deliver it anywhere they wish).
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The "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" doesn't seem so big when I "nuked" Vancouver.
Were Japan cities really small back then?
Or was it the radiation that spread and do most of the damage?

It was radiation, it was a concentrated population, and it was that buildings were made differently back then, a lot of them being wood. The shockwave did more damage there than you'd expect to see today.

Also, it was the "Holy fuck" of it all. When they said that the bomb would shorten the war by years and save millions of lives they meant it.

If North Korea launches its nuke and hits a US city like Anchorage or Seattle they'll be all "Yay. Our nuke hit something"

But thats their play. They hit one city with their one nuke. They can stand around patting each other on the back and shaking hands until their country gets turned into rubble.


I don't doubt that there are millions of good people living within the borders of that country who were unfortunate enough to be born in a nation with terrible leadership. The conditions in that country make it impossible for people to change their station in life or to move to a country where it is possible to do so. The government is taking steps to put them in an even worse situation but throwing them into a war they won't be able to handle.

Its disgusting.

The US doesn't even have to nuke NK with the technology they have. I'm sure they have some secret bomb no one knows about that will cripple the country and won't leave the aftermath of the radioactive fallout.

My point was that the US doesn't need to go and invade North Korea. They don't need boots on the ground which is what doesn't work anymore when a country has fire arms and a determined populace.
They only need to cripple North Korea's ability to wage war. The ICBM capabilities for NK is pretty unknown to the general public at this point, but once they are gone, NK has a greatly reduced ability to project power.

All it takes to assure North Korea's destruction is for her to launch a nuke. The amount of raw destructive force the US military has is insane. I bet they can unleash all their nukes and top it off with chem and biological agents all from the air, not even having to send one dude to lase a target.

I bet the US could've easily defeated Vietnam with tactical nukes if it didn't have the backing of other communist states.

NK is a rogue state, I bet China and Russia would back off and ally with the states should NK actually wage total war. I mean they'd love to get a piece of free land and her potential resources anyway.

What does NK have in natural resources that a country would want?
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Quite a few, actually. They've got some extensive Rare Earth resources that Chiner essentially has a monopoly on since they're the only ones who haven't got the hatorade on.

i dont think the concern is whether or not the USA can bomb NK to rubble; i imagine they can

the concern is what kind of damage North Korea could do within that time

if NK flattened SK (they can) that would put a complete halt to the electronics industry not to mention kill millions along with it

they may even launch one over at Japan and hell they might even land one in the USA

and we thought 9/11 and its aftermath was bad, the sheer damage that they might be able to cause would be nothing like we've ever seen

Just think back to what happened when the flooding was in Thailand and the price of Hard Drives doubled. Now imagine that happening to almost everything related to the mobile industry as well as to a greater portion of the television sector. Korean cars? See ya. Which means that the rest of the industry has shallow supply driving up prices sharply...

Korea has turned themselves into something of a little demon in terms of what they produce and how much. And North Korea (knowing that they're fucked anyways) would probably want to go down in a Pyrrhic victory.