Slashdot Mirror
North Korea Says War With South Would Go Nuclear
A reader writes "According to reports from the Uriminzokkiri, the official website of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons, and '[will] not be limited to the Korean peninsula.' The article goes on, 'The Korean peninsula remains a region fraught with the greatest danger of war in the world. This is entirely attributable to the US pursuance of the policy of aggression against the DPRK (North Korea).'"
I think you forgot the "stuff that matters" part. I don't know about you, but a story about a real case scenario involving nuclear warfare seems pretty worthy of attention.
right...
a war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons, and '[will] not be limited to the Korean peninsula.'
So what they're saying is if tensions rise the only safe response is to proactively nuke North Korea until they glow.
Well alllll righty then. B-bye now!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I think "Nuclear Launch Detected" is already a familiar phrase to South Koreans.
Didn't we (and by we I mean the US and the UK) just finish "liberating" 2 other countries on much flimsier pretexts than this. We've got a crackpot dictator AND genuine WMD's (although the phrase WMD seems to be getting applied to anything larger than small arms nowadays) surely in the spirit of not being hypocritical warmongering oil fetishists we must now "liberate" North Korea.
Somehow N. Korea got nuclear weapons before they invented the Internet (let alone the wheel)...HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
I don't like how the concept of total annihilation of a country is so easily bandied about. Not just this post, but all over the place. There are 24,051,218 people in North Korea (says Wikipedia), and only a large handful of them are actually causing this problem. How is it even conceivable to murder 24 million innocents (brainwashed, maybe; evil, no) because we don't like the guys in charge. Maybe the North Koreans can talk like that because the people talking are totally insane, but anyone else in the world shouldn't even have this cross their minds. Godwin called, he'd like to remind you that 24 million is four holocausts.
After you have cried wolf so many times that people ignore you then you need to move on to wolves with fricken laser beams, and then eventually wolves with ICBMs. After that maybe it's time to try something different. Maybe something with sharks.
I am not sure if this is true anymore or even if it were ever true; but I was told at the height of the cold war we had the capability to make the entire world uninhabitable in 8 seconds.
With what? Doctor Who technology? It takes tens of minutes just for ICBM-launched warheads to reach target. Bombers take hours. That's longer than eight seconds right there.
And we know how powerful nuclear bombs are. Even the 40,000 or so warheads at the height of the Cold War aren't that effective. I suppose we could seed all those bombs with cobalt and fire them off with intent to kill as many people as possible. That might drive to extinction any unshielded lifeforms above a few kilograms or with a longish lifespan. But anyone who is deep underwater or hangs out in a moderately deep underground cave for a few years, is probably going to survive.
Not really.
8 seconds is too short a time frame. The delivery systems for nuclear weapons take longer than that to reach their targets. An ICBM launch from the continental US to what used to be the USSR or vice versa takes at least twenty to thirty minutes of flight time (though a launch from bases in Europe or a ballistic missile sub near the coast would obviously be faster than that). This doesn't factor in the time it takes to authorize a launch.
And making the entire world uninhabitable is pushing it. During the cold war, most of the targets for those missiles would have been in the northern hemisphere (North America and Eurasia); there would be survivors elsewhere in the world. This doesn't even get into the fact that fallout is not universally lethal, meaning that just because a given region has been contaminated it does not automatically follow that everyone there is doomed.
In a worst case scenario a full scale nuclear war could mean total human genocide, thought most of the deaths would occur weeks or months after the bombs fell due to radiation poisoning and starvation. A more likely scenario is a massive die-off and the complete collapse of civilization on a global level, as well as regional human extinction in the participating countries.
This is still terrifying obviously, but it's nowhere near the fictional Armageddon that many people associate with the words "nuclear war".
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Internet-based attacks only really work on countries that have some form of internet.
That isn't a legend, it's an idea that was seriously proposed. And no, nobody ever built it. To begin with, by the middle of the cold war it wasn't necessary.
"Second strike" capability, that is the ability to launch a devastating counter attack when all of your airfields and missile silos are replaced with glowing craters, made destruction mutually assured, and therefor made the war unwinnable. A single SSBN with a payload of twenty MIRVed missiles has enough firepower to level several opposing cities, more than enough to be a deterrent, and the oceans offer a huge range of hiding places. You don't need a doomsday device to ensure an enemy will not be able to win with a preemptive strike when you have boomers.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Not at all.
They are completely sane, and completely ruthless, and they don't think like you do so NEVER take North Korean propaganda at face value.
This is perfectly standard NK gamesmanship repeated down the decades. They are rational, calculating, and smarter than naive Westerners. This game is very old news, as any Cold War vet can attest.
The Norks are magnificent at classic Cold War penis-waving, they are the finest of trolls, and they are NOT going to commit suicide. Unlike Jihadists, who are horny to die for Allah, Norks leadership are rational and want to stay rich and powerful. Know and understand the difference.
That is not to say the NK masses won't willingly die in droves if ordered, just like the last time, but that is what masses of simple people are for.
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I agree. a lot of this has to do with the power handover. From what you hear, Kim Jong Un is relatively incompetent (though not like we'd be able to get first hand sources from anyone) This sabre rattling (the boat attack, the shelling) has a lot to do with that.
As far as the nuclear parking lot consequences, he's already let millions of his countrymen die over decades because of bad policy and outright killings. if you remove empathy for countrymen and you substitute needing to retain power, it makes NK's talk a lot less crazy. It's a calculated risk that he can bring the US to the table to extort more food and that they won't initiate a nuclear campaign (again).
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them. Some of this stuff is secret for a good reason, and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
It's easy to be nonchalant about it when you don't like in Seoul. If war breaks out, Seoul will get hit by North Korean artillery nonstop. The other major concern is that China would get involved, and nobody wants to see the US and China going at it, either directly or via proxy. If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago. The only thing that could make those risks bearable would be if the alternative is an aggressive, uncontrollable nuclear state, and that's exactly what North Korea is becoming.
Nobody's on North Korea's side if they go to war, not even China. China's only interests in NK are, in order:
1) Prevent millions of North Korean refugees from flowing over the border to China (it's not like they're going to go to their other neighbor through all the robotic sentry guns.
2) Serve as a buffer between the pro-US South Korea and China's eastern border.
China will support Kim so long as he remains a posturing blowhard, but the moment he actually tries to invade--and triggers all those millions of refugees that China dreads flowing into their country--they'll turn their backs on him instantly.
My hope is the ratcheting up of the posturing levels to new ridiculous heights during the handover could be to allow Kim Jong-Un to adopt a more moderate policy without completely collapsing his power base. A event-free handover followed by "Welp, guess we should stop our unsustainable policy of isolationism and get with the international program" would probably result in the generals ousting Un, whereas "Oh shit, Glorious Father went a little too far, better do something to avert invasion, right guys?", even if the outcome is the same, may go down better.
Or I could be talking complete nonsense and am simple unaware of the magnitude of NK's regular levels of crazy.
And the category of the story... ie, this is at tech.slashdot.org. And right before the title it says "Technology:"
This is once again assuming that North Korea didn't already know that little bit of info that directly pertained to them and was visible to three million people.
You do realize that only ~1k out of ~250k have been released right? That is less than one percent.
I for one would prefer for DPRK to know it won't have allies if push comes to shove. Generally speaking, when little guys realize their big brother won't help them in a fight, they act less aggressively. But of course posturing plays an important role in negotiating a better deal.
There is the risk that information might destabilize their control and lead to violence. There is also the risk that the US and China plotting in secret to overthrow a nuclear power would lead to violence as well. Which situation is more dangerous, who can say?
Unless the initial press-only Wikileaks docs were leaked to N. Korea, this most recent flare up, which started when N. Korea shelled S. Korea and S. Korea shelled them back, started before Wikileaks took its dump. It seems more likely that Kim's failing health and the transfer of power to his youngest son are responsible.
Also, starting a nuclear war in response to finding out you only (massive, nuclear armed) ally wants you to sit down and shut up seems counter productive. Not to say that anything N. Korea does is sane: but I doubt it was a secret to N. Korea that China wanted N. Korea to make like it wasn't there (though the kid might not have been happy to hear it). The Chinese have the most to lose by a destabilized East Asia, whereas the N. Koreans have virtually nothing to lose. I'm sure China has spoken to them directly about the matter. They probably said something like: swing your dick around a few times to save face about the shelling, then go back to barely being there.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
All of this always makes me think of an article that ran a few years back (not on slashdot) that was interviewing several people who had managed to defect/escape from NK into China and other places. These were average citizens...
One of them told how her job was to collect the pamphlets that were dropped by US planes, and how she feels so incredibly foolish now, because she and all of her coworkers had to use sharpened sticks to pick them up. They did this because they had been told that the US pamphlets which espoused democracy and freedom were covered in some kind of an acidic solution that would eat away their skin if they touched them.
She acknowledged how (in the light of having escaped and seen the world around her for the first time in a more impartial manner) very silly it was to believe such a thing, but reiterated that everyone who worked with her truly believed this to be true.
This sort of thing makes me very nervous about the idea of invading North Korea. The people are so incredibly ignorant of the world around them and we know so little about them besides the fact that they're not well educated and starving, that it seems dangerously possible that going to war with them would mean going to war with an entire country of zealots...this does not seem like a good option.
Yes, you're quite certain, but why? As a former Nuke/Chem/Bio defense officer with the US Military, I can assure you that an attack on US soil with nuclear weapons would result in the big metaphorical glass parking lot becoming reality. They can take out a city center or two. We can and probably would literally kill 100% of their popualtion, unless our Comander in Chief excercises almost litterally inhuman restraint. We regularly trained back when I was in to drive M1A1 series tanks through four hour old craters just for the scenarios where the government opts to hunt down any and all survivors of the initial exchange and wants them all dead before any get a chance to surrender. We're talking the deaths of every man, woman and potentially every day old infant in North Korea as a matter of official doctrine. Although I have hopes we would do better than absolute genocide, I sure wouldn't bet on it, because the 300 Million + surviving Americans are mostly going to be wondering why we even try to avoid fallout drifting into South Korea or China, let alone what happens to the North. I trained from some of the response plans in the 1970s and they're finally public. We had plans that dedicated a Megaton for every village of over 500 people. Hell, in the 50's we had plans that involved seeding their croplands with radiocobalt isotopes so nothing would grow for a thousand years, and then crashing the nuclear powered, plutonium fueled, unmanned bombers that delivered it into their cities after they had spent a month each flying back and forth over the whole country. We've gotten more precise since then and started giving a damn about not poisoning the whole planet, but not less lethal. North Korea stands to lose literally 100% - it doesn't get any worse than that.
Who is John Cabal?
Well, he damned sure won't retain power if he sets off a nuke. His regime's lifetime will be measured in minutes at that point.
The only context in which it makes sense for the DPRK to threaten nuclear war is if they actually want to be taken over by a coalition of Chinese and South Korean forces. What else could it mean, when they adopt tactics and rhetoric that leave their neighbors no other responsible option?
Nothing personal really, I guess that is the scenario, but calling not committing genocide on a scale shadowing everything that happened in the whole history of manking "literally inhuman restraint" seriously creeps me out. Are you sure your planners haven't returned their membership card to humanity quite some decades ago? Or do you mean by "literally inhuman" that those in power are indeed the Lizard People?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Nope. The US has a very strong "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons...
No we don't. Not for North Korea. In April 2010 we extended our no first use policy for almost everyone, but very specifically excluded Iran and North Korea.
Our policy still indicates that we are very much interested in exhausting all options, and everyone seems to get that Nukes are terrible (though as little as a few years ago Bush had allowed for us to Nuke anyone that might have WMDs, or a towel on their head).
But we specifically excluded NK in our no first use policy. I don't think we'd ever want to be the ones to use them first, but we could.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
This is completely false. The North Korean military was completely and utterly routed to the Chinese side of the border in almost every single China-DPRK border province. North Korea was entirely defeated when 300,000 Chinese troops moved at night under orders of strict silence to repel the joint American and South Korean forces that were standing just on the south side of the Yalu and Tumen rivers.
Then there are the Crab Wars of the 1990s between South Korea and North Korea. There were a small number of victories on the littoral seas in the beginning for North Korea, but they soon began losing every skirmish they started and had to stop provoking the losses of their own ships. The DPRK lost this entire campaign.
When was it demonstrated that North Korea actually had nukes? I only remember a failed test and a lot of posturing. Googling turns up nothing, although I may not be looking correctly. What am I missing?
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
No, the UN forces flat-out defeated the North Korean Army in 1950. The war only lasted beyond that because the Chinese took over. Just look at the strengths of the top 5 combatants (Wikipedia numbers, yeah):
Yes, Communist China fielded 3.5x as many troops as the North Koreans. On top of that, right before the war they gave the North Koreans 70,000+ ethnic Korean soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, including two already-organized, experienced ethnic Korean divisions that had fought in the Chinese civil war. Kim Il Sung invaded the south only after Mao promised to send forces if the USA intervened. The Chinese Communists really, really threw their support behind North Korea.
Are you adequate?
Look, imagine if somebody could walk away with 100 million dollars, would they do ? Many would! You KNOW that many would.
Well, In NK, the top leadership have most of what they want. Hell, they are driving new mercedes. They have Rolls Royce there. They have homes that would be equal to what millionaires have here. And it is free for the taking. So, would walking away with 100 million dollars do for you? Nothing.
Now, imagine if you could kill somebody and make lots of gains, with little repercussion? Would you do it? Few would. Part of that is because they would wonder if there really was so little of repercussions. They will constantly wonder if they will be held accountable. BUT, if they KNOW that they will be held accountable, then VERY FEW WOULD DO IT.
Finally, if somebody launches a nuke against the USA, or a NATO nation, and the KNOWN response will be TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF ALL LEADERS AND EVERY MEMBER OF THEIR FAMILIES, and possibly their nation, do you think that OTHER nations will try that? Think that Iran, Burma, and now Venezuela will try it? DO you think that China will do it (who is the only major nation that is in active production of nuke warheads)? Nope.
Since MAD can not work here, then we need for every small nation to understand that ANY USE OF A NUKE WILL MEAN THEIR TOTAL DESTRUCTION. Then and only then, will you not see any of these nations use one.
But if NK believes that they can send one into SK and America will do nothing, do you think that NK would send one in? I KNOW that they would.
If you really wish to avoid war, then make certain that the other side knows that war will mean their total annihilation. BTW, if NK does attack and we do nothing, then Iran will be next to attack. And it will occur quickly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> You know, I thought you were serious until you put this part in.
> Now I'm just laughing... We barely have "unmanned bombers"
> now, much less in the 50's.
It was called Project Pluto, although IIRC there was a different name for the airplane/cruise missile that was to use the Pluto ramjet. After spending some time working on precision targeting systems, the designers realized that the weapon didn't need to hit any specific target; it just needed to fly back and forth over the enemy's terrain at low altitude where the combination of supersonic shock waves, direct radiation, and exhaust fallout would do more than enough damage. The autopilots of the 1950s were more than sufficient for that task.
The project was canceled in part due to concerns about its existence being overly proactive (as stated in the Wikipedia article), but also because the designers finally realized that even in the non-eco 1950s there would be nowhere on the planet that they could test it.
sPh