Bloomberg reports that North Korean soldiers are entering China and killing
villagers for food
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
In the December incident, a North Korean soldier shot four residents of Nanping, a border village of about 300 in northeastern Jilin province. Around 20 villagers have been murdered in Nanping by North Koreans in recent years, a senior local official said in an interview.
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In the winter months the Tumen river outside of Nanping freezes over, allowing North Koreans to walk across, and it is common for soldiers to enter the village to demand food, the official said by phone on Jan. 8. The December attack followed the murder of three members of the same family in September.
Now let's get this right.
Soldiers working the northern border are not manning their posts but crossing to villages to demand food and killing people for food and money.
That's not an Army, that's an Armed Gang.
Now there are lots of People, who will tell you the NorKs are the greatest threat
to civilization ever
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush also called North Korea "A regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens."[1]
of course these are the same people who tell you Cuba and Castro are the axis of Evil.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/...
The Evil Genius of Fidel Castro
http://www.rense.com/...
Bush's New Axis Of Evil -
Castro And Chavez
and lots of people even here will tell you that North Korea is a brutal war machine
ready to flatten Seoul.
http://www.cnn.com/...
And while Seoul in 1950 was a city that few people in the wider world had heard of, modern Seoul has tremendous international relevance as the capital of the world's 13th largest economy. Were it to come under artillery or nuclear attack, the tsunami that would sweep through global financial markets could be devastating.
and
here
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/...
Estimates of the damage that could be inflicted by a North Korean attack range from bad to apocalyptic. Lee Yang Ho, defense minister during a similar nuclear crisis in 1994, said one computer simulation conducted during his term projected 1 million dead, including thousands of Americans.
"It is assumed that if the United States were to strike North Korea that the North Koreans would fight back," Lee said. "All industry would be destroyed, gas stations, power plants. This is such a densely populated area that even if North Korean artillery were not very accurate, anyplace you would hit there would be huge numbers of casualties."
U.S. military experts who have contemplated strikes on North Korea agree.
we see extremely smart guys like Major Kong here
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The DPRK remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world today. They have an active army of around 1.2 million plus 8 million reserves. Their equipment is old but they have an awful lot of it. Their air force isn't much to speak of but they have a very credible submarine force plus a large missile force. They have over 1000 ballistic missiles, some capable of reaching as far as Guam.
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I've seen some of the plans for what Korea 2.0 would look like and you really, really don't want to go there. The Pentagon expects a war that would last maybe six months with US casualties numbering 50,000 or so. South Korean civilian casualties would likely be in the millions. By an accident of geography Seoul sits well in range of DPRK artillery and would probably be leveled in the first hours of a conflict.
I don't know...
I just don't see it.
North Korea reminds me of an old angry drunk sitting around in a bar saying
60 years ago, North Korea was something, but, South Korea is really something now,
while North Korea, can't feed their troops on the northern border.
I don't think North Korea is very much at all,
they aren't the Wermacht ready to leap at france,
They aren't the million man russian army ready to force the Oder.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/...
Forget that North Korea would be committing strategic and political suicide with a full-scale bombardment of Seoul. If a storm of artillery rounds fell on Seoul, would the city really disintegrate?
"Artillery is not that lethal," says Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and is a national security analyst for ABC News. "It takes a long time for it to produce the densities of fire to go beyond terrorism and harassment." Even in a worst-case scenario, where both U.S. and South Korean forces are somehow paralyzed or otherwise engaged, and North Korea fires its 170mm artillery batteries and 240mm rocket launchers with total impunity, the grim reality wouldn't live up to the hype. Buildings would be perforated, fires would inevitably rage and an unknown number of people would die. Seoul would be under siege—but it wouldn't be flattened, destroyed or leveled.
Me, I do the math, and look at a map.
Seould is close to the border but it's 20 miles to the ring beltway and 30 miles to downtown. Only really big field artillery can throw 20 miles. Most of it can't.
The ROK, USA and USAF have fierce counter battery.
8 hours after the NorKs start shelling, the US will be dumping B-52 raids
not just on the 10 mile belt where NorK long range artillery are, but,
that fierce counter batttery radar will be tearing up their locations
and fast flying raids will attack their facilities.
but more importantly,
Starving soldiers do a lousy job of fighting.
North Korea makes a great boogeyman, but, I bet when it's all over, the NorK Death belts of artillery will prove to be much more this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/...
http://against-all-enemi.es/...
then this
http://www.ww2incolor.com/...
https://41.media.tumblr.com/...
http://fc02.deviantart.net/...