The Korean war never formally ended, and for North Korea there is only
one acceptable outcome: reunification under North leadership. Alarmingly, despite South
Korea being protected by the might of the US military, it might be able to achieve this.
North Korea views reunification not just as a matter of national pride,
but of survival for the Kim regime. The situation in the north is bad, really bad,
with even Pyongyang experiences food shortages in recent years. The Covid pandemic also put a lot
of pressure on the Kim regime, and as the South continues to prosper while the north stagnates,
reunification by force may be the regime's last chance to stave off an insurrection.
Standing in the way of reunification by force are about 600,000 South Korea
troops and 50,000 American troops. The south fields a largely modern and capable military,
and has the explicit backing of the United States of America. Together, the two are a
military juggernaut that the North can't hope to best- or could it? Because North Korea has some
plans to either break this alliance, or simply win before the US can bring its full might to bear.
With over a million troops, North korean forces outnumber the ROK's own by 300,000.
Their equipment is outdated, and the bulk of their armored forces consist
of Soviet era T-62s. By comparison, the south fields the mighty K2 battle tank,
a fully modern and extremely capable system. North Korea's air force is antiquated and
largely a token force, and its navy has a little bit of punch, but is outclassed by the South.
But the north has one thing going for it:
a massive concentration of artillery that the South can't counter.
Artillery has become the saving grace of failed militaries around the world,
and nowhere is this better displayed than in Ukraine. After Russia failed at combined arms
operations, its best tanks were eviscerated by American and British anti-tank missiles,
and its air force failed to suppress Ukrainian ground forces,
it went back to the type of fighting it knew best: indiscriminate and overwhelming
firepower via artillery. With as much as a 20 to 1 advantage over Ukraine, Russian artillery
has been able to grind the war to a slow, steady grind and prevent an embarrasing all-out rout.
North Korea's artillery may be old, but the beauty of artillery is that it doesn't have to
be very modern to be extremely lethal- specially when you have a huge amount of it. And North
Korea has one of the biggest artillery forces anywhere on the world- that's not an accident.
The nation has an estimated 5,000 self-propelled artillery pieces,
alongside 5,000 towed howitzers. This is the second largest stock of each system anywhere
in the world, outclassed only by Russia. Its multiple rocket laucher system fleet
is the third largest on earth, with nearly 3,000 of these systems in its arsenal.
North Korean artillery doesn't come close to modern American systems like precision-guided
HIMARS or Excalibur guided shells- but they don't have to be. With thousands of guns
ready to go at a moment's notice, precision becomes irrelevant as you overhwelm your
enemy with huge volleys of saturation fire. And North Korea is prepared to do just that-
in fact they count on this artillery to secure victory in a new Korean war,
and they have one massive trump card over the US and ROK alliance.
The city of Seoul is one of the most modern and prosperous in the world, and it's also
within range of North Korea's long-range artillery stationed along the DMZ. With
several million inhabitants, Seoul has been the one weakness in every warplan developed
by America and the ROK. Multiple times in the last thirty years the United States has
been prepared to launch strikes against North Korean to punish it for its nuclear progam and
attempt to destroy it in place- each time the South Koreans politely reminded their
American allies that their capital was directly in range of North Korean guns.
To counter the artillery threat, Seoul has built large underground bunkers where its citizens can
hide out for days if need be. They have also deployed significant counterbattery systems
along the DMZ, with artillery units specifically trained and tasked with responding to Northern
fire and destroying the North's guns. The South Korean and US air forces both are prepared for
rapid response missions across the vast DMZ to eliminate northern batteries. But the north
isn't ignorant to these plans, and has its own in order to extend the survivability of its big guns.
First, North Korea would immediately target Seoul with its longest range
guns. Equipped with incendiary munitions, the damage would be catastrophic- and not
all civilians could hope to get to safety before rounds start raining down around
them. It's estimated that North Korea could deliver several thousand rounds an hour to
the city- even with US/ROK counterbattery fire. An estimated 40% of the city could be destroyed
in the opening hours of a new war, leading to catastrophic economic damage for the South.
Second, North Korea is guaranteed to use various chemical and possibly even biological agents in
the opening hours of its attack. With a fleet of an estimated 600 SCUD missile launchers,
North Korea would target ports, train stations, and airports with chemical and
biological weapons in order to paralyze the South's transportation networks. The
aim would be to make escape impossible for South Korean citizens. Much like Russia,
North Korea views civilians as a legitimate target of war and a way to force its enemy
into concessions. Trapping South Korean citizens in Seoul and other major cities
would be of greater strategic value to the North than destroying ROK military facilities
themselves. The North would attempt to negotiate for peace under its own terms by holding South
Korea's citizens hostage- or at the very least would seek to limit US involvement. The United
States would have to carefully weigh the global optics in its response to the North. If its
involvement guarantees the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of ROK citizens
it will cost the US politically, and might even erode public support for intervention back home.
Next, chemical weapons with persistent agents that can last for days would be used against ROK and US
air bases near the DMZ. North Korean victory would rely on it quickly taking Seoul and then holding
it hostage, forcing the south to sue for peace and the US to stay away by threatening the death of
millions of Seoul civilians. However, the biggest threat to this plan is allied air power, and thus
it would be critical to shut down air fields near the DMZ as quickly as possible to prevent rapid
response strikes. Persistent agents delivered via ballistic missiles would ensure that air fields
remain inoperable and aircraft themselves require extensive decontamination efforts.
Allied airpower would be forced to fly from air fields further to the south, or even completely
out of the country for the US, significantly slowing mission sortie rates and response times.
Shutting down allied air power is of critical importance to the north because the terrain
leading from the North into the South is very difficult, and large offensives could only take
place via half a dozen or so routes through the hills and mountains. This would create
a dangerous bottleneck of forces which could be devastated by superior air power, much as
we saw retreating Iraqi forces annihilated in the infamous highway of death leading out of Kuwait.
But even with runways operational, the allies might have trouble flying strike missions
against northern forces. The DMZ is home to a very dense network of northern air defenses,
and while these are largely old Soviet-era models, as we have seen in Ukraine weapons
like the S-300 is still a significant threat to modern aircraft. The United States has tools to
operate in such highly contested environments, but this would force it to rely on the F-22,
F-35, and B-2 stealth bomber. The B-2 is too few in number to stem the tide of northern forces,
and would already be tasked with delivering decapitation strikes
against the Kim regime and destroying its nuclear weapons infrastructure.
This would leave the F-22 and F-35 to respond, and neither aircraft is capable of bringing the type
of firepower needed to stop a million strong army equipped with over 6,000 tanks. Sure, North Korean
tanks may be relics, but they're still tanks. And there's six thousand of them, most of which
would be surging towards Seoul or fixing Southern forces to prevent them reinforcing the Seoul axis.
What the US and South Korea needs is the American B-52 bomber. This is the world's preeminent bomber
aircraft, capable of bringing the pain in the form of 70,000 pounds (32,000 kg) of high
explosives per aircraft. But it's the actual weapons that really matter here,
and the United States Air Force has weapons specifically designed to devastate large
armored formations. During the second Gulf War, a single Marine recon platoon in unarmored humvees
ran into an entire Iraqi armored formation. The Marines called in fire support from a loitering
B-52 which dropped four CBU-97 cluster munitions. Inside each 1,000 pound bomb are 40 sensor-fused
projectiles known as 'skeets', which when dispersed over an area automatically target
armored vehicles and destroy them from above. The Iraqi armored formation was immediately
forced to retreat after losing approximately half their vehicles to the first attack.
These types of weapons, which the US has in the thousands, would devastate north korean armored
formations- but the United States would have to carefully weigh the costs. Without stealth,
B-52s are nothing more than big bomb trucks, and significantly threatened by even older
ground-based air defenses. While B-52s in Vietnam showed that they were able to deploy electronic
countermeasures to dramatically increase their survivability and limit casualties
while bombing the densest North Vietnamese air defense zones, the US would still have
to carefully consider how much of its bomber fleet is it willing to sacrifice to try to
stop Northern armor- and if it would even be able to bring enough aircraft to the fight to do so.
That's because the US would be limited to flying missions from outside of South Korea,
basing its mighty B-52s from Japan and Guam. This limits how many of the aircraft can be brought and
stored in-theater, and dramatically lowers sortie rate as the big bombers are forced to fly further.
To further disrupt the ally's response, North Korea would immediately deploy the largest
special purpose forces world in the world. With an estimated 60,000 special forces operators,
Northern SOF would infiltrate into the south in advance of any attack-
or immediately before one is launched. Dressed in civilian clothing or stolen ROK uniforms,
north korean special forces would conduct a massive campaign of sabotage and disruption,
significantly complicating a military response by the south.
And North Korea has multiple ways of getting its special forces into the
south unseen by even sophisticated ROK and US surveillance tech.
North Korea maintains a small fleet of biplanes. With canvas skin, these aircraft are throwbacks to
World War I and of zero military threat to the south- except for one unique feature. Because
they fly low, very slow, and have few metal parts these biplanes are incredibly difficult
to locate and track with search radars, let alone target with modern air defense
missiles. North Korean forces are trained to parachute out of these antiquated planes,
and hundreds of them could probably manage the task under cover of nighttime.
The second intrusion vector into the south would be via a fleet of mini submarines that
the north operates. Some of these are large enough to pose a threat to allied ships,
but many more are designed to take squads of soldiers past the 38th parallel and to
southern beaches. Operating in very shallow water, these small subs would basically be undetectable,
and only vigorous beach patrols could hope to stop infiltration using these
craft- diverting badly needed manpower from the war spilling across the DMZ.
On the DMZ itself though North Korea has yet another infiltration vector,
though it's not known just how active it remains today. Throughout the 90s ROK
forces discovered multiple tunnels that the North had dug right under the DMZ. Some of
these were big enough to allow for an estimated 3,200 soldiers to pour through them per hour,
completely bypassing the dense defenses of the DMZ itself. Such a force could
wreak havoc behind enemy lines, and while they would be largely engaging in suicide attacks,
heavy indoctrination has prepared North Korean special forces for the sacrificial task. No new
tunnels have been discovered since the 2000s, but that doesnt' mean they haven't been built.
Disruption is the name of the game for North Korea, and of its strategic goals in an invasion
of the south none is more important than knocking the US out of the fight and keeping it out.
To achieve this, North Korea needs to shut down major southern ports which
would allow for the offloading of large amounts of American troops and equipment.
The US could surge several thousand light infantry via its large air transport fleet,
but bringing America's mighty armored divisions into the fight would require approximately 60
days. This would leave the North with just under two months to shut down the South's major ports.
Normally incoming reinforcements would be better intercepted at sea. North Korea does have a small
fleet of diesel submarines, but these submarines have short ranges and are not very sophisticated.
They would be better used laying silently in ambush to attempt to intercept ROK and US naval
forces pushing north past the DMZ to unleash volleys of cruise missile attacks. Even then,
they would not survive for long up against both fleet's anti-submarine assets.
Instead, North Korea would need to shut down the port facilities themselves. This is where
the use of chemical weapons would once more come into play, with the aim of contaminating
disembarking points for US troops. The US and South Korea both have formidable air defenses,
including the Patriot air defense system, but North Korea is prepared to launch massive
volleys of ballistic missiles in order to overwhelm the southern air defense network.
And amongst those incoming ballistic missiles would inevitably be multiple nuclear weapons.
It's believed that by now the North has miniaturized its arsenal of a few dozen
nucelar weapons enough to load on medium range missiles. It might even be able to threaten the
west coast of the United States itself. But the North's nukes are better suited knocking
out port facilities and military airfields in the south. The Kim regime is likely fully
prepared to do so too, as there is no chance that the Kim family would survive a failed
war. Not only do both the US and South Korea have decapitation strike plans in place using bombers,
cruise missiles, and special forces to eliminate the Kims on the outset of war, but a failed war
to reunify the South with the North could only end in catastrophic and apocalyptic defeat of
the north. Many in the higher echelons of power in Pyongyang would eliminate the Kim
regime long before American Abrams and South Korean K2 tanks started rolling into the city.
For North Korea, the outbreak of war is an all or nothing affair with national
survival at stake. The use of nuclear weapons is thus naturally assumed.
Now go check out China vs United States, who would win WW3- or click this other video instead!