It also has an arsenal of intermediate range missiles in operational deployment, some of which can travel more than 3,000 km (1,875 miles). That puts South Korea and Japan in range as well as the U.S. territory of Guam.
Realistically, this sounds like Saddam and his SCUDS. Practically speaking I am guessing (?) that Japan is more or less immune to anything NK would do; certainly no wide spread devastation.
North Korea officially voids non-aggression pacts with South, severs the hotline
On a technical level, this is huge as they've never done this before.
Agree, they have run out of things other than more outright attacks now.
I honestly don't believe this guy is in full control and something may come of this.
Does it matter who is in control? It's not like Kim Un is a nice guy who anybody can trust.
My position on NK has and remains that like any other nation it is not suicidal. It will not launch an attack that is inevitably going to result in a massive retaliation (e.g. bombarding Seoul) because those in power know they will lose it.
NK is very talented at giving the impression it is crazy. The fact it killed SKens in recent attacks without physical repercussions shows that they are indeed believed to be crazy. It's hard to imagine any other country rolling over after 46 of its sailors taken out in a random attack. SK is genuinely quite scared of NK.
In the midst of this NK tension, I'm sure SK & US already have a thoroughly detailed plan on how to demolish NK or react to them if they strike.
Many plans, definitely, along with detailed knowledge of where their artillery is or is likely to be. If any conflict went large there would be a list of coordinates to hit which are regularly reviewed to ensure they are still valid.
The only large threat NK poses to SK is via its artillery. I assume that at some point anti-artillery (like Israel's Iron Dome) will be perfected and deployed such that it could counter this and then NK will be impotent.