What should we do about North Korea? What will happen to them?

[sandorski]

How does this make you any better than a North Korean who wants to nuke us? How are you any less of a threat to them than you say they are to us?

Seems to me this is a type of arrogance of power, where any 'threat' from anyone else is unacceptable, but there's a double standard in the threats they should be ok with.

If they want to nuke us, we have plenty of people who want to nuke them, who say things like 'we could nuke them if it weren't for the risk to South Korea' - how is that better?

They are the ones throwing the threat around like it's a punchline to a joke.

 

[JEDIYoda]

We can only hope 1 of 3 things.

1. The NK people will revolt, highly unlikely as the people are so afraid and brainwashed.

Yep!! We know how well that works in communist regime...lolol

 

[Sonikku]

We need to capitalize on the weaknesses of our enemies. North Korea's weakness is they rely on China for much for their support/banking/ propping up in general. China's weakness is they have an obsession with their countries perception of being a super power, even if they are only deluding themselves. Convince China that their banking and support of the North is grossly undermining their nation's "power house image" and status on the national stage and they'll drop the North like a bad habit.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

They ended the armistice. I'm pretty sure North Korea is going to have to make the first move on this. Even though that was the first move. They probably would have to attack first to get a response from South Korea/US.

 

[Craig234]

They ended the armistice. I'm pretty sure North Korea is going to have to make the first move on this. Even though that was the first move. They probably would have to attack first to get a response from South Korea/US.

The way these things usually work is that the actual aggressor finds a way under the radar to provoke the other side to do something that can be called 'the first move'.

Sometimes that's just claiming they're a threat, sometimes it's waiting for them to do something, sometimes it's provocation and pressure.

Take Vietnam - we were training South Vietnamese commandos/terrorists and sending them into the north to commit sabotage and assassinate.

One time when we had a destroyer escorting a boat of these commandoes into North Vietnamese waters, they saw our ship and shot at it.

Done. claim it was in international waters which no one can prove otherwise and that it was an unprovoked attack and next thing you know, congressional act for war.

They started it, right?

Now, I don't really 'trust' North Korea not to actually start something, and not to need any provocation - but they sure seem easy to provoke if we want.

Maybe the CIA can send a false story to North Korea that Dennis Rodman mocked their leader saying 'North Koreans can't jump'.

 

[randomrogue]

North Korea plays the typical unruly child card and always gets their way. Now that they have a couple nukes it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Do we give them food or economic aid? Do we allow their financial transactions to go through our system?

 

[werepossum]

I would think the US & SK military would have been planning to for this situations for the past few decades. Enough time to develop weapons for this particular situation. As far as I know the only counter to artillery is a counter battery to knock it out. Missiles might be able to be engaged and destroyed.
While Seoul would take a beating, I think SK would win pretty quickly even w/o US help. Another problem is what to do with NK afterwards. Bringing NK up from where they are will be a huge drain on SK's economy.

Taking out North Korea's DMZ artillery would be time-consuming as it is deep within tunnel systems. There are many more tunnels than guns and howitzers, all are camouflaged and reinforced, and the pieces are only brought to the end of the tunnel for fire missions which leaves very little time to locate the weapon and fire against it. Meanwhile they would be pounding Seoul.

As to Red China, propping up North Korea is a fairly cheap way to avoid a unified Korea which could be an economic powerhouse competitor - although as you say, the North Koreans would take a huge amount of money for a generation or two to get up to speed. Direct attack would probably be a much different matter, probably akin to the early months of the USSR versus Nazi Germany. Massed infantry attacks are not an effective tactic in modern warfare, with artillery, ground attack aircraft and machine guns; South Korea's much more modern tanks could take out dozens of North Korean models, many of which require stopping for aimed fire (not to mention turret rotation via hand cranks.) All this means that North Korea has zero chance of taking and holding South Korea even without the USA. Let's hope that the North Korean leadership remains sane enough to not believe its own propaganda and hopeful enough to not stop caring about their own destruction.

 

[Doppel]

The truth is nobody knows when or if NK will dissolve, including its most studied analysts. This guy wrote something in 1994 about its impending collapse and wrote a follow-up in 2004 pondering why he was wrong. To be honest, I couldn't read it. I find the guy is an absolutely horrendous writer, loquacious and insufferable, but here it is anyway:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6592

I think the Kim line should be snuffed out and should anybody ever have a high confidence they can hit Kim they probably ought to. In NK they believe in blood lines and I say this be applied to them: Kim il sung, his son, his son's son are awful people due to their blood line and it should be finished.

The rest of the country cannot get worse; its military has done absolutely all it can and anymore it will invite response. Its destruction is ensured and it knows it, as must all its generals. Socially, it cannot get worse. NK has already suffered great famine and it's hard to imagine it being any worse to its people than it already is/has been.

So if it can't get any worse or more threatening, what really is the risk to snuffing Kim? Perhaps it would encourage leadership to change.

As more tech sneaks into NK despite the regime's control, though, and the old brain washed geriatrics die off the younger generation may be able to assert more control and see real changes.

 

[Craig234]

I've long said that tyranny can last a very, very long time. There are times it falls from within, but often it does not and can go on for centuries or longer.

I think it typically falls because of outside pressure - but that suggests that if one country is so strong not to feel outside pressure, it's all the more vulnerable to tyranny.

In a small sense I think that's the position the US finds itself in as corruption increases and it's largely politically unable to fix it, as the courts radicalize more and more creating new corporate constitutional rights and the 'left' becomes the old 'right' and the 'right' turns into a much more radical version that used to be fringe.

These billion dollar presidential campaigns that destroy democracy are the new normal.

Our federal government concedes that it refuses to proceed with otherwise strong criminal charges against banks because it would hurt the economy.

So we watch with jealousy as other countries overthrow dictators and pass democratic reforms, saying 'but we can't do that'.