South Korean government sources say, based on information from intelligence teams, North Korea appears poised for a rare, large-scale military drill.
Government officials, who do not want to be named, say they are “observing closely” North Korean positions. But they say there are no indications the massing of military personnel appears to be anything more than a drill.
Unless the North Korean government has actually decided to roll the dice and try to reverse the erosion of their regime with an invasion of South Korea, this could be quite entertaining.
One, it will eat up a lot of North Korean war reserves to move their stuff around and keep it running.
Two, it won't scare South Korea into passivity and prompt an eagerness to send aid north to keep the huge North Korean killing machine on its leash? Why? Because the balance of forces has been tilting in favor of the south for years now, and actually seeing the North Korean military in action with its museum-quality machinery will provide us with a whole lot of opportunities to see just how crappy the North Korean military has become. I doubt even the northern rulers fully appreciate how bad it is. The look on their faces when they see their glorious army thrashing about like a beached and injured whale would be worth the price of admission alone.
And it won't scare us into signing a peace treaty with North Korea, as North Korea demands. We shouldn't do that, of course, since North Korea likes to maintain the fiction that South Korea doesn't really exist except as a puppet of America, and so North Korea won't sign a peace treaty with South Korea--just with us.
Still, I retain worry that it isn't an exercise. Yes, North Korea would almost surely lose the war. But there is a small chance that breaks could all go Pyongyang's way and lead to an improbable victory.
And the way things are breaking down inside North Korea, there may very well be a higher chance of the army becoming a threat to the regime. Kim Jong-Il and his cronies wouldn't be the first rulers to send an army they don't fully trust into a war to, at the very least, keep that army busy with a foreign enemy rather than letting it sit around in the barracks pondering how much better things would be if they were in charge themselves.
North Korea's rulers might think that even if the army gets decimated in a war, fear of North Korea's nuclear capabilities (whether it exists or not) could stay our hand and keep us from counter-attacking into North Korea. And the shock of even winning a war that came out of the blue might prompt South Korea to open the spigot of aid after the war. Under those circumstances, chopping up the North Korean army might be a favor to the regime in the north that can't afford to demobilize disillusioned and hungry soldiers. I mean, as long as it doesn't go any farther than that and things go according to the North Korean script.
But who knows? North Korea might win a war and provide North Korea with enough loot to keep their racket going for another generation. As unlikely as that seems, if it is the only way out the northern leaders see, they might take a shot. So sit back and enjoy the exercises if it is only a misguided effort to bully South Korea.
But keep our weapons within easy reach in case it isn't. Crazy rulers can do crazy (to us) things. They might not think that the sinking of the South Korean corvette and the shelling of that South Korean island were wrong in concept. They just might believe they were too small in scale to achieve a proper respectful attitude in Seoul.
