South Korea and the United States will soon sign a new plan on countering any North Korean attacks, Seoul said Wednesday, amid international wariness over the abrupt leadership transition in Pyongyang.
"We believe there remains a possibility of provocations by the North during the power succession to Kim Jong-Un," deputy defence minister Lim Kwan-Bin told reporters.
The ministry said the South Korean military, in response to any attack, would ensure "the enemy threat, the source of the provocation and its supporting forces are completely removed".
We obviously hope that a threat of retaliation will deter North Korea and a promise of restraint will reassure Pyongyang that any retaliation is not the beginning of an invasion.
But at the same time we are signaling measured resolve, a South Korean think tank is warning that once the bullets start flying both ways, North Korea knows that their only military advantage will be in the opening days of a North Korean invasion of South Korea:
North Korea's military strategy is superior to the defensive posture of its affluent neighbor to the South, an independent think-tank said on Wednesday, giving Pyongyang the edge in the early days of any war on the divided peninsula.
The Seoul-based Korea Economic Research Institute said in a report that in 2011 North Korea operated a 1.02-million-strong army and a record number of tanks, warships and air defense artillery. Total military personnel strength is 1.2 million.
"The depressing reality is it would not be entirely wrong to say North Korea's military strength is stronger," the institute said.
"We need to remember that the North is far superior in terms of the number of troops, and especially the North's military is structured in its formation and deployment with the purpose of an offensive war."
While the article just says they advocate a strong response to any North Korean attack, the logic of their position is that they would want South Korea to treat any attack on South Korea as an act of war that could lead to a North Korean invasion of South Korea, so that South Korea should go to war fully to deny North Korea the chance to invade South Korea.
You can understand why they'd feel that way when you notice that Seoul crowds the DMZ, has a quarter of South Korea's population, and is vulnerable to being bombarded into a "sea of fire" (as the North Koreans frequently boast) without the North Korean military advancing at all. But the North Koreans do plan to advance and are organized and deployed for that mission.
The bright spot of North Korea's strategy of being poised to invade, now that their military has rotted so much, is that it gets them moving. That makes them more vulnerable to our firepower and they would suffer heavy losses battering themselves against South Korean defenses. A counter attack north after blunting the attack would be far easier than a simple invasion against dug-in North Koreans remaining on the defensive.
Which is why, if I was running that concentration camp with a UN seat and I wanted to start a war with South Korea, I'd sit on the defensive and bombard Seoul with conventionial explosives from the relative security of the bunkers set up to protect all my artillery. I'd hold the chemical weapons in reserve to use in case US and South Korean forces roll north of the DMZ in order to save my conventional forces from defeat. And then I'd count on China to get the fighting stopped before I got beat. Heck, maybe I'd even get more Chinese aid after the war if China decides they own the problem.
But sitting on the defensive would be my chosen strategy because I'd be trying not to lose. If the North Koreans don't realize this is their strategic situation, they might want to use their military--which is organized and deployed to invade South Korea--to invade South Korea, in the knowledge that their only shot of defeating South Korea is to hit South Korea hard enough (probably with chemical weapons) that the South Korean military collapses.
Still, the rot might be deep enough to deny North Korea the war option. Don't forget that the Soviet Union lost their eastern European empire and then their non-Russian imperial territory within the borders of the old Soviet Union without attempting to start a war to rally their population to the communist party.
