South Korea's military is planning to significantly enhance operational capabilities to strike the North Korean leadership should Pyongyang be first to launch a nuclear attack.
So if North Korea sets Seoul--which has a quarter of South Korea's population--on nuclear fire, South Korea's plan is know exactly where Kim Jong Un and his top leaders are bunkered and guarded deep in North Korea and to helicopter in special forces to kill them?
So America's nuclear umbrella is insufficient to deter North Korea from nuking South Korea but a threat of a commando raid will be? No?
Okay, then this really is the retaliation plan?
Even if such a raid works, China might consider that a great trade: Seoul is smoldering, glowing wreckage and the difficult North Korean leadership is dead, making it easier for China to get a more compliant leadership in the north.
Will South Koreans consider that a good trade?
The only way this story makes sense is if the raiding capability is a part of a decapitation strike on North Korea prior to North Korea using nukes on South Korea in order to stop such a strike, using a joint American-South Korean ground division to occupy nuclear launch sites while South Korean forces carve out a no-launch zone north of the DMZ to protect Seoul from conventional fires.
Although pray tell, how will we defend the nuclear threat as imminent and so justifies decisive military action?
Mind you, I can understand why South Korea doesn't want to admit what it might want to do and so sticks with this story. But I don't buy it.
