A long time ago, I wrote about the different objectives that South Korea, Japan, and America have concerning North Korean nuclear weapons. Just look at South Korea:
Look at South Korea. They seem annoyingly unconcerned about North Korean nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Sure. The North Koreans and their Chinese allies captured and destroyed Seoul--where a quarter of South Korea's population lives--twice in the Korean War. And since then the North Koreans have had an army poised to launch an offensive to capture the city a third time. Even though North Korea's army is declining and South Korea's is growing more powerful, the North Koreans retain large numbers of tube and rocket artillery within range of Seoul that could turn the city into rubble without even crossing the DMZ. So North Korea getting a few nukes is rather irrelevant. North Korea doesn't need nukes to wreck Seoul.
And then there is the possibility of winning. What if something happens and North Korea collapses? Will South Korea have to step in and spend the money to build northern Korea up to ROK standards? Sticker shock is an understatement. They've seen what West Germany had to spend for a far better off East Germany. South Korea wants North Korea to exist, stop being a threat, and slowly catch up with South Korea economically. And then let South Korea absorb them. Good luck with that foreign policy goal!
Of course, with American forces deploying away from the DMZ, the South Koreans may get increasingly nervous that large numbers of Americans won't die in the opening hours of a North Korean attack. This would Leave South Korea a little more exposed. South Korea might change their positions to account for this.
My point in that exercise was that America could afford to be patient because North Korea posed no threat to America; and that South Korea wouldn't see North Korean nuclear weapons as much worse than North Korea's ability to possibly take Seoul or wreck it with conventional artillery (or even chemical weapons).
For America, our recent policies to stop North Korea in contrast to when we were patient then reflects the new threat to America itself. This is consistent with my thinking.
But South Korea has been going along with the increased American pressure to stop North Korea before it can threaten America with nuclear weapons.
Is this American-South Korean cooperation because North Korean nuclear weapons would pose a new threat to destroy Seoul? Was I wrong to assume that North Korea without nukes already had the ability to destroy Seoul?
Or is the basis for my conclusion changed? North Korea surely weakened since I wrote that post more than a decade ago. Maybe North Korea had that capability a decade ago but no longer has it.
And South Korea has grown stronger. Maybe southern options, like clearing a no-launch zone north of the DMZ, are more credible now.
America may or may not be stronger in general than a decade ago but America does have new capabilities to harm North Korea in a narrow range of power. We have lots of penetrating bombs now with more stealth aircraft to drop them.
This change in South Korean worries may also indicate that South Korea doesn't believe North Korea has nuclear weapons yet--as opposed to nuclear devices, which they clearly have.
So I raise the possibility that talk about the capability of North Korea to destroy Seoul if we lead a strike campaign against North Korea's nuclear infrastructure may no longer be accurate.
