It seems as if North Korean nuclear weapons research momentum is taking them to a very dangerous place.
Yes, North Korea's pursuit of tactical nukes is a problem:
North Korea’s recent testing of “newly-developed tactical guided missiles” has raised the specter of possible North Korean development of tactical nuclear weapons. Indeed, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared the pursuit of such weapons to be a priority during the Eighth Party Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in January of this year.
One, as I've noted for Germany during the Cold War when discussing tactical nukes, when nukes are going off on your territory the fine distinction between "tactical" and "strategic" nukes will be lost on the South Koreans.
And two, with North Korea's army rotting, I've long said a conventional invasion of South Korea would require North Korea to massively use chemical weapons. If that collapses the South Korean army and allows the North Koreans to road march south, that is the only way North Korea conquers the south.
But can North Korea's ramshackle army even do that even with nukes disrupting the South Koreans? The army gets few resources under the Kooks, Spooks, and Nukes strategy. After all this time starved of funds, the North Korean army is basically an indentured servant labor pool. Which conveniently keeps men in their prime insurrection years under state control.
And there is a
non-zero chance America would nuke the North Koreans in response to North Korean tactical nuke use, with
special efforts to knock out anything suspected of being able to reach
America and Japan. If America responded with tactical nukes, would North Korea really respond with strategic nukes that would then lead to North Korea's destruction as a state? America likely wouldn't use strategic nukes on cities to kill people. But a bunch of nukes on key state security targets plus conventional precision strikes on leadership and other targets in cities might end North Korea.
So the introduction of tactical nukes completely inverts the purpose of strategic nukes to deter enemy attack on North Korea. Initiating tactical nuke use to invade South Korea provokes use of nukes on North Korea. Even if those American nukes are "tactical."
