North Korea can kill. But it is past its prime when it could win.
North Korea's army is starving:
The growing number of North Korean soldiers sent to the Chinese border to increase security have become a threat to civilians living nearby. ...
This breakdown in security and discipline throughout North Korea has been going on for over a decade. That trend accelerated in the last two years because of escalating food shortages. It has reached levels of hunger and privation not seen since the 1990s famine that killed about ten percent of the population.
This deterioration means that options to reduce North Korea's ability to kill with nukes increase. To hunt down North Korean nuclear weapons, "the U.S. has changed the composition of its small force to include an attack helicopter brigade and more artillery units."
Unless the North Koreans put short-range nukes close to the DMZ, this implies South Korean and American ground forces are heading north in case of war on a broader front than I earlier suspected.
I assume that's what an updated operational war plan will address:
At their annual Security Consultative Meeting in Seoul on Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Republic of Korea Defense Minister Suh Wook will announce new strategic planning guidance “to start the process of developing a new operational war plan,” said one of the officials, who briefed reporters traveling with Austin to Seoul.
“The DPRK has advanced its capabilities. The strategic environment has changed over the past few years,” the official said. “It’s appropriate and necessary that we have an OPLAN that is updated.”
Just as significant as North Korean nuclear progress, North Korea's conventional capabilities have rotted away. I'm only joking a bit when I've noted:
If the South Korean army completely collapses in the face of a North Korean ground invasion, the North Korean advance will grind to a halt as 13th-century poverty-stricken peasant soldiers of the North Korean army stumble into the ruins of a 21st century fairy tale stocked with consumer goods and Choco-pies that will still be more appealing than a new gray apartment building back home.
Especially since North Korea's war reserve food supplies may not exist. Did the fall harvest allow Pyongyang to rebuilt that reserve?
But we've been moving away from desperate defense to save Seoul to operating north of the DMZ for a while. Indeed, I noted the look north in 2003 (find "operational plan" in the massive recovered "post").
