Who Pays the Price For Coping With North Korea?

South Korea is in a three-way tug-of-war with themselves, North Korea, and America/Japan over dealing with North Korea. Which would be destroyed, regardless of other outcomes.

Yes, South Korea's "kill chain" strategy could ignite a North Korean attack. Yet trying to absorb and deflect a North Korean barrage is risky for South Korea, too:

In a move to prove that the age of appeasing North Korea is over, South Korea’s newly-inaugurated president Yoon Suk-yeol has quickly moved to revive a “Kill Chain” strategy towards North Korea – a plan which would in the face of imminent nuclear attack launch a pre-emptive strike to remove the leadership in Pyongyang. Yoon had promised as much on the campaign trail, arguing South Korea would have “no recourse but a pre-emptive strike” because there was simply not enough time to intercept missiles.

Even if South Korea is right that preemptive conventional strikes are the only way to protect Seoul--where a quarter of South Korea's population lives close to the Demilitarized Zone--neither America nor Japan would be eager for South Korea to risk that. Because a war would likely lead North Korea to strike whoever they can, including America and Japan.

Yet South Korea has incentive to build this capability so America and Japan don't think they are safe behind the human shield of South Korea. If South Korea can act, America and Japan can't remain passive as North Korea threatens South Korea.

South Korea's worries expand a great deal if it relies too much on America and Japan after North Korea gets nuclear weapons capable of striking targets in those countries. And America and Japan worry more about what South Korea initiates when North Korea has such nuclear strike options.

I've noted the different objectives and risks of the parties in coping with North Korea. I've long counted on North Korea dying before it gets long-range nuclear weapons. That race is still uncertain.

When it comes to stopping a conventional and/or poison gas bombardment of Seoul, I think stopping the North Korean kill chain would require standing on the launch sites.  North Korean military power is fading and it is only really capable of a futile killing spasm, whether conventional, chemical, or eventually nuclear.

NOTE: My most recent war coverage continues here.