Srsly.

Land some Delta and some SEALs, from the SSGNs, use short S. Korean to infiltrate their ranks, figure out where they are kept.

They go in, steal the Nukes, then use Japan, Russia, China, and our forces to destroy their production reactors.

Aftermath?

Without the threat of nuclear war from the N. Koreans, they don't have ANYTHING to help them. Their soldiers are starving and aren't paid. The only thing they had to cling to was the awesome power of the Kim and his dead Eternal Leader father.

12/18/2011 11:54:38 PM

but what about those massive stone blocks that will be moved over the South Korean lines

and what about that jackass Kim Jong-Un, who will prolly try to start World War III over it

12/18/2011 11:56:17 PM

with what?

12/18/2011 11:59:19 PM

The world's largest artillery stockpile? Of which at least 17 guns could hit Seoul with chemically laden shells.

12/19/2011 12:00:19 AM

Why do you think there's not thread of nuclear war from the koreans?

you realize that his son is reportedly more hawkish than il was??

12/19/2011 12:16:11 AM

I know what you meant; I'm not sure, however, that "hawkish" is exactly the word I would use to describe Kim Jong-Il...not in the conventional sense, at least.

12/19/2011 12:22:51 AM

I doubt Kim Jong-il wanted a war, he wanted to stay relevant/seem important. Every couple years he would throw a hissy fit to try to get stuff from the Western world.

12/19/2011 12:52:45 AM

Quote :

"Land some Delta and some SEALs, from the SSGNs, use short S. Korean to infiltrate their ranks, figure out where they are kept."

who says we haven't

12/19/2011 1:02:25 AM

12/19/2011 1:09:36 AM

Quote :

"Why do you think there's not thread of nuclear war from the koreans?"

I doubt the N. Koreans are on TWW.

12/19/2011 1:36:22 AM

I srsly hope this is a troll thread.

12/19/2011 8:23:46 AM

this would be possibly the WORST time to instigate N. Korea... the new leader... Kim Jong Un is his name? Well he will want to assert his power to show that he doesn't look weak to his people.

12/19/2011 8:31:22 AM

N. Korea could be taken out with a few fly overs. I say do it.

12/19/2011 8:53:06 AM

It would be a lot more complicated than that.

12/19/2011 9:01:11 AM

this would end well

12/19/2011 9:03:22 AM

Quote :

"Well he will want to assert his power to show that he doesn't look weak to his people."

Possibly, but Jong Il didn't when he took power after his father's death in 1994. Jong Un was brought up and educated in Switzerland.

12/19/2011 9:29:51 AM

"You can take the trash out of the trailer, but you can't take the trailer out of the trash."

Corollary:

"You can take the dictator out of the 3rd world, but not the 3rd world out of the dictator."

Known recent example:

Saif-ul-Islam Qaddafi

12/19/2011 9:38:24 AM

I would say this is more of a East/West Germany type deal than a random third world country. Yes DPRK is more far gone than Germany ever was, but you have a modern country (RoK) right there that was to unify and save it.

12/19/2011 10:00:06 AM

What incentive does the US possibly have to get involved with N. Korea, especially with all the saber rattling from Iran recently?

My older brother was on the last US merchant ship out of N. Korea when Bush placed the embargo on the country. Until recently we had been sending several tons of grain and beef to N. Korea as a part of our post-war agreement. He got a chance to tour the country (of course, under an armed guard that would only let 'the capitalists' see certain things. He said that a lot of their massive artillery stockpile is old stuff from the 1950s and a lot of their air defense is still made up of old flak guns. It's like they are a first world country just stuck 50 years in the past.

Anyway... it's just not profitable for us to go into N. Korea. There is a risk of them hurling their artillery, albeit outdated artillery, at S. Korea and disrupting trade in the area, but if we eliminate the threat, there is minimal payoff. I imagine China, though they are not particularly friendly with N. Korea, wouldn't like the Americans getting involved so close to their borders.

12/19/2011 10:21:18 AM

China doesn't want war refugees crossing into their country.

12/19/2011 10:55:33 AM

they will just shoot them, it's ok.

12/19/2011 11:48:42 AM

There are already N. Koreans that live in little "communes" on the Chinese side of the border that the government kind of reluctantly tolerates. I'd say they are more concerned about giving the US any more reasons to conduct military maneuvers so close to Beijing.

12/19/2011 11:51:56 AM

For one, we need to know where the nukes are and destroy all of them at once, or they'll use the last ones against us or our allies. Unfortunately, I don't think we have sufficient intelligence on their location to pull a stunt like that. My guess is that we don't even know how many they have.

Such a stunt would rally the North Koreans around their new leader. I say better to let them squabble and risk implosion instead.

Yeah, most of their equipment is obsolete, but they have sheer numbers. Also, they've so heavily dug into the mountains that it would be a nightmare to try and dig them out.

12/19/2011 3:17:36 PM

^^^^ One of the wikileaks cables mentioned that China was prepared to deal with up to 300,000 refugees coming across from North Korea in the event of collapse and that any more than that would have them using their military to seal the border.

12/19/2011 3:35:56 PM

I say we teach this new 'Emperor' how the big boys play. Send in the delta teams and let the chips fall where they may.

[Edited on December 19, 2011 at 3:49 PM. Reason : ,]

12/19/2011 3:44:51 PM

Quote :

"It's like they are a first world country just stuck 50 years in the past."

It's not like they are.

They are.

12/19/2011 4:50:04 PM

It might be better to just let the very likely leadership struggle take place, and hope for some kind of internal implosion/uprising.

Kim III is NOT guaranteed to just be the next leader. Kim II was held up as successor and built up a small (relatively speaking) personality cult a good while before Kim I kicked the bucket. Kim III was only figured to be successor recently and hes a good way away from having is picture up everywhere.

12/19/2011 7:26:20 PM

We can likely bribe Kim v3.0 with a few buckets of KFC. We're good to go.

12/19/2011 7:55:04 PM

^^^ No, it's like they have a developed (shitty Soviet-model) nation's military stuck 50 years in the past...except that they also don't really have enough money to effectively operate and train.

There is nothing about the country in general that is 1st-world, 50 years antiquated or otherwise.

Quote :

"He said that a lot of their massive artillery stockpile is old stuff from the 1950s and a lot of their air defense is still made up of old flak guns. It's like they are a first world country just stuck 50 years in the past."

Shitty old artillery is still a threat. I mean, are they gonna use state-of-the-art shell trackers against ROK batteries and return accurate and and devastatingly rapid counterbattery fire? Probably not. Would they shell the shit out of Seoul for a while before getting annihilated? Yeah.

Their IADS is similarly antiquated, but incredibly dense, both with SAMs and AAA--probably the most heavily defended airspace in the world, in terms of sheer numbers and density.

They have a million-man army, and I believe that their navy has more vessels than even ours (I don't know about total tonnage, and they have a bunch of shitty little boats and long, long obsolete subs and warships that would be sent to the bottom immediately.

Oh, and they've been digging everything but ships into the mountains ever since the end cease-fire agreement of the Korean War.

Don't get me wrong, we would totally fuck them up in spectacular fashion, but the fact that they are nuclear and the fact that even an opening conventional (or chem) volley into Seoul would kill a bunch of people makes war with them pretty unattractive.

By the way, the ROK military is no slouch on its own.

12/19/2011 9:04:09 PM

Is there a "Big Rice" lobby in Washington that I don't know about? Is this a serious thread?

12/19/2011 10:43:19 PM

Quote :

" U.S. Officials Describe Kim Jong Eun, Elusive Inheritor of the Kim Family's Dictatorship, as Sadistic and Unpredictable"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577107891655666650.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

12/19/2011 11:52:01 PM

^^^ Affirmative. I spent a month at Camp Casey (Dongducheon, RoK), with the 2ID and ROK counterparts winter of 2010.

The RoK would encounter some heavy artillery from the DPRK, but the RoK would totally wipe out their navy.

12/20/2011 12:21:53 AM

Quote :

"Don't get me wrong, we would totally fuck them up in spectacular fashion, but the fact that they are nuclear and the fact that even an opening conventional (or chem) volley into Seoul would kill a bunch of people makes war with them pretty unattractive."

I think that was kind of my point when I said, "There is a risk of them hurling their artillery, albeit outdated artillery, at S. Korea and disrupting trade in the area, but if we eliminate the threat, there is minimal payoff." Could we go in there and kick their ass? Probably. However, just because we probably 'could' do something doesn't mean there is reason to without a decent 'return on investment'. The potential harm N. Korea could do to S. Korea compared to the relatively small payoff we would get doesn't make military action in that region worth it.

I also wonder how the post-war process would go with a country like N. Korea. On the one hand, you don't have the same problem as Afghanistan where the country is left centuries in the past. The populous isn't as fragmented and there is a sense of loyalty to a centralized government. On the other hand, these are people who have been sheltered and brainwashed for years about their country and the west. The psychological warfare on this front would be a huge obstacle.

12/20/2011 11:54:08 AM

Let China take care of it, case closed.

12/20/2011 11:59:41 AM

^^ Interestingly South Korea basically has an assimilation school for defectors where they teach them how money works, hot to order food, etc. It's all very structured and closely observed so that they'll have the mechanisms in place to help integrate all of North Korea should the peninsula ever be reunified.

However, a large portion of the defectors lose their $20k defection payment to pyramid schemes fairly quickly.

12/20/2011 12:47:01 PM

Didn't know that, but it's good to know that contingency plans are in place. I guess my concern is more about the threat of insurgency from a brainwashed populous.

12/20/2011 12:50:20 PM

Lol at anyone who thinks the Kims actually make any of the decisions about running the country or its military

[Edited on December 20, 2011 at 2:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/20/2011 2:31:37 PM

I'm sure there will be some level of insurgency; anytime you topple a government you're always going to have a loser.

That being said, the integration of North Koreans into South Korean society is a really big question mark. On one hand, they are overall a well educated and highly skilled population. North Korea was, until the complete collapse in the mid-1990s, an industrialized nation.

However, those skill sets may not translate well into the modern world. Think of it, you have some of North Korea's smartest students taking the only path available to them: party membership, degrees from Kim Il Sung University and then maybe some post-baccalaureate work in Beijing or Moscow. They may have built up to mid-careers working the communist bureaucracy or a vintage, 1970's Soviet-style hospital. All of a sudden, you throw them into the modern world where there degrees, accreditation and work experience are worthless. Those years working in the hospital? Worthless because medical techniques and equipment have advanced a good three decades. You played by the rules available to you then suddenly, everything you accomplished with great struggle is absolutely worthless. That's not going to make a happy camper.

You also have the problem that North Koreans have essentially been operating in survival mode for the last two decades. Whereas before, they were simply the equivalent of some Eastern Europeans, now many are operating with a poverty mindset, sometimes on the edge of cannibalism and selling your own children into slavery, just to get by. Emerging from that sort of thinking is not easy, and people with that sort of thinking aren't going to be easily integrated into the wider world.

Then, you have the more subtle things. You see this with defectors all the time: they have no clue how to operate in the Western world. ATM's, college admissions, the Internet... these are all completely foreign to them. The defectors educated by the South Koreans struggle enough, not just because of the alienness of it all but the discrimination by South Koreans themselves. What do you think will happen when you have 22 million of them?

I think most scholars realistically believe that the best hope is to have a government in North Korea that would reform the country and ease it into the modern world over the next couple of decades. The problem is, as it becomes easier and easier for people to sneak out, how do you stop a complete mass exodus?

12/20/2011 3:14:02 PM

Quote :

"Those years working in the hospital? Worthless because medical techniques and equipment have advanced a good three decades. You played by the rules available to you then suddenly, everything you accomplished with great struggle is absolutely worthless."

True. I've actually read about one defector who was a successful doctor in NK who came to the South and had to return to medical school in her later 30s and redo her MD.

Quote :

"I think most scholars realistically believe that the best hope is to have a government in North Korea that would reform the country and ease it into the modern world over the next couple of decades. The problem is, as it becomes easier and easier for people to sneak out, how do you stop a complete mass exodus?"

They've got a number of joint industrial parks that exist in the north with north korean labor, but are operated by the south. If a reform goverment took power I'd assume that they'd be even more friendly to foreign factories attracted by the cheap labor there and could gradually raise the standard of living as well as vocational skills of the populace.

12/20/2011 3:24:07 PM

The groundwork to assert KJU's power has already been laid out -- we've been speculating for a while that KJI was spiraling the drain in large part because of the timing of his son's rise to prominence in line with various belligerent actions, like the torpedoing a while back.

Assuming we understand North Korean political dynamics at all, Kim Jong Un's best move is to show he's the boss -- launch some bullshit initiative, maybe shoot a couple of officers that can be more easily accused of treason -- while doing very little to rock the boat. Anything that makes too many waves risks giving power over to one of the other (presumably military) elites in the country and compromising his position.

Of course, even that line of thinking only matters if we further assume that KJU actually knows what's in his best interest. Between limited western education and what has to be a surreal upbringing, that kids psychology must be all kinds of fucked. Most of us are weird enough without growing up a billion times better off than everybody in the country, cut off from most outside contact and possibly believing that our dad is some sort of pseudo-deity.

12/21/2011 12:00:33 AM

Double-post to directly address the OP:

We don't have enough Korean Delta or SEALS to go unnoticed in North Korean and do anything. If we did, it's highly doubtful that we'd be able to give them adequate intelligence to go undetected or accomplish much.

Infiltrating ranks is not something you do in a short period of time, least of all in a massive, authoritarian police state.

Also, just an aside, why would KJI's demise make any of this easier?

The Russians and Chinese would absolutely and actively oppose proactive military action, possibly to the point of defending the NK regime, and Japan would be unlikely to support such action either.

Why would the removal of nuclear weapons production capability make NK less able to feed or pay its soldiers?

Why would tens of millions of starving, desperate, and armed North Korean soldiers be a good thing?

What makes you think that we'd be able to get all the bombs before Tokyo (or some other city) went up, or before they got sold to the highest bidder?

The best-case scenario here involves a nasty war in which at least one of America's allies gets pummeled all to shit, with no guarantee of nuclear disarmament and little chance of successful reintegration of North Korea with the rest of the world. SK talks a big game but doesn't want to have to feed, clothe, house, and otherwise care for the starving masses of North Korea. Neither does anybody else. Some West Germans are still upset about the economic impact of reunification with the East, and East Germany was way better off than North Korea is now.

12/21/2011 12:13:11 AM

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/10/idUS232818209920120210

Quote :

"Twitter, Weibo Spread Rumors of North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un's Assassination Rumors that Kim Jong-un, the country’s supreme leader, has been assassinated just months after he took power originated on Chinese microblogging service Weibo and have now spread all over Twitter. Others are reporting that Jong-un, believed to be 28 years old, may be on the run rather than dead, but both reports claim that some kind of coup is taking place. The rumors remain unsubstantiated. However, the reports are beginning to attract a great deal of attention, especially now that a couple of American news outlets including The Atlantic Wire have reported on them. Weibo is in many ways the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and disseminates news at a rapid pace. People were tipped off that there was something happening that involved Jong-Un, who succeeded his late father Kim Jong-Il, because of the mass of cars parked outside of his resident. One person on Weibo wrote (poor translation), "confirmed reports, the top leaders in # Korea # # jinzhengen was assassinated # . Reportedly occurred at 2:45 on the 10th, gold and three fat was assassinated in their own villa, the Korean Embassy in Beijing has brought together more than 30 cars, the scale of more than Kim Jong-il's death the situation.” Yet many Twitter users are exercising caution, aware that news like this can spread without much to sustain it. A sample of the dubious tweeters: “Kim Jong Un apparently assasinated in Beijing. Source: 'Chinese Twitter'. What does that even mean? One Chinese person's account? or @China?” AdamThompson1 tweeted. “Wait for confirmation on Kim Jong Un death rumors. Twitter is also reporting that ‘Jonas Brothers are the best band,’” Matt Binder wrote. “Rumors from Chinese twitter that Kim Jong Un assassinated this morning in Beijing. pretty unlikely,” Dan Bennett posted."

2/10/2012 1:57:07 PM

The Kims are not in control of the DPRK, the military is and have been for decades and their power is not interrupted by the occasional dynastic transfer of the figurehead leadership position.

2/10/2012 2:03:38 PM

I SAY YOU HE DEAD

2/10/2012 2:25:12 PM

now we will get some cute, cuddly general to deal with!

2/10/2012 2:33:16 PM

well wouldn't that be some shit

2/10/2012 2:51:19 PM

Quote :

"The Kims are not in control of the DPRK, the military is and have been for decades and their power is not interrupted by the occasional dynastic transfer of the figurehead leadership position."

I would caveat this. Kim Il Sung was firmly in control of all levers of power. Kim Jong Il had firm control of the military, but his role was more like a chairman who kept the various factions in line. With Kim Jong Un, I'm pretty sure it's a cabal of the military and a few other key elites running the place.

As for assassination rumors, I highly doubt it, but if there was an assassination, coup or an attempt at either, then we're in for some seriously interesting times. (Chinese are going to be pissed too)

2/10/2012 3:07:08 PM

The Chinese have been weary of the DPRK for a long time, like a rabid dog leashed on their front porch. If KJU is assassinated and a power struggle is immanent, the PLA will probably be marching through Pyongyang before we in the US even know about the assassination.

2/13/2012 11:15:54 AM

I'm pretty sure that's why they're keeping his older brother around and under tight guard. If Kim Jong Un bites it or starts testing Chinese tolerance, then the PRC will probably work a coup and replace him with the older brother.

2/13/2012 11:23:35 AM

KJU had apparently been planning to assassinate his oldest brother before Beijing told him to knock it off.

2/13/2012 2:10:10 PM