North Korea

There won't be any military action taken against NK any time soon save perhaps shooting down any missiles they test fire.
 
Rilot said:
Yes I do, but that doesn't mean his mind hasn't been corrupted by having thousands of yes-men around him all the time agreeing with everything he says. It doesn't take long when you live in a hall of mirrors.
There was a very good psychological analysis of losing US presidential candidates (that I can't seem to find now) which detailed how they are nearly always utterly shocked when they lose, even if the polls have been against them all the way though. It's because they have a constant stream of people saying "Yes, you WILL win" around them at all times.
Click to expand...

There is however a bit of a difference between yes men convincing a well travelled well educated man that he will win an election he's campaigning to win, and yes men convincing a well travelled well educated man that he can defeat the military of the USA using chicken farmers and planes that are older than he is.

:p
 
Rroff said:
With NK on the defensive it would likely last quite a long time (it is estimated their reserve stockpiles of fuel and ammo would last 4-6 months of war and are mostly buried too deep to easily destroy) and have quite a high body count for the US. NK has spent around 50 years digging in and from all accounts brainwashing their population to that end - with terrain that favours defensive and guerilla warfare more than most parts of the planet.
Click to expand...

NK produces 150 barrels of oil a day and has zero reserves, they'd be lucky to sustain a war for 1 week. By comparison the USA produces 9.7 million barrels and has 20 billion in reserve.
 
Roar87 said:
NK produces 150 barrels of oil a day and has zero reserves, they'd be lucky to sustain a war for 1 week. By comparison the USA produces 9.7 million barrels and has 20 billion in reserve.
Click to expand...

I think you are mixing up different types of reserves.

US has 700+m barrels in crude inventory as well as 10s of billion in reserves. NK I believe is currently producing ~70 barrels a day (but refining around 10-20,000 which must come from somewhere) with suspected 4 million in inventory and unknown reserves. They also smuggle significant quantities of low quality crude from Russia (some of which is refined and sold to China) and get some fuel in exchange for coal from China despite sanctions - most of which goes into defence inventory.
 
Last edited:
So when will NK start becoming less of a joke and more of a serious threat to world security.
Will it be when there nuke is about to destroy half of SK or sooner?

Seems the world is content on do nothing in fear of the massive humanitarian issue that will need solving, but surely its gonna be a hell of a lot worse if a nuke does occur.
 
iamtheoneneo said:
So when will NK start becoming less of a joke and more of a serious threat to world security.
Will it be when there nuke is about to destroy half of SK or sooner?

Seems the world is content on do nothing in fear of the massive humanitarian issue that will need solving, but surely its gonna be a hell of a lot worse if a nuke does occur.
Click to expand...


Ridiculous, NK want to unify Korea not destroy SK for the sake of it. They will continue to be a joke when compared to western powers until they have the economic/military/political weight that can effect us. Until then, we are simply out of reach. Jong-Un is not the world dominating mad-man that the media love to portray. Yeah his regime is terrible but he is only a threat to SK and his nuke research is just the equivalent of political military smack talk.

What are you suggesting we do to help their people?

At the moment, having anyone other than SK get directly involved would trigger a conflict between external powers that no one wants or needs and the battleground for that will be Korea. Seol will be a smoking city within days thanks to NK artillery and the people of NK will be starved to death within months of shifting a large portion of their workforce to military roles to combat the SK military. NK will face destruction from air and water, while NK soldiers push back via land. The US will be involved due to their military arrangement with SK and China will lend air navel support in turn to prevent a US run country from being born from the ashes of Korea.

We wait 10-20 years for China's relationship with the US to sweeten and for the US-SK military agreement to end and then we are left with a slowly withering NK on their own vs a modernised and armed SK that has a wealth which stretches beyond international relationships and money.

Intervening does not always produce the best results. It certainly wont in this case.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
Though Seoul will likely fall to ruin in the beginning of the conflict,
Click to expand...

People say this all the time, but I don't think it be that bad. The whole area is covered by defences that can shoot down incoming projectiles. C-RAM and Counter-RAM systems that range between missiles like the Patriot system to the Phalanx CIWS. The Americans are also ordering more THAAD systems too. Then there is the Aegis equipped destroyers.

A lot of these systems was used in Iraq and Afghanistan to great effect.



After the first few minutes, the enemy artillery positions would be targeted and destroyed by counter-battery fire or from the air.

It's just a question how much will get through? The Iron Dome system that Israel has a 80% hit rate I believe.

But that's just one system I believe while Seoul and South Korea is defended by three layers of defences, Patriot, THAAD and finally CIWS.

Then there is the whole laser weapons that the US are testing, they believe it should be ready by 2023.
 
China doesn't want a unified Korea because it wants a communist buffer between SK and themselves.

The US doesn't want a unified Korea because they would have less military influence and presence in the area.

SK doesn't want a unified Korea because they can't economically afford to help the whole of NK in the short to medium term.

Other countries such as Japan don't want a unified Korea because of the long term economic competition they would provide in the region.
 
IronWarrior said:
People say this all the time, but I don't think it be that bad.
Click to expand...

On paper NK has the ability to completely saturate defensive anti-missile/projectile systems - IIRC from another thread on here though despite the on paper stats a lot of NK's artillery is extremely dated and simply doesn't have the range to hit anything other than the very outer edge of Seoul? and yeah counter battery fire would be very effective and is probably already largely sighted in, etc.
 
Those defence systems are good and work well but the numbers involved would be different. The iron dome system intercepted projectiles over a period of time but NK have enough artillery and missiles to launch an overwhelming amount. They are reported to have 8600 artillery guns and 4800 multiple rocket launchers, with most of artillery weapons pointed towards SK and a good portion on Seol. Not enough to level the city but enough to turn much of the suburbs to ruin

I dont know how effective these anti projectile systems are against a large number of projectiles fired at once.

Let these systems age further and the detonation rate on these things will continue to drop. No need to start a war that not even NK want.
 
They dont want to destroy SK though, they want to unify it with the north. If they cant have that, they wouldnt risk destroying what they cant have only to be shunned by China and destroyed by America.

With NK gone, the US excuse of holding military might in SK dissappears
 
a lot of people think that NK people have no idea of life in the west and it is partly true however there have been people crossing over the border for years and NK people watch DVD's (which is a massive market according to the documantary I saw) of SK tv and so on - so there are a lot of people that have a good idea but the risk of trying to leave is high and the penalty extends to all immediate family including grandparents, obviously most people won't take the chance. What surprised me was the number of people that have smart phones and internet connection, I guess its closely monitored and sanatised but in the documentary I watched they suggested that there was a great deal of information available, although the phones can only be used in pyongyang where there is a network and only the elite live there which implies there living standards are quite high and wouldn't have the same drive to learn the truth when the lies are serving them well.
 
Last edited:
Did we ever get a proper explanation for the VX assassination yet?
They pondered initially if each girl had a different compound, and the mixing caused VX creation, thus the girls survived.
This was discounted as the mixing would be unlikely to occur correctly.

So they then thought they must have been wearing specific gloves, but as yet I haven't heard anything definitive.
 
Let's be brutally honest here:


If JongUn pressed the big red button he'd be turning up to a gun fight with a butter knife and he knows it. All his bravado is nothing more than propaganda for his own people to keep them convinced that they're living in the most powerful and righteous nation on earth. The people of North Korea can't be kept stupid forever and I suspect that over the last decade with the internet boom they're starting to gradually question him, so his propaganda tactics are becoming more desperate.
 
scotty365 said:
a lot of people think that NK people have no idea of life in the west and it is partly true however there have been people crossing over the border for years and NK people watch DVD's (which is a massive market according to the documantary I saw) of SK tv and so on - so there are a lot of people that have a good idea but the risk of trying to leave is high and the penalty extends to all immediate family including grandparents, obviously most people won't take the chance. What surprised me was the number of people that have smart phones and internet connection, I guess its closely monitored and sanatised but in the documentary I watched they suggested that there was a great deal of information available, although the phones can only be used in pyongyang where there is a network and only the elite live there which implies there living standards are quite high and wouldn't have the same drive to learn the truth when the lies are serving them well.
Click to expand...

I find it varies. The people I work with in North Korea (i was there last week) have varying levels of information. They knew that China had banned tour groups travelling to South Korea, and also that China was planning to stop buying their coal but none of them knew that Kim Jong-nam even existed, let alone had been killed until I mentioned it. It did surprise me as some of the people I work with are senior enough to be allowed to leave the country on business.

Yeah smartphones are everywhere in PY, but they only have intranet access although there is a lot of content on it, I've only had limited chance to play around on it. Foreigners can get uncensored internet access on their phones though, I'm planning to buy this for the first time in a couple of weeks.
 
Diddums said:
If JongUn pressed the big red button he'd be turning up to a gun fight with a butter knife and he knows it.
Click to expand...
He knows it, we know it. The only people who don't know it have bought into the western medias fear mongering for the sake of article views and newspaper sales.

How many people on this thread alone have thought of him as an insane egomaniac itching to dominate the world. Fact is, his ambitions are not that big, he is not that deluded and his greatest weapons are ever ageing soviet era conventional weapons. Yeah he may have nukes but if you cant get them anywhere, they might as well be giant rubber ducks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom