^Indeed, no one does know how they would react. But I think it is a safe bet that the South Koreans would have the most chance of success. Now perhaps the North Koreans have an insurgency plan all set up if they are ever kicked out, but then so did the Nazis and look how that turned out. If Machiavelli is right though, the more absolute control the government has the easier the country is to occupy once it has been destroyed because of the lack of loyalties else where (Iraq and Afghanistan had tribal, sectarian and/or religious leaders that allowed resistance to continue). The main challenge though (IMO) would be rebuilding North Korean's economy and standard of living from near nothing to something equal to South Korea's, which considering Germany is only now starting to near that goal after 20 years of reunification could be highly difficult.

Don't be fooled, Goa, North Korea has the fifth largest army in the world with more than a million enlisted personnel. About 20% of men aged 17-54 are in the armed forces. An expeditionary force invading North Korea would have great difficulties, not to mention the cost and length of time, and the fact that a lot of the American expeditionary forces are busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. North Korea knows they will not be attacked, but they also know they have no or little chance of winning a war in South Korea (although the probability of this is higher than before, due to the American problems in the Middle East). That's why I predict that nothing will happen there in the foreseeable future. Americans and North Koreans will talk a lot, there might be minor incidents, but that's it. The Middle East is of a lot greater concern currently to the US, as well as the growing secessionist movement in South America. I can guarantee you that the American intelligence is very busy in South America.

Um, what was the point of this? I have already agreed with you that all of this is just talk. Also the size of North Korea's army is not necessarily the important thing. Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world during the gulf war, and their troops were either annihilated or surrendered in mass. Would North Korea's be the same way I don't know, but it is a possibility.

What?

Iraq use to have the 4th largest Army.  So much for the show.  The difference between NK and Iraq is the Nuclear threat.  The army is just a bunch of guys who are trying not to starve.  They have no discipline or competent training, just full bellies (which the rest of the population lacks).

They do not need missiles to get to South Korea.  A jalopy works just fine - or even a sub sending a party ashore.

I just didn't agree that America could easily take out any country in the world with conventional weapons. North Korea would be a very very tough nut to break.

Yeah, Iraq used to have a large army. But that was before the war with Iran, which was devastating for Iraq.

I agree that the nuclear threat is a consideration. But I doubt anyone expects NK to use their nuclear arsenal during an otherwise conventional engagement. Also, NK army received a great deal of Soviet tactical training during the Cold War.

It is also a question of what China would do if there was an engagement. My guess is they would stay away from overt involvement, but would offer covert support to NK.

Even in the Persian gulf war they had the fourth largest army, with over 500,000 or so deployed in Kuwait and Southern Iraq. Granted North Korea might be able to send twice that into South Korea, but they would be facing at least 600,000 South Koreans and Americans with lots of air and naval support. And if the U.S. actually wanted to attack North Korea, we could send a lot more guys than we have now to do the job. Maybe not as much as we could have without Iraq, but enough I think, provided we don't have to occupy N. Korea.

In most cases I would agree with you.  However, NK sank a SK ship.  That does not indicate any kind of rational thought on their part.

Not invade, just detonate a nuke.  They already sank a ship.  I would not put it past them to try due to their xenophobia.

I wouldn't use the term "xenophobia" when talking about North and South Korea: the two countries are populated by the same ethnic group. Nitpicks aside, I think in the last 60-odd years the North's fallen into a pretty clear pattern of only harassing their neighbors when they think they can get away with it. The ship-sinking is a prefect example: there's just enough doubt as to what actually happened to keep the rest of the world from attempting a direct reprisal, but they still can take credit for it back home. Any direct act of aggression, especially a nuclear strike, would bring about a great deal of hostile action from outside. I think the military over there knows it- why wait until now to attack, when they could have moved while America was bogged down in Veitnam, while the Soviet Union was still an actual force in the world, and while China was still Maoist and stood a chance of helping them again? This level of military and nuclear potential obviously didn't spring into being overnight.

S. Korea and the USA N. Korea should be prepared for the worst if they actually do that.

Fixed...

It's clear that North Korea won't attack South Korea if they are not insane (but are they ?) but can american forces invade North Korea ? Imagine they use a nuke on one of your armoured division on their own soil once you invade. You could lose several thousands of your men on one strike. How would your public opinion react to this ?

Nuke are not just to strike city, if only one or a few are used correctly in a battlefield, they could make the technology and training gap between US forces and the N. Korea arme irrelevant.

Only in NK. When the UN condemns, it means the evidence is irrefutable.  And Xenophobia is the fear of outsiders - strangers.  Not of other races.  You can be living in Buckingham palace and still be xenophobic about englishmen.

North Korea recently sent one of its submarines within torpedo range of an American aircraft carrier. The submarine went undetected and surfaced close to the carrier despite the fact that the US was conducting anti-submarine warfare exercises in that very area. This has served as an enormous wake-up call to the US Navy.

Russia has developed the VA-111 shkval supercavitating rocket torpedo and no nation has any kind defense against this weapon due to its tremendous speed. It is rumored that Iran, China and North Korea had obtained several of these, possibly with nuclear warheads.

My point is the South isn't "strange" enough to the powers in charge of North Korea to be realistically "xeno": the ordinary citizens likely know very little about what goes on outside the borders, but the actual propagandists and military leaders have to have some understanding of the outside world. They obviously don't seriously believe all the "capitalist corruption" stuff they're spouting, or they wouldn't be involved in the UN or diplomatic talks or fake apartment complexes or massive expos of staged prosperity in order to try and convince the rest of the world that everything's fine in there. And as I said, everybody on the outside is almost certain the North blew up that ship, but we haven't gotten direct, immediate, entirely irrefutable proof that they did it, only that they took credit for it. Now, those are almost the same thing, but the spinmasters up there could still potentially make it look like the whole thing was a setup and convince a fair number of people who already distrust the First World power structure- not something you'd want to happen if you were using the ship incident to try and justify a military strike.

Do you have links on this stuff? Especially the torpedoes.  I would love to read up on them.  I would not put it past Russia to build a better bomb since they do not do so well at building the ships.

I give Russians (and Indians) points for the Tulwar. Look it up. Neat boat.

As for the navy, they have several issues. Russia with a better torpedoe? No real surprise. Everyone gets their turn on that one.

Here is the link for the information regarding the Russian rocket torpedo.

I can't find anything regarding a North Korean sub surfacing close to a US carrier, maybe I got it mixed up with China. Heres a link.

If war ever occured between North Korea and the US, it seems likely to me that North Korean conventional forces will initially inflict significant damage on South Korea before being quickly crushed. However, the remains of North Korea's army will probably become a fanatical geurilla force making occupation very difficult.

I think much like the current conflicts the US is in, the military forces would not be the biggest issue with occupation, but the smaller groups that are currently suppressed by the regime. But yes, South Korea will get a bloody nose for sure.

After reading both wikipedia articles about N. Korea army and South Korea army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea_Armed_Forces), i think that South Korea barely needs the help of the US army to beat the crap out of the North korean army. They have the same number of heavy weapons (tanks, aircraft and artillery) but South Korea ones are two generations younger...

And quality matters a lot in modern warfare

Thanks for the links.  That torpedo is awesome (in a deadly way).  What we do not know about weapons is probably a lot more than what we do know.  I wonder how good it is now?  back in the early 90s, I guess remote guided was the way to go as packing enough intelligence into that small of a unit would be difficult.  However as we have seen just recently, it is no longer a pipe dream.  I suspect that thing is a lot more deadly now.

As for the carrier episode, I do remember reading about that.  The problem with these big fancy carriers is that in peace time they can do a lot of good (Indonesian earthquake 4 years ago).  But in war, they appear to be more a liability than an asset - at least if we were to be up against a competent enemy such as Russia or China.

About the Carriers: I read this book a while back called Nimitz, detailing the crew of the USS Jefferson which was docked in the Indian Ocean, I think a short time before the Gulf War, and the Cold War had just ended.  A group of Russian extremists who still refused to beleive the USSR was done had purchased an old Diesel-Powered submarine as well a single nuclear warhead from the former USSR military.  They left port in the Black Sea, and sailed past all NATO defense completely undetected, and eventually they reached their target, the USS Jefferson Battle Group.  They penetrated the defenses of the group, got within a mile of the Carrier, and nuked it.  It was a tragedy.

The book ends with US Subs capturing the Russian Diesel sub, however, not after serious reconsideration of the use of Carrier Tactics, how they are essentially massive floating islands packed with US Citizens, and how truly vulnerable they are.  They decide to change Battle Groups from being Focused around the sheer Power of the Carrier to having the Carrier as a mass support unit, rather like Battleships in the old British Navy; have small ships out in front, distracting the enemy so that the larger ships can rain down fire from a safe distance.

Xer0 \^/