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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1951 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 18, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If the United States gets embroiled in simultaneous hot wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the Taiwan strait, it massively changes the potential success calculus for a North Korean Invasion. Especially now that it’s starting to become apparent that ammunition stocks for Western advanced weapons are not very well supplied. That doesn’t mean that Kim will necessarily go for it, but at the very least it gives him a card to bluff with.

North Korea's dysfunction does extend to its air force, or so I've heard. It's hard to invade a country that has a vastly superior air force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea_Air_Force#Aircraft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Army_Air_Force#Aircraft

Even with the element of surprise, it's hard to imagine that North Korea could neutralize this disadvantage.

South Korea is armed to the teeth though and doesn't depend on US support in a border war the same way a Ukraine does. Even if they were really cut off, we have some 20k soldiers there already plus another 50k in Japan, nearly half of our forces deployed abroad. In a situation where a Taiwan strait crisis was happening Korea and Japan would also already be involved in that war.

South Korea could put up a good fight conventionally. The casualties would be immense because of the extreme volume of artillery pointed at Seoul, but much of NK’s weaponry and missile stock is extremely degraded, missile defense is antiquated and troops are poorly fed and trained. Leadership is extremely concentrated in Pyongyang. There are a lot of reasons to believe it would be a pretty quick war.

If the US pulled out China would be even less likely to intervene in support of Kim, and honestly even now I suspect they’d let SK take out the leadership (in the event of Kim making a move) and then step in to put someone in power in the north, and everyone would tacitly be fine with it because it’s better for China to pay for reconstruction.

South Korea unlike most of the countries in NATO actually has decent artillery capability and the ability to conscript. I suspect North Korean equipment is in better shape than expected. Most of the lines about their starving troops and rusted artillery sound suspiciously similar to the media line about Russia in the first year of the Ukraine war.

IMO the real danger is the Chinese armies in that theatre. They have the training and technology that North Korea lacks and no shortage in numbers. It's unlikely that North Korea would strike without Chinese approval and assistance, though they are wary of Chinese influence.

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