Can S.Korea handle N.Korea alone?

Flying Frog, for the past 10 years or more, every single day has been disaster season for North Korea. Especially with the floods that hit... at least one big one in the late 90's. Can't coin the year but I was there for it. It affected China I remember hearing about 2000 people in China died from it, and 200 people in South Korea died from it. North Korean numbers unknown.
Anyways that REALLY messed them up.
Also, South Korea has no will to INVADE. However if they are invaded, things will change dramatically. The will to fight though is always there. It always has been. If you just talk to your regular run of the line university student, their view will be drastically different than from most people who have come out of the military or are around 30ish.
North Koreans, though their special operations will be fanatically fighting to the death, the rest of their army might just be too happy to be seeing food.

North Korea's ability to capture Seoul is a big if, but yes for the sake of argument, it IS possible. Just it'll take some time, a stack load of casualties and God knows if what's left of the NK Army at that point can handle a South Korean counter attack.

North Korea's Nukes.... there are many kinds of nukes. Somehow I doubt their ability to create something massive... probably more like a few tactical nukes. Now these will be a ***** to handle, but it's still not going to wipe out an entire army and there will be close to a million reserves still coming along the way. You can forget about arguing about South Korea's "weak will" once this happens and you can expect massive intervention and the whole world will come crashing down on North Korea.
 
south korea should be able to take care of most parts of north korea's troops...south has the superior quality of weapons in nearly every area...and also well-trained...

but north has nukes....and it may be their last dice to throw if south beat them badly
 
well, unless the north have good commanders and field strategists, then they could outsmart the south and win not by logistics or weaponery, but stratgy

its possible... :(
 
Of course, the South Korean officers, who on average better educated and are purely voluntary (as in being an officer won't make you ahead of the rice rationing pecking order) would just sit around and do nothing right?
Basically if you ask anyone who's knowledgable in this field, they'll tell you, the time where North Korea could go to war against South Korea and actually have a decent shot at winning passed a long time ago. This opinion is not just mine, it's the only answer I've heard from experts of this field.
For some reason only the Communist faithful (from all over the world) seem to put any faith in North Korea winning.
 
south korea is capable to defend against north korea, i am not saying 100% certain since not everything is 100% certain, but the chances are very high.
south korean army is full of officers, their male population have basic military training and are well educated (i heard 90% of them have uni degrees, correct me if i am wrong), nearly all of them are capable of being an officer, when war breaks out, the army could expand rapidly and with well educated officers leading them using american weapons. it is not likely to lose. the south korean can take over the skies at the very early stage of the war. and the north korean navy would be destroyed by the south since there isnt anything decent the north koreans have in the navy. the south could then bombard their infratructure near the coasts.

south korea is an advance country and have a decent infrastructure, in war time the south korean could produce decent weapons thant he north koreans could not. as the south control the skies to bomb the north's infrastructure, there is nothing the north koreans could use except nukes.

the only possible outcome of winning by NK is using nukes, to force the south to withdraw or stalmate.
 
if there is really a war, i think south will suffer more in actual losses (including economy)

look at north korea, the whole nation's GDP is like 15 billion U.S someting, that is no more than a big sout korean coperation....how much r north korean gonna lose during a war....

however, in south, a war will cost much much more
 
We should hope North Korea never goes to war, should it occur, it's defeat on the field is assured, and thus it will self-destruct. It will take much of asia and all of western civilization with it.
 
Truth is, war in Korea is bad for South Korea no matter what the outcome. First of all, even though I'm pretty sure (but again of course, surprises DO happen) that South Korea will defeat the North Koreans. However, it will be at great cost.
This will not be a low casualty conflict. If the enemy uses Nukes, it is true, this can end as a stalemate if it is enough to destroy South Korea's counter attacking capability. I say counter attacking because the scenario of South Korea rushing up to take North Korea first is so remote, it hardly needs to be considered.
However, the North will gamble big time on this. If their strike fails, or if it doesn't result in theire desired outcome, the North Koreans can expect a speedy trial to the firing squad when the conflict is done with to South Korea's favor. Remember that having a nuke is one thing, being able to use it is another. If the scud or jet carrying it goes down, that's it.

Even in victory it will be really poor for South Korea. Because of pressure from within, unification will almost certainly take place. South Korea's going to have to rebuild its own country AND North Korea. Rebuilding North Korea is a gargantuine task and this will set back the South Korean economy by God knows how much.
 
yup, just like when east germany and west germany united, it was messy as millions emmigrated

such situations could be solved, depending on time
 
Yup, the economy, the immigration. The sh1t is going to hit the fan big time. This is why I am strongly against quick unification. It will destroy South Korea. They say in the long run it'll be better. We don't live in a post cold war Germany. We don't have that sort of time.
And I can't stand it but some people think it's going to work just because we're all Korean. I don't need to tell you how retarded that sort of thinking is.
 
yes, but the way ur stating it is also wrong, ur provoking fear and conflicts for unification, north koreans are the same as south koreans, ur all koreans, but just diff governments and different idology

dont bring about hate to ur northern neighbor, you should learn from history that unification cannot happen if both sides wont disgriminate aginist each other, i have read some of ur posts redneck13, and its pretty aginist the north kroeans, its not helping btw
 
Read my post again.
Fear or mistrust of the neighbor has nothing to do with my reaasoning for the unification. In fact, I left out the entire culture class that will ensue when North Koreans and South Koreans interact again en masse.
The simple point is, South Korea's economy cannot fund the rebuilding of South Korea and North Korea. It simply can't do that. In the event of peaceful unification, even funding just North Korea will be an incredible challenge and we will be hurt and we will be hurt VERY bad.
That's the part I'm talking about.
Mistrust, trust? Nothing to do with it.

As for North Koreans being the same as South Koreans. This is a very dangerous myth. This is not the case. In fact, because of pop culture exchanges between South Korea and Japan, if the language barrier is broken (i.e. the Korean speaks Japanese or the Japanese speaks Korean or both Speak English), the South Korea and Japan actually have more to relate to than with the North Koreans. Shocking but true. Don't believe me? I talked to an expert on this matter... I can't remember her name but she even released a book about Korea and Japan. Anyways she went to a meeting in Hawaii between North Korean, South Korean and Japanese scholars. It lasted about a week. The first three days the South Koreans tried to get along with the North Koreans. But byt he 3rd day they had simply run out of things to say. The South Korean scholars just ended up talking to the Japanese. Why? Because they had far more in common than they had iwth the North Koreans.

I put pride, nationalism etc. issues aside as this is purely the way it is. People fail to accept it because of the 35 year colonization of Korea by Japan. But it's simply the truth.
 
i dont think using pop culture to define a group of ppl is proper.....
as pop culture changes all the time...



now most of ppl agree that if North Korea attacks South, South should be able to take care of northern soldiers..

how about South attack North, Can south korean army successfully overthrown the Kim familiy's army in north?
 
Sexybeast said:
i dont think using pop culture to define a group of ppl is proper.....
as pop culture changes all the time...



now most of ppl agree that if North Korea attacks South, South should be able to take care of northern soldiers..

how about South attack North, Can south korean army successfully overthrown the Kim familiy's army in north?

I think the problem with South Korea going North first is that this sort of move would have very little backing in South Korea alone. For the party in power, it's also political suicide. Another problem, we're under the command of the UN, but of course under American command in terms of military organization, so it means we'll be going against a UN directive in order to do this. But if it was popular, could it be possible? Sure.
 
i ve heard rumors taht North koreans got lots of bunkers and underground tunnels...some left by PLA in 1950 korean war...some north koreans digged by themselves in later years....

are those tunnels practical? are they useful to fight against the army of south korea, which has state-of-art equipments and training
 
if uve got powerful heat seeking devices then the tunnels and earthworks are useless

yes, the japanese have colonized korea for years, but to bring out such differences that even excluded your northern neighbor, than thats just strange

i dont see how you, a native of the korean pensula, could ever not object to a country that had colonzied and brutalized ur people

im not aginist japanese here, just findinig it strange for redneck 13 to praise the japanese pop culture which had so-called provoked major difference between north and south koreans. :?:
 
Guys you're kinda wrong.

The tunnels that cause the most problems nowadays are purely North Korean. The Chinese may have toyed with this concept and used it to some degree but the major ones are North Korean projects from after the war.
The Chinese were not really notorious tunnel diggers. That credit goes mostly to the Vietnamese, followed by the North Koreans. The North Koreans built the bigger and badder ones that actually are practical in conventional warfare. The Vietnamese variety was purely a guerilla inspired weapon.

For those who don't have experience with remote sensing I'll tell you this, it is very hard to detect things that are hidden under ground. For obvious reasons of course. The best way people detect bunkers etc. is by observing activity that takes place making those facilities. It's VERY hard to pick up things like tunnels. I think there are ways by exploding something and seeing how the vibrations coming back up read on instruments. But that's not my area of expertise.

Other times there have been flukes. I believe one North Korean tunnel that crosssed into North Korea had some "smoke" coming out of a hole. A South Korean squad chanced upon it and a firefight broke out. Can't find anything on the incident so you'll just have to take my word on that one.

I have never praised Japanese pop culture. I said that Japanese pop culture and Korean pop culture have intermingled for so long, and at such a huge scale that the actual cultural similiarities between South Koreans and Japanese is now undeniable... it is simply not a big topic because it's so controversial because of the past.
 
The little experience that I have on the Chinese Army is that they are very adept at tunneling.

It is something that has to be seen to be believed. It is like an underground warren.
 
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