This is North Korea we're talking about. Nothing will actually happen. If anything did happen, there wouldn't be a North Korea for very long.
Small, vastly outmatched countries with idiot leadership have been picking fights they cannot possibly win for millennia. It just takes the right circumstance and a guy in charge who is the right kind of crazy and has just the right mix of unchecked political control. The situation in Korea has been dry wood and kindling waiting for a spark for quite some time now. Make no mistake about it, things over there could get real bad real fast with very little additional provocation.
This is very true. Let's not forget that World War I began when a Serbian rebel shot an Austrian noble. One country declared war forcing others to declare war in return due to alliances and treaties. Long story short, 37 million people, soldiers and civilians died as a result of the four year conflict. While there is little doubt that if North Korean invaded the South or if they launched a preemptive nuclear strike against anywhere outside their borders they would lose and be destroyed in the end, however the danger lies in what surrounds their insanity. Let's say they have a small dirty bomb and they drop it on Seoul, South Korea. South Korea has no nukes of their own, so does the United States have to nuke Pyongyang? Would that be enough or would the US have to hit every area that could potentially launch another missile? How does China and Russia respond to the use of nuclear weapons by a "superpower" so close to their borders? Let's say that clearer heads prevail on the American side and they opt for a full scale conventional invasion. The North Koreans certainly have a large army but their equipment and personal are questionable. The UN Allies pushed them back to the Chinese border 60+ years ago prompting China to enter the Korean Conflict. No country wants a potential enemy right on their border. Germany and France got into a couple of scuffles last century and despite being separated by a channel, the English and French have had their fair share of disagreements over the years. Even the US invaded both Canada and Mexico during the 19th century. The Soviets created the Warsaw pact to act as a barrier between themselves and the decadent West. China does care if a military power like the US (or a direct US ally) is on their border. They may be forced to intercede again as they did in 1950. This is the danger of the domino effect. Things quickly spiral out of hand and we're left living Fallout 3.
Nothing will happen. Anyone remember the island they shot at last year? How about the boat they sank the year (maybe two) before that? The rocket test that may or may not have happened? An endless stream of posturing from a pathetic regime desperate for attention. Yet clearly intelligent enough to not do anything to jeopardize the stranglehold they have on their populace. As long as the generals and their families can continue to live the high life on the backs of millions of impoverished farmers under the thrall of their figurehead god/ruler the Kims, they'll keep things just the way they are.
This is certainly more than their usual posturing. I would say it's still a distance from all-out war starting again, but there is decent reason to be concerned that they may escalate further into taking some physical action. For example, shooting at a South Korean island. Most-likely, you will see more direct provocations like that before they will jump toward anything further, because they are aware of the fact that another war would not be like the original Korean War. They would have most of the world against them, including China and Russia. China isn't the ally it once was, and it will act to keep the peace and maintain the status quo. If North Korea goes any further, look to see China biting at the regime a bit, as they neither want North Korea to fall or North Korea to go too far in its actions and force China to side with deposing the regime.
The lines of communication have been cut off before, and all we can hope is that the North Korean regime still cares enough about its existence to calm down a bit and reopen talks.
... there is decent reason to be concerned that they may escalate further into taking some physical action. For example, shooting at a South Korean island.
This crap has been going on since the 1950s. Not all of it makes headlines across the globe. I live in South Korea. No one here is any more concerned now than they were before they "canceled" the armistice. All this saber-rattling is just a big face-saving (read: dick waving) exercise in futility.
I've been on the DMZ tour. When the South Koreans built their big on-site office building taller than the North Korean one, the North Koreans built a new floor to make theirs taller. When the South Koreans made a big-ass flagpole, the North Koreans made one that was taller, in the middle of an entire empty village built solely for appearance. One of the fondest stories told by the tour guide was about how some North Korean soldiers sneaked into the little meeting building that straddles the border one night and cut a few centimeters off the legs of the South Korean diplomat's chairs so they'd be shorter than the North Koreans. I can't stress how incredibly ludicrous all this posturing is enough.
The sad thing is, underneath all this bullshit are starving farmers who've reaped the countryside clean of trees (the clearest demarcation of the North/South border) to fuel their fires in support of an incredibly corrupt regime solely intent on keeping itself in power through propaganda. This latest incident is just more fuel for their propaganda fire.
@sinusoidal: Indeed. I was actually referencing that incident you linked to. We're likely to see something like that again sooner than any kind of larger military action.
Though, while we may just consider it more of the same, it's important to consider history, and in conflicts like this, especially with an unstable regime on one side, sometimes things can unexpectedly tip. For a stalemate is unlikely to remain forever, and the North Korean regime is likely to take extreme, unpredictable measures before allowing themselves to simply implode as they eventually will on their current course. This doesn't mean that day is today or any time soon, but it's a reasonable concern which escalations like this do not dissuade.
North Korea is a lot of smoke and mirrors. The real problems arise if they start to believe in their own BS of global domination. A lot of people, read: Koreans, will get hurt then.
They'd manage kill a few thousand South Korean citizens before the US swooped in and flattened them, again.
Yeah right, because that´s how the Korean War went for the US. All smooth sailing. They just swooped down from the sky and rescued the South.
Read up on some history, dude. That war was fucking brutal- especially on the population. Nobody in their right mind would want this shit to repeat.
Yeah that was really brutal and a lot of people forget that we fought in Korea. It's like the forgotten war between WWII and Vietnam.
But don't forget that having to also fight China with Russian support is what made the war even more brutal. If North Korea were to attack, I don't believe China would aid in their offensive or come to their defense unless they found reason to intervene. They seem to want to avoid any type of conflict right now just by looking at their urging of North Korea to stop what they are doing.
@mrpandaman: @superfriend: Dont worry, fully aware of how fucked the Korean War was, also no doubt that the toll on both sides would be horrific.
But the technological disparity between North Korea and the US is massive, it wont be trench to trench big line on the map moving fighting like the first war was, unless China or someone else really goes whole hog to help them out like they did last time.
But North Koreas tanks, heavy weaponry, manufacturing hubs etc. could get taken out in a very short space of time with the US's air power, so they'd lose their ability to fight anything other than an ugly drawn out guerrilla war, which would peter out once North Korean people realise that having food on the table and a samsung galaxy is a pretty sweet deal.
Sounds like another temper tantrum from the children of North Korea.
Not saying one way or another if they are for real, you never know with children what they'll do. That's what makes NK still so terrifying. They could never win and I don't think even China would get behind them in a conflict at this point as even China has more to lose if something like that happened. They're just being stupid.
North Korea is kind of dumb and barbaric when they do stuff like this. I would guess some ones trying to make a name for themself. I guess he wants to make sure hes on the list of worst people to ever live (whats his face, the kid to the other whats his face that was ruler of NK). Starting a dumb war that kills most all your people for no reason is a good way to do that.
The number of times North Korea has cut their hotline with South Korea and called off the Armistice within the last 50 years is in the double digits. This is actually not a big deal, at all, in terms of the chance of another war on the peninsula.
I find it funny a country with less military power than fucking Thailand is threatening the U.S. and South Korea.
Nuclear capabilities, no matter how limited in effective range, is always a rather frightening thing. They don't need to hit California to be considered threatening, they can already hit South Korea or Japan.
I find it funny a country with less military power than fucking Thailand is threatening the U.S. and South Korea.
Nuclear capabilities, no matter how limited in effective range, is always a rather frightening thing. They don't need to hit California to be considered threatening, they can already hit South Korea or Japan.
Yeah, that's the thing. I'm more worried about them nuking South Korea then us. Honestly that's the sort of terrible outcome I see coming from all this if they don't chill.
I find it funny a country with less military power than fucking Thailand is threatening the U.S. and South Korea.
Nuclear capabilities, no matter how limited in effective range, is always a rather frightening thing. They don't need to hit California to be considered threatening, they can already hit South Korea or Japan.
Yeah, that's the thing. I'm more worried about them nuking South Korea then us. Honestly that's the sort of terrible outcome I see coming from all this if they don't chill.
Never gonna happen. Like I said two posts above, people are freaking out, but North Korea has threatened to break the armistice many, many times before. It's also worth noting that it's not the North Korean government that declared it null and void, but rather a state run newspaper, so they are obviously giving themselves room to take backsies.
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