North Korea is a giant fortress of underground tunnels, cave complexes and military hideouts. We could target his Taepo dong ICBMs easily enough, but he still would have any number of Nodongs and SCUD vairants that he could use against the locals. Taking out all delivery systems would require a massive highly sophisticated air campaign that would look exactly like the start of an invasion.
I know we would be taking a chance on starting an all out war but I don't know if North Korea really wants that.
North Korea doesn't want a war, but they want to lose power even less. If we push them to the brink of losing power, they'll make sure that everyone pays for it.
If we destroyed there nukes and they attacked South Korea it would be eventual suicide for them. If they didn't retaliate then they could probably keep their power. What do you guys think their reaction would be to a massive air assault that destroyed their Nukes and capability to make new ones?
You're talking about a huge gamble here, potentially with the lives of millions of people. A massive air campaign against North Korea may trigger an immediate artillery and ballistic missile / WMD response against South Korea, Japan and possibly China, depending on the circumstances.
You can imagine how the world will react to that.
Pinpoint strikes with a few planes against a few targets would require solid gold intelligence. If we hit, we hit, if we don't, they MAY choose to play the incident down, but given our obvious targets, they may feel that it's use it or lose it time. It's unlikely they'd just sit still for us, or they'd be encouraging more of the same.
Now, a decapitation strike against Kim Jong Il runs the same risks. If we miss him, we're screwed. He'll assume that his time has come, and we'll just keep coming for him until he's dead.
If we hit him, there's a decent chance, maybe one in four, that North Korea will fall over dead. The remaining elites could grab the mike, and tell the world that they never liked Kim anyway, and for immunity and immediate sanctuary they'd be willing to surrender. North Korea is a nation of survivors, and I'm sure that their elites have given thought to any number of 'what ifs' like this. Formal capitulation is a possibility.
What is most likely is that North Korea would emit a loud creaking noise, and implode. Once word spread that Kim's balcony at the military parade blew up in a bright ball of shock and awe, and that no one knew what to do, the entire place would fall apart. Kim's loyalist fanatics may launch WMD anyway, and there may be sporadic conventional attacks, but anything more coordinated than that would fail to materialize.
There's a smaller chance, maybe one in four, that it would trigger a full scale invasion. The elites would assume that they had no way out, and for any number of desperate reasons, send the troops south.
Anyway, as bad as these options sound, I fear that history may prove that they would have been the smart way to go.