[Old Teufel Hunden]

"It would be a short but exciting life for the NORK military should they decide to take us on."

You are correct. No matter how many people under arms the NORKs boast they have it is all meaningless. With us and South Korea's superior technology, plus the South Koreans have quite a large military force as well, the NORKs could not win a conventional war against us.

The problem is not one of military might, but one of geography. The capital Seoul is approximately 35 miles from the DMZ, within the limits of conventional artillery. It was devastated during the Korean War. The last time I was in Seoul was the 90s and at that time it was a city of 10 million people, I imagine it is more now. Can you imagine the loss of life that could possibly happen with the NORKS launching even conventional arms against South Korea?

[Mariner]

For artillery to be effective against Seoul they have to bunch it up at the DMZ. And most of that would still be out of range. Only the MRLS has the range to damage Seoul in a significant way.

Additionally, with immediate air supremacy, the US could drop thousands of cluster bombs from B-52s and B-1Bs in short order.

Artillery and rockets and armor are no match for the CBU-100 family of weapons. No match whatsoever.

Completely neutralized in a few hours.

[Fai Mao]

“The last time I was in Seoul was the 90s and at that time it was a city of 10 million people, I imagine it is more now.”

The metropolitan Seoul area is just under 26 million people. If the NORKS started shelling the area they’d potentially kill millions before they could be stopped even if stopping them only took 20 or 30 minutes.

Imagine if they used chemical weapons. The Norks have at least 10,000 artillery tubes trained on Seoul not to mention (I think) short ranged Scud type missiles.

The Norks can’t really win a major war but they could kill a lot of people.