Curious Case of South Korea: Part 2
Eying Each Other Warily Across The Korean DMZ
We understand why South Koreans lament their past. But, the threat matrix their country faces should force their full attention on the present.
Let’s start over the border, just 50 kilometers from Seoul, with North Korea.
The Kims invaded South Korea once before — and almost conquered it. So, the danger is not hypothetical. Had the United States not intervened, instead of being one of the most prosperous democracies in the world, South Korea would be a North Korean province, and part of the one of the poorest and most repressed countries in the world.
Of course, that invasion was 70 years ago. There’s a status quo in Korean relations that lulls the mind. So this is important to consider: all things being equal, if he thought he could successfully invade and conquer South Korea, would Kim Jung-un?
Of course:
It would achieve his grandfather Kim Il-sung’s vision a Korean peninsula reunified under communism.
Dictatorships survive on the basis of distributing fruits to enough key people to keep the regime alive. Even a decimated South Korea gives Kim more fruits to distribute to his backers. And himself. (Principally, why did Saddam Hussein gamble on invading Kuwait in 1990? More oil revenue means more fruits.)
North Korea is technologically backward. South Korea is a technologically very advanced. Kim gets whatever is not ruined.
It removes the threat of an invasion of his country from the lands to the south. Any invading force would have to come across the sea from Japan. That’s a massive North Korean national security imperative
Let’s say the U.S. abandoned its conventional commitment to defend South Korea. South Korea is not the fragile, occupied, proto-state it was when Kim Il-sung tried to conquer it.
The quickest assessment is that while North Korea has a 2:1 active duty manpower advantage, South Korea’s technological advantage would make a North Korean invasion unlikely to succeed. South Korea’s tanks, planes and artillery are all modern. North Korea’s tanks were state of the art — in the 1960’s. It’s helicopters aren’t much better.
North Korea can deliver a hard punch. North Korea has lots of artillery that could level Seoul. The North Korean strategic forces have an estimated 900 short-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles that can reach anywhere on the Korean Peninsula. Many of those missiles are mobile-launched, move fast, fly very low and they are maneuverable. They’re a nightmare for missile defense.
But, even without U.S. help, South Korea would repel a North Korean invasion, and might if things went reasonably well drive into the North and end the Kim regime. Of course, South Korea has a defense alliance with the U.S. — making Kim’s chances at success on his own near zero.
Why South Korea doesn’t take out the Kim regime?
The North’s prospects in a conventional defensive war where its troops would not leave their heavily fortified positions are significantly better. Success is unlikely, even with American help. South Korean troop losses would be massive, and all of South Korea’s cities would be devastated by North Korean rockets and artillery. The textbook definition of a Pyrrhic victory. It’s why any war on the Korean peninsula would be very bad for South Korea.
And North Korea has allies who would likely come to its defense. More on them upcoming.
But the real reason the Kims have WMD in addition to being a useful bargaining chip, and despite the accompanying sanctions that further cripple their economy, is they don’t think their military is that mighty. Their pursuit of WMD is probably the best indicator of the Kims’ assessment of their military’s capabilities.
The biggest danger North Korea poses comes from those nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The Kims have demonstrated their missiles could carry them throughout South Korea and Japan.
The obvious reason North Korea would not use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is it would invite full WMD retaliation from the United States, and the North would be reduced to ash.
For South Korea this is the catch: it’s WMD response depends on Washington. South Korea upgraded plutonium to near weapons grade in the 1970s, and could fairly quickly develop a deliverable weapon. But for now, it is not a nuclear country.
Suffice to say, without outside help, Kim won’t be storming south. Though, it’s imperative to note again, that isn’t to say he wouldn’t if he didn’t think he could succeed, which is why it’s imperative the South never be weaker than the North.
It’s also why there not appear to be a gap between the U.S, and South Korea. Left-wing politicians in South Korea do not always seem to grasp that.
President Moon Jae-in Moon came to office committed to achieving a breakthrough in inter-Korean relations, and was convinced that Kim would be willing to accommodate him. Moon was Chief of Staff to President Roh Moo-hyun, who brought US-South Korean relations to their lowest point. And who pursued rapprochement with North Korea — right up until Kim Jong-il ended the moratorium on North Korea testing missiles by firing seven into the Sea of Japan.
An enduring peace on the Korean peninsula would have huge benefits for Seoul. Every dollar South Korea doesn’t spend on its military is a dollar it could spend building its society (though the threat of rising China means there wouldn’t be a huge peace dividend). It would remove the psychological threat of needing to be ready all the time, and the physical threat to South Korea’s cities.
Let’s say North Korea could be flipped out of the China camp, and economically transformed with a growing economy integrated with South Korea. Strategically, that would be a disaster for China.
If North Korea remained militarily neutral, it would still act as a formidable buffer zone protecting South Korea and Japan. If it were to reposture against China, and have a mutual self-defense treaty with South Korea, that would be the ultimate catastrophe for Beijing. Beijing would probably try to use whatever influence it has to remove the Kims — though it’s doubtful they have enough.
It’s the kind of jujitsu Nixon pulled on the Soviets with his China policy in the 1970’s. President Trump seems to believe this, too. Which is why he had engaged with Kim Jong-un.
Here’s the problem with magical thinking: where are the tangible signs Kim Jong-un wants to change how he runs his show? That he wants to do what it would take to release his regime’s grip even slightly to make the standard of living better?
What is Kim’s peace dividend?
More foreign investment? To attract it in any significant way beyond a handful of factories near the DMZ that would take rule of law. Kim has less than zero interest in that.
A smaller armed forces? That keeps the regime in power. China has a booming economy. And a huge military that acts as much as a domestic police force as an army.
More leverage with China and Russia? In fact, Kim gets more leverage reminding Beijing and Moscow that if his regime falls, the U.S. would have tanks on the Yalu.
Would he have to give-up WMD? That guarantees no country, and this is often forgotten - including Beijing - will try to remove him.
Remember Milton: It’s better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
I say the best assessment of the North Korean regime is this: they have mismanaged and brutalized average people for so long that they know that given the chance, the people drag them into the streets at the first chance and bullet them. Thus, anything that risks that level of control is not worth whatever other improvements it might bring.
Extra rations for you
It’s fine to see if Kim will make that mistake and loosen his grasp. But, if he shows time and again that’s not his paradigm, you’re whistling in the wind. Reality is not what you strongly want to be true.
The North Korean people may one day overthrow the Kim regime. But, they’ve had 70 years — half of it living in abject poverty and facing starvation. That’s more believing what you want.
Until it does, South Korea must not only maintain its very strong defense posture. It needs strong allies to also convince the Kims an invasion is not worth the risk.
Realistically, who are those allies?
The United States and Japan. They’re the only countries with a stake in South Korea that are powerful enough to be useful.
Absent Kim Jong-un (or a future Kim) going mad, the only way North Korea would move against the South is with outside help. So where would North Korea get outside help?
As it did at the start of the Korean War, one place that help could come from is Russia.
One the one hand, getting the Americans off the Korean peninsula would weaken the American position, and Moscow would greatly welcome that. On the other hand, the U.S. presence forces China to dedicate significant military assets to counter it that can’t be used somewhere else. Russia’s own threat assessments prominently feature the People’s Republic.
In the near-term, while Putin likes to keep America swatting at flies, the level of global instability Korean War II would unleash is not in his interest, and the potential for backfire — the U.S. ends up with troops at the Yalu River and much, much closer to Vladivostok — is not worth the risk. He’d also like to sell Seoul more Siberian oil and minerals. He has to give that to the economic basketcase in Pyongyang.
If we were talking about a Russian involvement in an invasion of South Korea, it would be because the world was a very different one than the one we are in now. One where China has already subjugated Moscow, likely economically. (For a scenario, read our Mahan and Mackinder primer).
That leads to Chapter 3.