- WASHINGTON (UPI) -- If the
United States goes to war with North Korea, there would be high casualties
on both sides, according to military analysts and retired officers familiar
with the region. Nevertheless the United States, backed by South Korea's
powerful military, would prevail, they said.
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- "We would kick their butts, but it would be bloody,"
said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in
Washington, D.C.
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- "Certainly, any conventional war fight in Korea
-- because of the tyranny of proximity -- would wreak havoc and destruction
and devastation on (South Korea). But I think the alliance would prevail
if there was a war," said retired Army Gen. John Tilleli, who commanded
U.S. forces in South Korea from 1996 to 1999.
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- For now, U.S. President George Bush and his national
security team continue to insist that international diplomacy -- with China,
Russia, Japan and South Korea pressuring North Korea -- is the way ahead
with Pyongyang, which, U.S. officials say, recently told them it had a
nuclear weapons program.
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- "The president is keeping all of his options on
the table, and we're leading with the diplomatic option because it's important
for everybody to realize this is a problem not just for the United States
but for the region and for the world," Secretary of State Colin Powell
said Sunday on CNN.
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- In the meantime, the 37,000 U.S. service members in South
Korea and the 670,000 South Korean fighters remain at the ready.
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- "I think it's a time to be especially cautious and
careful," Tilleli told United Press International. "At the same
time they are trying to solve the nuclear issue, don't let down our readiness
guard."
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- Some 700,000 of the 1.1 million active-duty North Korea
soldiers, roughly 2,000 tanks and 8,000 artillery systems are arrayed within
100 miles of the 155-mile-long Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, that separates
North and South Korea. About 20 million South Koreans -- half the civilian
population -- live in and around Seoul, within artillery range of the North.
According to U.S. officials, North Korea can field more than 12,000 self-propelled
and towed artillery weapons.
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- These North Korean forces are "getting better, day
to day, year to year," Army Gen. Thomas A. Schwartz told reporters
during an interview in Seoul in March 2000. "They've been improving
themselves. They've been modernizing and they've been exercising."
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- North Korea has been ravaged by economic troubles and
nearly five years of famine in the late 90s during which as many as 2.2
million people died. One-fourth of its 22 million people receive food aid
from the World Food Program, which recently warned a new famine might be
coming as it tries to rally donations. With a newly announced nuclear program,
the expulsion of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and international
missile exports, North Korea is tough sell.
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- Despite the troubles, however, the military has received
special food consideration and funding from Pyongyang. Raking in $5 billion
a month, the military soaks up more than one-third of North Korea's annual
gross domestic product, according to the CIA.
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- "I still think the relative proportion of constrained
resources goes to keeping the military at a level that's acceptable to
them," said Tilleli. "That is the irony of North Korea -- in
that they are willing to cause their population to suffer great deprivation
when there is not an external threat."
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- The conventional force it has amassed is a powerful one,
comprising 5 million reserves in addition to the 1.1 million active-duty
soldiers. Its air force is large but believed to be poorly maintained.
It numbers 110 MiG-17s, 160 MiG-19s, and 130 MiG-21s, as well as 30 more
modern MiG-29s, according to the U.S.-based Center for Defense Information.
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- The United States "would have to fight in terrain
that is a great equalizer, that only requires (of North Korea) a certain
basic level of armament," O'Hanlon told UPI. "They could do what
the Somalis did (in 1993), which is basically ambush. They could certainly
make it bloody."
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- More worrisome, however, is the North Korean missile
force, which holds most of South Korea at risk. A missile tested in 1998
can reach Japan, and it is believed North Korea is close to having an intercontinental
missile that can hit the United States.
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- "Their ballistic missile inventory includes over
500 Scuds of various types that can threaten the entire peninsula and they
continue to produce and deploy No Dong missiles capable of striking Japan
and our U.S. bases there," said Gen. Leon Laporte, the commander of
U.S. Forces Korea, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
last year.
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- North Korea is also assumed to have material for at least
two nuclear warheads, if not the warheads themselves. Now that it has restarted
its mothballed fast breeder reactor, and accessed the spent fuel rods placed
under U.N. seal, it could have material for two more in less than six months.
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- North Korea is understood to have an arsenal of chemical
and possibly biological weapons, both of which could be delivered to Seoul
via artillery or missile in advance of a land attack.
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- "If they were to be foolish enough to try some sort
of a conflict, they would not be hesitant to use all of their capability,"
Tilleli said. "But I think they understand the United States and (South
Korea) would prevail."
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- South Korean forces would absorb most of any North Korean
offensive. The 37,000 U.S. forces are on the Korean peninsula primarily
to help mount a counter-attack.
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- While North Korea could initially overwhelm a U.S.-South
Korean coalition with its sheer numbers, the superior training, weapons,
maintenance and logistics system backing it up would best them in the end,
according to most military analysts.
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- "They don't have the ability to make it last,"
O'Hanlon said of Pyongyang's military.
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- Tilleli refused to speculate whether North Korea's newly
belligerent stance is timed to capitalize on the United States' focus on
a potential war with Iraq, or is simply a way to secure more food and energy
aid as winter sets in.
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- "It's so hard to get into the brain cells of leadership
of North Korea. Brinksmanship has been their modality for dealing with
world," he said.
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- North Korea admitted to its nuclear program only after
it was confronted with evidence by a U.S. diplomatic team in October, U.S.
officials say.
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- Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International.
All rights reserved.
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