North Korea just looking for a fight?

[mallorian69]

(08-28-2016, 05:32 PM)jason Wrote: They fought the US to a standstill... Granted, the Chinese intervened, but the fact remains. I've often heard that they could overrun the South and the few Americans stationed there fairly quickly if they really wanted too. I don't know if that's true. But as others have pointed out, saber rattling is par for the course for a Stalinist regime.

It's very true. My brother has spent at least half of the last 25 years in Korea either in the army or NGA as a korean interprter. The general concensus is that best case we can hold for 3-7 days with the forces we currently have there and the few we could bring in in that time frame.

We only have around 25k troops there most of the time and of those generally only 5-10k are combat troops. At best we can get another 5k light infantry there in the first 3 days. 

South Korea has over 600k active duty personnel in their military but that is all branches combined. Can't find numbers for just their army. Generally speaking though most militarys combat troops are only 10-20% with the rest being support troops. 

North Korea has nearly 1 million troops most of which are stationed in the southern 1/3 of the country, easy striking distance from the DMZ. They have double the number of tanks and greatly outnumber the combined forces in the south in regards to artillery.

In addition to this we are constantly finding tunnels under the DMZ that they have dug for troop transport. Most are smaller only allowing a platoon or company to move through rapidly but there are some capable of allowing an entire batallion to move through in a matter of minutes. 

They also use small planes that are made mostly of wood and canvas that are nearly undetectable to radar that can carry small special ops teams that can infiltrate the south and take out key communications and infrastructure targets.

The major weekness of the north's military is their logistics. They don't have to food or fuel for a long drawn out campaign.

While we would ultimately win, we would lose the entire Korean peninsula in the first few days of a conventional war and have to retake it.