Thread: A New Korean War Would Be Devastating

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/15/a-...-could-happen/

A New Korean War Would Be Devastating, but It Could Happen

(Dec. 15) -- There would be no winner if war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.

But more than 57 years after the armistice suspended open hostilities between the U.S.-allied Republic of Korea in the south and the Chinese-backed Democratic People's Republic in the north, their border remains trip-wire tense. And both sides are braced for a return to conflict, however unlikely, that would kill millions of people and resonate economically and politically across the globe.

In the South Korean capital of Seoul today, residents participated in a 20-minute air attack drill by donning gas masks and rushing into underground shelters. It was the biggest evacuation exercise in decades and one treated with an unusual seriousness in the wake of last month's artillery clash.


KCNA / AFP / Getty Images
This photo released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on April 26 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, center, inspecting at undisclosed location in North Korea.

Two South Korean marines and two civilians were killed when North Korea opened fire on the small garrison island of Yeonpyeong last month. The attack, which brought a brief South Korean artillery response, came just after the North unveiled hidden, potentially dangerous advances in its nuclear program, and a few months after a South Korean naval vessel was sunk by what appeared to be a North Korean torpedo.

North Korea's rhetoric has become exaggeratingly bellicose -- a standard practice for Pyongyang -- with the state-run Korean Central News Agency most recently saying joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the Yellow Sea brought "the dark clouds of a nuclear war to hang over the Korean peninsula."

And these days, the international community isn't dismissing the threat.

An apparently evolving transfer of power in North Korea, along with the country's perpetual economic frailty and extreme paranoia, has put the U.S. and South Korea on edge and scrambling for ways to calm the situation.

"It's changed out there, and it's dangerous. Increasingly dangerous," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told troops in Baghdad this week when asked about the Korean standoff.

In addition to what's thought to be a rudimentary nuclear arsenal of perhaps a dozen bombs, the North Koreans have a million-man army, with half deployed near the demilitarized zone abutting South Korea, and hundreds of long-range artillery tubes within range of Seoul. That means a sudden strike could potentially kill the roughly 30,000 American civilians living among the millions of South Koreans, as well as the roughly 25,000 U.S. servicemen and women assigned to protect South Korea.

In turn, U.S. and South Korean firepower can destroy the North Korean leadership and military.

"North and South Korea have never been closer to war since 1953, but close is actually not too close because of the terrible consequences of war for both sides," as the national security veteran analyst Leslie Gelb put it recently.

Still, unpredictability is one of North Korea's most dominant characteristics, and the fields of potentially deadly miscommunication or misinterpretation are many.

Out-of-Control Scenarios

After the sinking of the Cheonan in March and South Korea's angry accusations against the North, Pyongyang shut down a military-to-military hot line that had been set up in 2004 for the two sides to handle maritime emergencies.

It also periodically turns off the United Nations fax machine link at Panmunjon, along the DMZ, like a small child acting out.


Ahn Young-joon, AP
North Korean Army soldiers, background, look at the southern side as South Korean Army soldiers stand guard at the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, on Oct. 20.