Suicide Is Painless

Military experts have been trying to soothe fears among Americans regarding the possibility of North Korea making good on its threat to attack the United States with a nuclear missile, insisting that the North Koreans don't have enough expertise to fit a nuclear warhead on any missile. But the North Koreans do have missiles that can obviously reach South Korea, and also Japan and even Guam. If these missiles had nuclear warheads, enough people would have reason to fear a North Korean missile attack. And they have plenty of artillery batteries to strike immediately over the so-called demilitarized zone that serves as the border between the two Koreas.

In the event of another conventional war on the peninsula, though, South Korea might have the upper hand. Despite the size of its conventional military, North Korea can't keep its equipment properly maintained or their troops properly trained and fed. The army of the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) in the south is smaller but more modernized. (Just as an example; North Korea is thought to have 4,200 tanks compared to South Korea's 2,400. But the R.O.K. tanks are more modern and better maintained.) If South Korea had to sink more money into its defenses, it could do so; North Korea cannot.

South Korea may very well, and very soon, build up its military forces before a second North Korean invasion happens, and the south has certainly had advance warning. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north has just canceled a non-aggression pact with the south and cut the telephone hotline between Pyongyang and Seoul. With U.S. and R.O.K. troops exercising drills in the coming days, one could be forgiven for suspecting that Korean War II is imminent.

I don't think the North Koreans would actually provoke a war like they did in 1950. It is worth noting that, in 2010, the North Koreans opened fire on Yeonpyeong, an island administered by South Korea. Given that the Yeonpyeong attack didn't exactly cast Pyongyang in a favorable light - the North Koreans claimed they were retaliating South Korean shelling into North Korean waters - I wouldn't expect a repeat performance of that. Starting another war now would be suicidal for the North Koreans; the entire world is isolating them, and even China, North Korea's closest (only?) ally, is getting wary of their actions. Relations between the one-and-a-half countries have been cool in recent years. I would guess that a second Korean War would have the United States and China fighting on the same side instead of fighting each other; China would probably have to send troops over the Yalu River (the Chinese-North Korean border) to take the current leadership out of power and replace it with a more benign Communist administration, while American troops would be defending South Korea at the 38th parallel. Such a war would indefinitely put off Korean reunification, but it would be preferable to what we have now.

North Korea is more interested in its own survival as a sovereign state, which explains in part its pursuit of nuclear weapons; no own would threaten its sovereignty if it had the bomb. That would certainly also be enough to discourage a revolt from its own people. That a state created as a Soviet pawn in the Cold War would last this long without any sort of reform only shows you how well the so-called Democratic People's Republic has lasted.

Why would it do anything to seal its own fate now?