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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Not really, Nukes can't actually be used in war - if NK does that the US would launch back and end NK.

You assume the survival interests of general North Korean population and North Korean ruling class perfectly align. One of those groups was known to starve to death, the other - not so much. You shouldn't really consider the interests of DPRK populace as any driving factor when analyzing political situation on the peninsula.

EDIT: actually the nuclear war is beside the point. Just that conventional shelling South Korea while having a number of deliverable nukes on hold might become a weekly routine for the North.

It's this simple: circa. 10,000 artillery rounds per minute, falling on densely populated urban neighborhoods.

The first hour of a full-on war on the Korean peninsula would make 9/11 look like a day at the park and would generate more civilian casualties in an industrialized first world nation than any event since WWII.

This is the finding of every sensible study on the military situation on the peninsula, and is most of the reason we haven't buried Kim four times.

The second order effects of losing South Korea don't bear thinking about, either. Everybody saw how fast the dominoes fell when 10% of one sliver of American mortgage holders decided to go late, right? If Seoul gets burned, several hundred billion dollars worth of high quality bonds held by primarily Japanese and American financial institutions burn with it. That would put the market into pure, unrestrained panic within literally seconds. It would get worse over the coming months as countries who traded heavily with South Korea (let's see: China, Japan, Taiwan, US, etc) saw their orders go to near zero and had their supply chains dependent on SK products start blocking on input.

Plus, in the middle of this, Obama gets to make a phone call to whomever takes over when the Japanese government falls and say "Listen, I know you're kind of spooked at the moment and have just been elected on a platform of We Must Stop North Korea, but please please please please don't announce nuclear capability despite that being within the capability of Japanese industry in a matter of weeks. China would get a trifle upset."

That might not be an option. The North Korean people are portrayed in the media as victims of the regime rather than a horde of blood-thirsty, war-mongerers so laying waste to swathes of the country with nuclear weapons is not going to go down well domestically or in the court of world opinion. The options for retaliation might well be very limited and the regime knows this well.

This applies to a pre-emptive nuclear strike of course, but few would object to a nuclear response after Seoul is a smoking crater. If we didn't do it the Chinese would probably do it for us.

Believe me once the pictures from Seoul comes in, nobody is going to care much for the NK civilians.

I don’t think those with the power to launch nuclear weapons care all that much about TV pictures. At least I hope they don’t.

I would think the goal would be to save as many humans as possible (while, admittedly, probably not willing to trade South Korean lives for North Korean lives) and toppling the regime in North Korea as quickly as possible. I don’t know whether that includes nuclear weapons. I would hope that nobody would be willing to launch a nuclear weapon just to kill as many North Koreans as possible.

We're still talking about the scenario when NK nukes SK, right? The "nuclear umbrella" doctrine, where nuclear deterrence is used to protect one's allies from nuclear attack, is well-established policy. The question smackay raised was whether public opinion would allow such a retaliation. The TV pictures take care of public opinion; the nuclear umbrella doctrine (and the need to demonstrate the West's will to enforce it) take care of the leadership.

I am not sure the West has the will to enforce it - certainly judging by recent events in Afghanistan where there seems to be a limited amount of support for the USA.

The deciding factor might be China's position on the matter. It provides quite a bit of support for North Korea and whether the USA would want to get dragged into a conflict that might escalate beyond the Korean peninsula remains to be seen.

Having said that I don't think there is a significant risk of serious conflict since it is in China's long term interest to keep some form of low-level conflict with the USA or its allies going in the area, if only to further its territorial ambitions with the Spratly Islands, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands and other parts of the South China Sea which apparently has significant old reserves.

I would assume that should North Korea use nuclear weapons, masses of conventional military will roll in. Could China or anyone else sufficiently powerful really object to South Korea and the US (maybe others?) invading in that case? I guess China would want in on the action, themselves invading North Korea.

Why would the Chinese want to invade North Korea?

That is... a fairly optimistic opinion.

And presupposes that North Korea choses the least self-destructive action.

Feeling lucky?

No I don't feel lucky, I just know that people like the fear leader are addicted to power and would loose a lot if they die or their country becomes a ruin.

Their country is already a ruin.

You're assuming that the leader isn't self-destructive.

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