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My father-in-law was a VP in Northrop Grumman's space and satellite division. The kinds of projects he worked on were space defense satellites.

When he looked at all the uncertainty in the world (much caused at least indirectly by the US), his biggest fear was and continues to be North Korea.

Given the types of people I know he met with, this test does not fill me with warm fuzzies.

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" his biggest fear was and continues to be North Korea."

Can you go into why? The sentiment runs at odds with Bush's obsession with Iraq/Iran.

Not really an ideal frame of reference

It really comes down to the country's leadership. All of the other points in other comments here are certainly valid, but he feels that NK's leaders are more likely to be willing to push the button and the US is in range.

What I can't say is if this belief in NK's leaders is based on actual intelligence or some sort or just his opinion. Given their willingness to take pot-shots at SK, I know I'm concerned about this.

Has that sentiment changed since Kim Jong-un ascended to power?

His view hasn't. My reading of it is that is because Kim Jong-un was raised in the same megalomaniac environment and the supporting power structure hasn't changed.

But we're safe right? Those defence satellites worked?

That part I have no real knowledge of. I'm guessing whatever information he has about it is still classified.

However, the fact that he is worried says something to me about the answer to the question.

The Axis of Evil included North Korea along with those two countries.

If I recall correctly, the Bush administration's list of countries in the Axis of Evil, sorted by perceived evil from most to least evil, was :

1) Iran

2) Iraq

3) North Korea

North Korea was not the top threat at the time.

North Korea was not the top threat that we could realistically do anything about.

If I recall correctly, the list was unordered. But practically speaking, it was obvious that Iraq was the easiest target to attack, and North Korea would have been the most difficult. That has nothing to do with perceived evilness, though.

Because the regime has always been crazy, even as it passes through different rulers. The best case scenario of North Korea is that the world is faced with a humanitarian crises on a shocking scale that will cost tens of billions of dollars to correct. The expected lower limit of the results of foreign action working to take down the North Korean regime would be the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of South Korean civilians (in a matter of hours) due to shelling from thousands of DPRK artillery positions. The possible upper limit of badness would be the North Koreans hitting Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Taipei, Tokyo, and Seoul with nuclear and/or chemical weapons on ICBMs, IRBMs, aircraft, or smuggled onto commercial cargo ships.

> The best case scenario of North Korea is that the world is faced with a humanitarian crises on a shocking scale

True. Reintegration would compare very unfavorably to that of East Germany:

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/04/09/comparing-north-kore...

Every aspect is much worse. Larger population, lower relative GDP, lower workforce skills...

I wonder if the U.S. would react any differently if Iran had conducted these same tests.

No, thats the entire point about obtaining nuclear weapons.

Interesting logic. The government is willing to go to war to obstruct Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, yet not when North Korea is actually testing and threatening to "target" the U.S.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/asia/north-korea-vow...

It's mostly because we're in a bit of a bind as far as NK is concerned. As long as China supports/props them up we can't realistically 'attack' NK. Once China drops support for them you can bet that the regime will fall quickly, and/or China will smack them down before we even get the chance.

If Paris/London/Berlin were somehow within 30 miles of Iran's border, nobody would think about going to war with Iran so easily. If any major city of western allies was a few dozen miles from Iraq, nobody would've gone to war with Iraq.

Yes, S Korea's not very lucky in the geography department. Actually the whole Korean peninsula.

Huh? Have you ever heard of the Soviet Union?

The US had a brigade of soldiers stationed in West Berlin whose survival time was ~72 hours in the event of hostilities with the Soviets.

We almost went to war multiple times over things like geese flying over radars. Both the US and Soviets played little games like parking ballistic missiles in Turkey and Cuba to measure the reaction.

Iran has the ability to control the Straight of Hormuz. Iraq had the ability to harass shipping traffic in the Gulf. That waterway is far more important to the US (and Japan, and to a lesser extent, China) than Paris, London and Berlin.

I think you answered your own question. It's a lot easier to prevent a country from developing nuclear weapons that it is to confront one that already has them.

Also, different countries and different geopolitical situations. Iran has a few allies among the superpowers (Russia, China), but they aren't very strong allies. NK has pretty strong backing by the Chinese and the US also has to deal with it's allies in Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc.

It's much easier to play hardball with a country when no one is really opposed to you doing so.

I think there is also the issue that Iran is more likely to fight asymmetrically than North Korea would. I imagine that North Korea has all their nuclear weapons mounted on ballistic missiles. Iran on the other hand probably support an asymmetrical war where nuclear weapons are brought into the country by "stateless" terrorists and then deny involvement.

I would also venture that Iran, being a "non-secular" government where the more fundamentalist members see US influence as a threat to their religion and way of life, is more likely to foster radicalists that would try to enter the US with a suitcase bomb. North Korea has completely isolated itself and its people from US influence. Iran on the other hand has "porous" borders that permit western media and western culture to permeate. The permeation of western culture is seen by some as a threat to be stopped.

Edit: can the downvoter, please explain their down vote?

Right, but that's pretty standard. This is a strategy that has existed since, well, before I was born. Nuclear weapons give you a seat at the grown-ups table. It isn't ideal, but it works. North Korea isn't the fear, nor really is the Iranian government. The fear is Iran will leak a weapon to fanatics that are not part of the Mutually Assured Destruction paradigm. That's problematic. There is some old saying about this, but I only vaguely remember it. It was something like You don't fear a country with 10,000 nuclear missiles you fear the lunatic with the small suitcase bomb.

A big difference is that PRNK's provocations are mostly about preserving sovereignty and extracting material aid. PRNK is willing to use asymmetric tactics to their advantage, but so far this has been restricted to amassing weapons that threaten the southern population, and increasingly japan. They may be a batty and inhuman place, but their strategic behavior is largely rational self interest. PRNK wants nukes to hold as a trump threat, to then extract a rent.

Iran on the other hand has a much smaller military than PRNK, but is very active in supporting paramilitary groups (aka terrorists, insurgents) that are aligned with their interests. The fear is, they want a nuke not to hold onto, but to give away.

So aside from any domestic political considerations (read as: Israeli lobby groups), the strategic contexts are different in important ways.

Iran is not a client state of China, though. Few people in the Chinese leadership want a nuclear war with the US, or with anybody else. They will keep Kim Jong Un on a short leash; we in the US can take our eye off of that particular ball.

Iran is not presently capable of flattening a city the size of Seoul on a few moments' notice. Different situation, different response.

N Korea can NOT flatten Seoul in a few moments' notice because of the following: 1) Seoul is a HUGE city. 2) N Korea actually doesn't have UNlimited number of artillery tubes capable of reaching Seoul. There are hundreds (maybe a few thousand) tubes but these are heavy ones, meaning they would be lucky to get off a shot every few minutes. And they would have to be concentrated in a relatively small area near DMZ to reach Seoul, not smart move considering SKorea/US's jets. 3) You can BEN SKorea/US jets/artillery are already targeted for some/many of the known N Korean artillery sites. 4) N Korea's most interested in preserving status quo for their leaders and the elites that support the top leaders. Flattening Seoul would certainly mean they would be eliminated.

Yes N Korea can damage Seoul, but will not really 'flatten' it. Well, I hope...

The op was referring to "flatten" in terms of using a nuclear weapon not conventional artillery. Regardless, I think either way is so improbable it probably isn't even worth speculating about.

I sit partially corrected:

http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-how-north-kore...

http://atlanticsentinel.com/2012/06/north-korea-cant-really-...

https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korean+artillery+capab...

5) The Chinese don't have a reason to allow North Korea to flatten Seoul.

There are some very detailed writeups of PRNK's ability to damage Seoul based on open sources around on the web. The short summary is that 'flatten in a few moments' may be an exaggeration, but they do present a very real and very large threat.

They do have a fair number of dug in artillery installations that could survive several airstrikes. The basic template of these installations are bunkers under mountaintops that artillery can move rapidly in and out of. So instead of shoot and scoot more like shoot and turtle up. They may have limited resources, but the PRNK does appear to know how to deploy them quite effectively. Chemical shelling is a particular concern.

It's not that the PRNK would win an outright war, it's that they could extract a massacre no one else wants.

Neither is NK. They could wreak some havok with conventional weapons, but their last two nuclear tests were 1 & 2 kt, respectively. That's enough to take out a couple city blocks, with a fireball about 100 ft across. Couple that with the fact they can barely get a missile to go into the sky without blowing up, let alone land where they want it to, and NK's nuclear threat is pretty minimal. They'd cause far more damage with conventional weaponry.

"Wreak some havoc" is a gross understatement.

Look into how much artillery they can bring to bear on Seoul (they have the world's largest artillery force, and Seoul is only 35 miles from the border).

That's what the OP was talking about, not nukes.

Current best estimate is about 10,000 artillery shells per minute, landing in heavily populated parts of Seoul. How long that takes to match and then exceed the death counts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an experiment which hopefully will never be carried out.

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