And the city was almost entirely destroyed during the Korean war. They could have chosen to rebuild their capital somewhere else, but they let their romanticization of the city get in the way of logic.
Seoul was the capital prior to the War, a major seaport, and was established Two Thousand Years ago as the capital. Nice of you to understand that. Shows your education.
When you fly into Seoul the international airport is located in Incheon. So most would consider Incheon as being part of Seoul.
still, it's only about an hour away.
If there is war it will probably be a nuke war. NK is just itching to use their nukes.
THen add in China, the US, and there we are. Nothing will ever be the same again.
911 will look like a kiddie fight in a sand box. 30,000 US troops stationed in SK vaporized.
I think it will be called WWIII.
China isn't going to side with North Korea or attack the US if the North uses nukes or attacks the South. Also this won't be a world war either.
PJ, so we appease them the first time now they have a nuke in Cleaveland as well. What then? Keep appeasing them until they have nukes everywhere and it's to late they win? The end game here is a conflict, there is no avoiding it. We could have earlier worked towards solving this problem, but we're to fucking stupid to set aside our differences and actually work with the Chinese. If we could we might actually have made some progress on NK. We didn't so we are where we are and it has been 50+ years of the same shit. N.Korea commits an act of war, S.Korea pussies it up because of Seoul and they appease the dictator who is holding their balls. Now he holds more than just their balls and people still want to appease. Eventually he'll be able to destroy all of S.Korea and then what? We just appease still until he can take out Japan as well?
This will come to a conflict and we can either do it now or wait until they can do more damage. THe longer we wait the worse it is. North Korea is a cancer, the longer it goes untreated the more damage it's going to cause to the region.
Ok, you don't give them the money, Chicago is obliterated. Bombs also go off in several other places, killing a total of 50,000,000 people. (Would be about the same percentage of potential losses compared to South Korea).
You are saying this is the best course of action? Yes or no.
lol. It would be bad, but none of that would happen should we go to war with NK.
It is an almost absolute certainty that Seoul would be shelled mercilessly within moments of a full-scale conflict breaking out. With over 10 million in the greater Seoul capital area, it would be a slaughter of historic proportions.
This isn't 10 or 20 cannons that would drop an occasional shell on a moderately populated city, it's over 10,000 (on the low end estimate) cannons raining explosives on one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.
My analogy would be pretty accurate if you go on percentage of population. Strictly number wise, it would be more akin to New York City being completely flattened, with all 9 million people in it.
That's just the initial attack... this is all before the actual fighting even starts. 1.2 million man Army the north has. A lot more people would die very quickly.
Does anybody seriously think that is a good trade off just so the threat goes away?
It is an almost absolute certainty that Seoul would be shelled mercilessly within moments of a full-scale conflict breaking out. With over 10 million in the greater Seoul capital area, it would be a slaughter of historic proportions.
Every artillery piece in NK has a GMLRS with it's name\coordinates on it. If we struck first, virtually none of the guns would get a single shot off. If they struck first, we could retaliate and destroy their artillery pieces before they were able to fire 2 more rounds. And all of our launchers are remote controlled and moved regularly.
NK does not want to enter into a conventional war with the US. We've spent the last 50 years spending an enormous amount of our GDP preparing for a conventional war that never came. We would decimate NK militarily.
Every artillery piece in NK has a GMLRS with it's name\coordinates on it. If we struck first, virtually none of the guns would get a single shot off. If they struck first, we could retaliate and destroy their artillery pieces before they were able to fire 2 more rounds. And all of our launchers are remote controlled and moved regularly.
NK does not want to enter into a conventional war with the US. We've spent the last 50 years spending an enormous amount of our GDP preparing for a conventional war that never came. We would decimate NK militarily.
What information are you basing this on? I am unaware of any credible source that believes anything close to that. The sheer numbers of MLRS launchers needed to accomplish what you're talking about without even taking into account our MLRS' inability to penetrate the heavy rock a lot of those pieces are under makes your idea extremely unlikely.
The threat of North Korea isn't going away and is only growing stronger and bolder with each year. The North Koreans themselves have visions of eventually taking over South Korea. That is the goal they've been brainwashed to believe in as nation. Eventually they'll have the means and capability to accomplish that goal and then carnage of that war will pale in comparison to what would happen if we were to topple North Korea in short foreseeable future before they've solidified and mastered their nuclear weapons capabilities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XsWb_ObOpM&feature=related
Every artillery piece in NK has a GMLRS with it's name\coordinates on it. If we struck first, virtually none of the guns would get a single shot off. If they struck first, we could retaliate and destroy their artillery pieces before they were able to fire 2 more rounds. And all of our launchers are remote controlled and moved regularly.
NK does not want to enter into a conventional war with the US. We've spent the last 50 years spending an enormous amount of our GDP preparing for a conventional war that never came. We would decimate NK militarily.
What information are you basing this on? I am unaware of any credible source that believes anything close to that. The sheer numbers of MLRS launchers needed to accomplish what you're talking about without even taking into account our MLRS' inability to penetrate the heavy rock a lot of those pieces are under makes your idea extremely unlikely.
There is an enormous amount of armor & ordnance emplaced in South Korea. You're assuming that NK would purposely target Seoul of spite or to cause economic damage, rather than attempt to disable actual military targets.
What's funny is that I think you're actually serious about believing this. You're saying that we have far far better intelligence on NK's capabilities than we had on Iraq's?? We "thought" Iraq had all sorts of weapons that it turned out they didn't. Yet, you think we know what every weapon is and exactly where it's located in NK? :roll:
Sucks man, but you can't let assholes continually be assholes. Would you let your neighbor kill your dog every year and demand you pay him to not shoot you or would do something about it even if he had the bigger gun? Sometimes bad shit has to happen for good shit to happen. Getting rid of North Korea is a good thing and the longer we wait the harder it will be.
again when I say WE, I mean the world as a whole.
Every time someone talks about NK using nukes I go "uggggggggg".
They tested two duds along with their inability to fit said duds on anything other then flatbeds.
I'd only worry about NK in two cases at this point.
A- SK does nothing to counter NK aggression while NK keep escalating until they fell they can get away with shelling Seoul (which is not the case).
B- NK feels that no matter what they do they are going to lose their control over the country (going out in a blaze of glory).
NK's one and only deterrent against being wiped out is the damage they could do should they start a war. Once that war is started there is nothing holding back SK/USA from destroying them.
Sure China is backing them up, but with most all of the rest of the world behind SK, should China fight with all it's power to save NK then their economy will collapse with the rest of the world isolating them and China goes into civil war with Taiwan's government likely coming back to take control of China. Then there is "what's in it for China?", if SK does take over NK then SK will be crippled trying to modernize NK and there will be a massive push to get rid of all US military presence.
Barring a total collapse in Command & Control leading NK to think they are actually being invaded, as long as they don't feel they are toast then the actions they take will simply be what they feel they can get away with. I'm also of the mindset that the next leader of NK will change their stance and not be so downright hostile, wanting wanting the benefits trade with SK/China will bring.
It is an almost absolute certainty that Seoul would be shelled mercilessly within moments of a full-scale conflict breaking out. With over 10 million in the greater Seoul capital area, it would be a slaughter of historic proportions.
This isn't 10 or 20 cannons that would drop an occasional shell on a moderately populated city, it's over 10,000 (on the low end estimate) cannons raining explosives on one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.
My analogy would be pretty accurate if you go on percentage of population. Strictly number wise, it would be more akin to New York City being completely flattened, with all 9 million people in it.
That's just the initial attack... this is all before the actual fighting even starts. 1.2 million man Army the north has. A lot more people would die very quickly.
Does anybody seriously think that is a good trade off just so the threat goes away?