[quote=Allan from Fallbrook][quote=afx114]Isn’t N. Korea’s military made up mostly of rusted out and broken down Cold War-era Soviet hardware? And aren’t their troops and populace in general poorly trained and weakened by famine?

I don’t know if these things are true — they’re just nuggets that I’ve heard a few times from various reporters who’ve managed to get in there. I am curious what the military-knowledgeable people here think about the above claims.[/quote]

Afx: Google “Oplan 5027” and you’ll get a good look at US planning on the subject. While the general populace is impoverished and starving, the NK military is not. Kim makes certain his military machine is well fed and they are certainly well indoctrinated and hate the US with a passion.

It’s also interesting to note that North Korea does not consider South Korea it’s main foe: The US holds that role. South Korea considers North Korea their main enemy, but not vice versa.

Someone earlier opined that North Korea has 8,000 artillery tubes trained on Seoul. Actually, this number is about 500, and I think North Korea has about 8,000 tubes TOTAL in their military.

Either way, a second Korean War would be devastating and I don’t doubt that we’d see WMD and even nukes if Kim had them in deployable fashion. I don’t seriously think he wants war, especially because he knows the final outcome, but it’s a convenient bargaining chip/tool for him to use.
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I did google “Oplan 5027” and found this sentence to be pretty insightful.

“Pyongyang has the ability to start a new Korean War, but not to survive one.”