Daily News (New York) January 10, 2003
BUSH SOBERED BY THEIR MIGHT
By RICHARD SISK
WASHINGTON - President Bush's choice of diplomacy over confrontation in North Korea is driven by the grim calculations of what combat on the peninsula would involve.
North Korea has "the most militarized society in the world," according to the CIA, with active-duty armed forces of more than 1 million backed by 6 million to 7 million ready reserves in a population of about 23 million.
The North's forces lack the "level of sophistication" of the 600,000 South Korean and 37,000 U.S. troops arrayed against them across the demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel. However, the North has "twice as many main battle tanks, five times as many self-propelled artillery pieces, air defense suites that dwarf South Korean analogues, plus many more submarines, torpedo boats and anti-ship missile craft," according to a U.S. Army contingency plan published on the Internet by GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank.
Military analysts said a conventional attack by the North would be quickly contained and overcome by U.S. air power and the more mobile and better-equipped U.S. and South Korean troops.
But the initial blow from the North's long-range artillery and mobile rocket launchers could devastate Seoul and fall heavily on the U.S. 8th Army, deployed along tactical "lines of access" from the North to the South.
"It would be a real war, as opposed to the firepower demonstrations" with relatively few casualties for the U.S., as in Desert Storm, Kosovo and Afghanistan, said John Pike, a GlobalSecurity analyst.
Nasty weapons array
North Korea also poses a significant threat with an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons and possibly two nukes, according to U.S. intelligence.
With war in Iraq looming, the U.S. now faces crises on opposite ends of Asia brought on by the North's recent ouster of nuclear inspectors and its abandonment of a global nuclear treaty.
How to end the standoff is complicated by the fact that it is not clear what prompted the North's reclusive leadership to push the issue to the brink of war. The country is one of the world's poorest. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have starved to death in recent years, and hunger has driven many to seek asylum in China.
North Korean paranoia was worsened, according to some foreign policy experts, by Bush's inclusion of the country as a member of the "axis of evil." Their concerns were heightened when Bush told reporter Bob Woodward that he "loathed" North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
In South Korea, President-elect Roh Moo Hyun has said he would offer a compromise plan calling on both the U.S. and North Korea to make concessions.
"The South Koreans are saying to us, 'What, are you guys crazy?' " said Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under former President Ronald Reagan.
"They're telling us that the best way to deal with this is to engage," said Korb, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Copyright © 2003 Daily News (New York)
