Originally posted by Rictor
MP, North Korea doesn't have missles anywhere *near* the range required to hit US cities. The problem isn't only the actualy warheads, the main difficulty is delivery systems. As for hitting the South, well they already have enough long-range artillery aimed at Soeul and the DMZ to do major damage, so nuclear weapons would be largely redundant in that respect.
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Delivery is a ***** to them, for now and propably in foreseeable future. However, there are always ways to get a nuke in US soil - the cargo scanning is proceeding very painfully and only a minor part of the containers are inspected. It would take time and would depend on some luck, but it's possible.
However, as someone pointed out, it's really doubtful if the NK would ever try to nuke US. They could aim for troop concentrations in South Korea, Seoul or Japan (they have launched missiles over Japan years ago, they still have that capacity).
As for the Seoul + artillery thing.
Seoul is a big city, built on hills and stuff. And the NK could only reach the outskirts and suburbs of Seoul with the equipment WE KNOW OF (that's a lot, but still), and it's not their entire arsenal either. NK has so much artillery because they have spared every single goddamn gun they've ever got their hands onto. This also reduces their overall accuracy, and the older the gun the more impaired their accuracy is. Terror bombing a city does not take much of that, though, but the main thing is that the bulk of their artillery cannot reach Seoul - the forces near DMZ are a completely different matter.
But.
US and ROK forces have been training for such situation since the Korean war. Basically the counterbattery fire would most likely devastate the bulk of really dangerous NK artillery in matter of seconds and minutes - quite a few of their heavier guns also have fixed firing positions (and often those are the ones which can reach the Seoul), and we know how well a stationary target manages to survive against technologically vastly more advanced enemy. Not very well. Also the air superiority factor - it's not really funny to be an artilleryman when enemy CAS platforms are buzzing everywhere.
And even if they had ICBMs, please stop assuming that they're crazy enough to actually try anything. These things only happen in Tom Clancy novels, not the real world.
Quite true, though I also remember Tom Clancy wrote a stupid book where the Yellow Threat used commercial airplanes as weapons. Against White House and Capitol. lolocaust
ps. Tom Clancy's recent books suck ass
ps. edit: pyro-manic's feelings hurt were my postal stupidity by yes
