Those 10,000 artillery pieces are a great way to extort and threaten and prevent retaliation.  Once war starts, the threat no longer means squat and those artillery pieces won't win a war.



10,000 artillery pieces would mean chaos, destruction, and some possibly large amount of death in a limited area.  This is a huge deal for a population at peace, but once war starts, it's not the end.  It is however a damn fine motivator.  Quite probably, it will be a wake up call for lots of South Koreans.  Huh?  You mean they want to kill us?   Fuck that, we have to kill them back.



How many would die?  A city of 13 million being shelled equals how many casulties?  50,000?  100,000?  1,000,000?  One computer program estimate was 1,000,000 in an article I read, but it was just a newspaper type article and reporters rarely understand what they are reporting on.



During WII, the highest we managed was in the 100,000 to 120,000 and that inculdes 15 to 20 kiloton nuke strikes and 374 plane incendiary attacks.
 

were are you getting this 48hrs nonsense???

Well, let's hope the South Koreans who elected Lee Myung-bak hold more weight than the ones who elected Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-Hyun.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/72545734.jpg%3Fv%3D1%26c%3DIWSAsset%26k%3D2%26d%3D77BFBA49EF878921F7C3FC3F69D929FDDFBB2AD3F346EEAC702C1A6AC49E23BEAB73669C57EB99F5F06BF04B24B4128C&imgrefurl=http://www.life.com/image/72545734&usg=__T255aLU2rbeJAa8tOlv_1xzlIqw=&h=385&w=594&sz=52&hl=en&start=67&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=_1ou7KTI-yOPTM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkoreans%2Bprotest%2Bbush%26start%3D60%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1R2GGLL_en%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1



Street Protest Against Bush Visit Turn Violent in Seoul
401332 10: South Korean protesters clash with police during a rally against U.S. President George W. Bushs visit to South Korea February 20, 2002 in downtown Seoul. Protests against Bush have been staged daily in Korea since Bushs comment about North Korea being part of an 'axis of evil.' South Koreans fear such comments will escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Feb 20, 2002

Intel briefings when I served there, relatives in the ROK SF and Intel community.

Exactly.

Here's how it works in realityland.  Small units (batteries in this case) are not given all their go-to-war ammo because upper echelons in the .mil don't want to risk some renegade idiot starting the whole thing by himself.  The US army doesn't keep their vehicles loaded with ammunition either.  It is easily accessible but it requires a whole lot more than one guy or 100 guys and 30 minutes to pull off.

Hungry troops usually don't serve in militaries that have the transportation/logistics to move them from garrison to battlefield either. Okay, great they have millions of boots they can commit if push comes to shove, but they aren't worth anything if they are staring and can't get to where the fight is. I'm never been in the military and even I can see this one.

The DPRK will not invade, at most it would like a trigger to make the USA or if necessary the ROK look like the aggressor nation so the elder brother will be obliged but beyond all the bluster, everyone knows neither side will do anything. The latest news story as summed up in another thread is more of the same rhetoric. The DPRK would like to take over the ROK from within.

But I agree with your overall point and cite another example beyond Southeast Asia that is more relevant than Desert Storm. Let's take starvation and food with this example:

The best of the best against the worst of the worst. Outcome, US leaves Somalia and Mogadishu remains a place of violence and starvation to this day. US military valor and prowess undeniable, Somalian deaths were tremendous. Somali warlord doesn't care, he got what he wanted, he wasn't captured and had several hundred or thousand less mouths to feed or pay.

Was it Karl von Clausewitz who wrote that war is an extension of politics? Was it Sun Tzu who wrote "victorious warriors win first and then go to war and ... make many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. ... strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won".

Perhaps I'm a pessimist but I would rather assure victory than assume it.







http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/somalia/somalia.htm

Most of the American troops were out of Somalia by 25 March 1994, ending Operation CONTINUE HOPE, the follow-on mission to RESTORE HOPE. Only a few hundred marines remained offshore to assist with any noncombatant evacuation mission that might occur in the event violence broke out that necessitated the removal of the over 1,000 U.S. civilians and military advisers remaining as part of the U.S. liaison mission. All UN and U.S. personnel were finally withdrawn almost a year later in March 1995.

All attempts to reconcile the Somali factions had proven futile, and the international community gradually lost its patience with the total lack of political results. Operation UNITED SHIELD, the final UN withdrawal from Somalia, was completed on 3 March 1995. The United States, as part of the international community, had made major contributions to the Somalia humanitarian operations for over two years. Starvation had been stopped and hundreds of thousands of lives saved. The U.S. had accomplished much in the initial stages of the operation, but the political situation had unraveled even as the food supplies increased, allowing Somalia to slide backwards into disorder and anarchy.


http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N49/somalia2.49w.html

Senate Agrees to Withdrawal From Somalia before April
By John M. Broder and Michael Ross
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON

Army helicopter pilot Michael Durant, battered but in apparently good spirits, was freed Thursday by Somali rebels after 11 days in captivity. President Clinton hailed Durant's release as evidence that his new Somalia policy was working, while insisting that he had cut "no deals" to secure the airman's freedom.

Hours later, on Capitol Hill, Clinton won at least a partial victory when Senate leaders reached agreement on a resolution to back the president's aims for Somalia. The measure accepts Clinton's March 31 date for withdrawal of American forces from the African nation, but would force him to meet that deadline by withholding funding for the operation after that date.

After three days of intense negotiations, the Senate headed toward certain passage of the resolution late Thursday night –– the first time since the end of the Vietnam War that Congress has exercised its constitutional "power of the purse" to cut off appropriated funds for an American military venture abroad.

Somali clan leader Mohammed Farah Aidid, declaring in a Mogadishu press conference that "I am not a warlord," said he ordered the release of Durant and Nigerian soldier Umar Shakali as a gesture of goodwill after appeals from the United Nations, the United States and African leaders.

Aidid summoned Red Cross representatives to a walled compound in Mogadishu, from which they removed Durant and Shakali and transported them to a U.N. hospital in the Somali capital. Durant winced in pain as he was moved, but flashed a thumbs-up sign to onlookers. He declined to speak to reporters.

Several hours after learning of Durant's release, Clinton held a news conference to welcome the act as vindication of his week-old Somalia policy, which combines a reinforced military presence with a new political initiative designed to end factional fighting and attacks on U.N. and U.S. peacekeepers.

"That demonstrates that we are moving in the right direction and that we are making progress," Clinton declared. "Now we have to maintain our commitment to finishing the job we started."

Clinton said he made no implicit or explicit promises to Aidid to win Durant's freedom.

"I want to ... emphasize that we made no deals to secure the release of Chief Warrant Officer Durant," Clinton said. "We had strong resolve. We showed that we were willing to support the resumption of the peace process and we showed that we were determined to protect our soldiers and to react, when appropriate, by strengthening our position there.

"I think the policy was plainly right," he added. "But there was no deal."

He said he had called off the military manhunt for Aidid and was open to other possible solutions to the effort to fix responsibility for the June 5 massacre.

The United States did not dispatch more than 10,000 troops to Somalia "to prove we can win military battles," Clinton said.

Clinton said it was up to the United Nations whether to release 32 Aidid aides captured by U.N. forces. Their release was a condition demanded by Aidid while Durant was being held.

It is apples and oranges again to compare a mission in Somolia to the mission in ROK.

Adderall is a wonder drug to those who need it.........Just sayin

;-)

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

The only problem is Desert Storm was, well in a desert. Vietnam was a jungle. Take a look at the terrain on the Korean peninsula. The major disadvantage for a northern invasion is limited avenues of approach, primarily one. But for the thousandth time, the DPRK is uninterested in a convential warfare 1950 invasion. They would like to corrupt the youth of the ROK like the hippies of the USA to become the Clintons and Obamas and the election in the 1990s - 2008 were bad harbingers. I was about to freak out until the new adminstration won election in 2008 which gave me some hope.

Adverseries of the USA are dropping "convential war and tactics" like a hot potatoe and exploring all means available that may aid them. Being the best boxer in the world may not prepare you for the a wrestler or jiu jitsu opponent.

Hmm, you clearly don't read my posts and have no idea of my background beyond the most basic summary, so for the last year, you've been "gunning" for someone you don't even know anything about. Well that's intriguing.

Wow a totally vague and evasive response. I know I know, you'd tell me but then you'd have to kill me.

Carry on high speed.

More importantly, neither does his constituency.....Iraq.....Afghanistan.....Vietnam...Rwanda...Somalia

There's room on the car for a FREE TIBET bumber sticker and smoking a J while talking about Darfur but that's as far as it goes.

The thread is about NK military capabilities, That requires comparison to ROK abilities. Yes the north is trying

to corrupt the students, they have tried this since I was a child. It is not working the way they want. But putting

that aside they sunk a ROK military ship. This goes far beyond anything they have done for a long time.



It has caused quite a conundrum for sure. But if the ROK decides this is go time they need to go into this wide open

and so do we. I don't think there needs to be a ground invasion per sey. Just a huge pounding on military targets like

we did to Iraq in 91. This may be enough to get the NK government changed.



 

"If there's one thing I learned in Nam, it's to keep it simple Dude" "I'll just grab one of em and beat it out of him" "They want us to throw the briefcase over the bridge" "We can't do that Dude, that messes up my plan" "Walter your plan is so damn simple, why don't tell em" "No time to argue Dude just give me the ringer"

"Let me tell you something, these camel jockeys will be trying to find reverse in a Russian tank faster than..." "Not like the man in black, that my friend was a real adversary"

I recall reading that the 25th infantry division's motorpool was on top of this tourist attraction during the Vietnam war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eeZM3qOsiM

http://www.vietnamtourpackages.com/Vietnam-Travel-Guide/around-ho-chi-minh-city-vietnam/cu-chi-tunnels-vietnam.htm

I was driving from NYC to Toronto in 2000 and I stopped at one of the Seneca Indian reservations and there was an interesting book in the giftshop and I read a quote of a Seneca shaman who tried to warn the warriors who wanted the Senecas to join in the war against the American colonists and he said something along the lines of "War is easy, until you fight it".

Going to a shaman about war is like going to the Devil on how to become a Christian.

The ROKs have 500,000 men themselves...



They also have late-80s US tech (the 'K1A1' tank is an XM1 (Abrams prototype) derivative), against late-50s Soviet tech on the DPRK side...



The ONLY think the Norks have going for them, is WMD and the ability to shell Seoul.



USFK is just there as a 'reminder' - the real combat power is/was/will be the ROK side...



 

They had technological parity back then, and Soviet support. And the ROKs didn't have much of an army beyond riflemen...
Now, their gear is decades out of date, and they are facing a modern army with only a 2:1 numbers advantage to compensate for their pitiful technology. And that's without the US involved.
K1A1 vs T-55 = turkey shoot, for example.
The 'One of theirs can kill 10 of ours' strategy ONLY works if you have an 11th...
The DPRK is not quite positioned to trade men/equipment for ground, since they lack the population and industrial capacity to play that game like we (US) did in WWII....





All the 'motivation' and 'tenacity' in the world matters not, if you are sending waves of infantry armed with AKs and grenades, against tanks firing canister shot...





Same applies to T-72M and earlier tanks against M1s (or the ROK equivalent)... And so on...




Oh, and the 'Hadji bomb tricks' only work when on offense... With the ROK on defense, IEDs are not a concern (for the US/ROK side, anyway)....
 

I'm not so sure it isn't working out the way they want, the DPRK still exists, they continue to make and sell missiles and work on a nuclear program while sending hit squads, submarine saboteurs and sinking ships and getting oil, food, $ and South Korean trade and tourism.

Also, if the sinking of the ship and it's crew is far beyond anything, why hasn't the ROK begun attacking the DPRK already? As you and others have stated many times in this and other threads, the ROK can pound the DPRK into the dust, so why haven't they?

When you say "go time" does that mean the ROK attacks the DPRK? Does the ROK or the USA or both of them fly and drop bombs on the DPRK? This then is supposed to create an uprising and overthrow of the communists followed by peaceful unification of a democratic Korea? Is that what you're implying? If not, please clarify.

I would like to read more details than "we got the tools, we got the technology, it's Miller time" but then that's probably because I'm not so convinced that civilian casualties on either side will be as light and acceptably minimal after all the carpet bombing and tactical nukes as others posts make it out to be.

So , you all feel that if the ROK does something to 'avenge' the chenoan , that it might just make dear leader mad enough to do something?



There's a good deal of people out there that seem to think dear leader is dying, and might just try to go to war with the ROK prior to his demise.

Well, these are some rather detailed and very convincing posts but with all this common knowledge that's been laid out in this thread, I really don't understand why it's been close to 20 years of waiting, let's do this thing already "Leroy Jenkins"...

So when should I book a flight to see my unharmed and newly liberated family in a unified Korea? Because that's all I really care about.

T-55s vs M-1 Abrams, ROK Marines vs DPRK Special Forces, 1960s AAA vs hellfire missiles, tactical nukes vs infantry, etc. not so much.

As you so aptly stated previously every major geo-political player involved really wants to maintain the status quo.  Plus, anecdotally speaking, I don't think the south wants to attack the north.  But if the north attacks, the south will respond accordingly..

Part of the problem is the people in South Korea have become numb to the insane bullshit that NK has pulled over the past 50 years. Seoul is a modern city with a lot of wealth there. People do not want to sacrifice what they have worked for. Companies doing business with the north do not want to boycot because they will lose money. College kids have a comforable life in Seoul and they are not interested in the tit for tat the two Koreas have gone through over the years. They care more about music, ipads, video games and looking like metrosexuals to get the girls.

If dear numb nuts is really dying I can see him trying to nuke the South to make his father proud of him the afterlife or even going after Japan. Hopefully, one of the other nut jobs in the north would kill him before hand seeing the bigger picture.

Okay, so having the best gun in the world that's locked in your cabinet isn't much use against a criminal standing in front of you with a baseball bat, so what does it matter if ROK Marines are tough as nails or F-22s could take out the entire North Korean air force, etc. if they're not aren't a factor. The DPRK sunk a ROK ship killing it's crew, the DPRK continues to make missiles with longer range and improve a nuclear program while repressing Koreans horribly. Now what? Because all I see is the DPRK continues along despite the superiority of the ROK and USA militaries.

Nothing will change until South Korea and the U.S. both have presidents that have the balls to do what is needed. Until then, the games continue.

Speaking of KATUSA troops being lazy...my last time I was there, we had two. One was the son of the ROK ambassador to Italy. He spoke perfect italian and perfect english, with a slight midwestern accent, having grown up outside of Fort Riley. He was almost done with his BA, and planning to take the foreign service exams when he got out of the ROK Army.



Our other KATUSA had his BS from SUNY Binghamton in economic accounting, whatever the fuck that is. His english wasn't as good, but he was a fantastic trooper. I would venture to guess he was slightly underpaid at 65 bucks a month.  Neither of them was ever late, came to work smelling like the last night's drunk, or complained about their jobs. Additionally, they kept their rooms and uniforms spotless, like one would expect of their American counterparts. Meanwhile, we had an American staff sergeant who would sometimes "forget" that a belt was part of the uniform and show up with pants sagging.



Are they lazy? I suppose it depends on who's supervising. I've seen a KATUSA mowing grass while a barely literate American Specialist who can barely speak english yelled at him to hurry up. I can imagine that might breed a bit of resentment on the KATUSA's part.

We both know the answer to that is 'if/when Kim gets nutty enough to attack the ROK'....



Otherwise, status-quo...



My interest in this thread, is with the folks who think that the US can't beat a sheer-numbers human-wave military...





 

For decades our strategic and tactical doctrine was built around defence against massed infantry/armor attacks with massed artillery support. It's the one type of attack that we've litterally documented, simulated, planned, and contingency planned for every possibility. Much of that planning having been done with ROK central command.

This isn't the 1960's.

North Korea has no one in The West of any influence supporting their position.

Please, you're really, really going out on a limb here. This is a completely invalid comparison, A humanitarian mission gone wrong vs. full war on the Korean Peninsula?

Sadly, this is probably true.

The West you say....interesting.

What really matters is sentiment in South Korea and the US. And as I said, NK has no one of influence in those nations to prop up their position.

Incoming artillery would mean the counter battery fire would be seconds away.  Before their next rounds are loaded, their location is known.  Before the second shot leaves the tube, counter battery fire is outbound.



They might get 2 rounds out before their active artillery is turned into scrap steel.  



 

Anyone remember what happened to the last million man army with 1960s and 1970s era technology that tried to invade and conquer the neighbor to its south? Remember how well that all worked out for them when we became involved? That is basically what a North Korean invasion of South Korea would look like, the only difference being, it wouldn't take us from August to mid January to deliver our reply. Nor would the ROK be the soft target the Kuwaitis were.

North Korea possesses a conventional army. Fighting conventional armies is our bread and butter. From the end of WWII until very recently, fighting against numerically superior conventional forces was what we spent all of our time training and equipping to do. We are good at it. Our equipment is good. The same applies to South Korean forces.

The whole topic of this thread is what sort of threat does NK pose for SK? Most people have correctly recognized that outside NK's ability to launch a massive artillery strike against Seoul that they have very little capability to threaten SK. If they attempted to attack SK in mass, they would be slaughtered. Period. This isn't underestimating the NORKS at all. It is a simple observation of what happens when large 3rd world armies equipped with 1960s era equipment decides to take on a modern army (with a super power ally) equipped with late model stuff.

North Korea simply isn't going to launch a massive invasion of the South. They can't. And they know this. Otherwise they would have tried long before now. They could cause serious damage to Seoul if they elected to hit them with a massive, pre-emptive artillery strike. But they'd pay dearly for doing so and would gain nothing for their troubles. Otherwise, the only action they can take against the South is through propaganda or small scale attempts to sabotage or assassinate South Korean leaders. All of this stuff they've tried before. They actually came close to pulling off an assassination in the late 1960s. And they've attempted sabotage on numerous occasions using small team commando raids. But they really don't have the capability to do much more. And they certainly don't possess the capability to militarily conquer SK. Hell, even their attempts at infiltrating SK with their agents to subvert the SK government (which they have attempted for decades) has failed miserably.

Yes, NK could do a lot of damage to the Seoul area if push comes to shove. Yes, both the US and the ROK would lose people in a head to head fight. But the victory would be so lopsided in our favor that it would resemble the Gulf War in 1991. A combined US/ROK effort against the North would be a massacre of grand proportions.

That said, I hope it doesn't come to that. Even though we would win and win convincingly, that still doesn't mean it would be pretty. I don't want to see hundreds or thousands of South Korean civilians die in shelling. And I don't want to see any US or ROK troops die if at all possible. Nor do I think our economy needs another war or our military commitments stretched any further. But none of those things change the ultimate outcome of a ROK/US vs NORK fight. If they are really stupid enough to engage in a head to head fight, then the ROK/US will ream them a new asshole, or maybe several of them.

I hope you're right



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GH05Dg03.html

Aug 5, 2005

Politics of anti-Americanism in South Korea
By Sheila Miyoshi Jager  

After 1991, the communist threat vanished and in its wake stood a shell of a nation, abandoned by history, and seeking some way to survive. Suddenly, North Korea no longer appeared so threatening, and with the South's military junta now out of power, South Koreans found themselves able to say things about their northern neighbor that they could not say before. The result of all this is that South Koreans, freed from the imperatives of the anti-communist line, began to think very differently about their former Cold War enemy as well as about the United States. Roh’s “policy of peace and prosperity” toward North Korea, building on the approach of the earlier Kim Dae-jung administration, interprets Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons primarily as a defensive strategy and advocates a policy of engagement with the North to ease tensions between the two countries.

These post-Cold War political reevaluations of North Korea, predicated on the recognition of the enormous human costs in the event of a North Korean collapse or resumption of the Korean War, and viewing North Korea as a blighted but basically benign enemy in need of prodding and support, is shared by many younger South Koreans born after the war. Their views have had enormous repercussions not only on the way South Koreans now perceive their wartime past but their future. Whereas North Korean brutality was central to the official story of the war until the 1990s, the focus has now shifted to reexamining American culpability and misdeeds during the conflict. This trend has also contributed to the rise of popular anti-American sentiments in South Korea that in turn has fueled tensions between the Roh and Bush administrations as they seek to find a resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis.

While anti-Americanism is not new to South Korea, what is new is that anti-American sentiments appear to have spread into almost all strata of South Korean society, ranging from elite government policymakers and intellectuals to the middle class and younger generation. While the sources of tensions are many, it is the changing perception of North Korea that has had the most profound impact on US-ROK relations in recent years.

In a major speech in Los Angeles in November 2004, Roh shocked Washington by declaring that there was some justification for North Korean claims to a right to develop nuclear weapons and missiles in order to protect itself against external threats (of course, he did not name that threat). In January 2005, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, in a major speech in Berlin, styled Korea as the “greatest victim of the Cold War” and stated that South Korea would not back down on the principles of “no war, peaceful coexistence, and common prosperity”.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about South Korea’s new relationship with Pyongyang is that it has encouraged the expression of a pan-Korean nationalism rooted in Korea’s self-image as victim. Park Geun-byung, a teacher at Song Chun elementary school in Seoul, uses a storybook that instructs his Grade 4 class about the tale of an evil dragon that prevents two lovers on either side of a wide river from marrying. The evil dragon is clearly the United States and the river is meant to represent the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Park is a believer in what he calls “unification education”.

Such depictions, while unsettling to Americans, resonate with the vast majority of Koreans who, from an early age, are schooled in their country’s long-suffering history of foreign invasions, occupation and national victimization. In the present context of a post-Cold War national division, these sentiments have fueled an intense form of pan-Korean nationalism, inclusive of both Koreas, by finding a common enemy to oppose. (The rise of popular anti-Japanese sentiments in South Korea, sparked by the recent dispute over sovereignty claims to Tokdo Islands, is just the most recent example of this trend).

Even the conservative Grand National Party lodged a petition demanding a revision of the SOFA. “The aggressive US policy has forced South Koreans to change their perception of what an ally is,” said Representative Kim Won-ung of the Grand National Party. “In the past, a country that helped deter war here was an ally.

Attempts to rewrite North Korea back into a shared and ongoing history of national struggle and triumph over foreign adversity - a familiar theme in Korean history - reveal the growing desire for the “normalization” of relations between the two Koreas. This shift has also brought a fundamental reevaluation in South Korea of US-Korean relations as well as the legacy of the unfinished war that the United States is now seen as perpetuating.

Even MSNBC won't be showing the "good leader" of North Korea in a good light.

And Katie Couric won't be over there sitting on an NK AAA gun praising the "freedom fighters" of NK.

And Code Pink won't transform into "Code North Korea."

Any comparison of the Vietnam War to war on the Korean Peninsula is silly.

And anyone old enough to have lived through the Vietnam War years knows the difference.

A younger South Korean's desire to make peace with the north will be quickly diminished if the DPRK continues to set off nukes and sink ships, etc....  The very things that will push both sides into an open war.

Realistically, the South may respond to this incident by sinking a DPRK sub, or ship.  Maybe bombing a military base if they are really pissed.  If so, that may lead to more tit for tat strikes and counter strikes that could lead to full scale war.

Neither the US, China, nor the ROK wants that outcome, mostly because no one wants to deal with the resulting humanitarian crises of millions of refugees from the north.  But there is no guarantee that cooler heads will prevail (see WWI)  And you really just can't let the DPRK sink a ship and do nothing more than send a strongly worded letter.

If the DPRK thinks that China will come to it's aid militarily, or that anyone else will, they need to put down the crack pipe.  China has made it very clear that they are sick of the "Great Leaders" bullshit, and that their only interest is in stability.

Many of the Koreans were ungrateful SOBs but not all of them.  I reminded those that brought up how they didn't want us there that we didn't want to be here either, there are real wars to fight, not this limp dicked effort to do nothing...   They're really no different than most of  the rest of the world, they are jealous of America but still want what is in their best interest (our generousity).

Guantanamo, water boarding controversies, proposed terror trials in NYC, relocating terrorist into US prisons and giving them US residency, withdraw from Iraq, Obama not deploying all the troops requested, announcing July 2011 as an end goal date, nor getting enough support from NATO allies for trainers, reading miranda rights, new ROE for bombing to avoid civilian casualties in Afghanistan, GD is replete with complaints about liberals and the GWOT. But Korea is different? I would think 9/11 hits home more than some "land war in Asia".

Kim Jong Il won't be around much longer, like his father before him. Now what?

Liberals haven't been a factor in the press with Iraq and Afghanistan in the USA and also in Europe? It sounds like you'd like to fight 1950 again but I promise you the DPRK will not follow that approach again. Also, in the PRC and in the DPRK it's taught that the USA attacked and China protected the DPRK from invasion and take over. Not saying that's true but that's what they believe. They use the Gulf of Tokin as an example.

You mean like the way overwhelming US artillery, naval gunfire and air power  superiority stopped all those dug in Japanese guns on Pelilue, Iwo Jima and Okinawa after they only managed to fire off at most 2 rounds?

I am. Attitudes change quickly when bombs and shells start falling and people begin dying.

The difference being modern artillery is more accurate and we have the means to pinpoint its origin. We could only make educated guesses in WWII. Add to that bunker buster technology and I'm not sure it's a fair comparison.

North Korea does not have deep penetrating GPS guided long range artillery shells.  The artillery capability of the North Koreans is not that significantly advanced over what was available during WWII, and that means they'll have the same problem as in WWII.  That is to say, hitting the heavily re-enforced fortifications won't be the problem, but penetrating them will be.  Modern counter-battery artillery today is all automated.  It will detect and track incoming shells, and target originating point and return fire before the first shell lands.  We've been able to do that for the last 20 years at least.  With newer counter-artillery systems that are fully integrated, systems that can detect and track incoming shells, sound an alarm, target origination fire counter mortars and artillery and fire 20mm cannons that destroy the in-bound enemy shells all before the first shell lands.  On top of that, in testing, only 20% of the incoming shells even made it too their targets.

Heprdy derp. Artillery couldn't have possibly advanced in the last 60 years could it?

That's an interesting concept.

Do you think the South would go forth and bring an end to what started in 1950 if they had a free rein?  (Real question)

I thought she was talking about the effectiveness of the propaganda, which was the decisive factor in how our involvement in VN ended.