North Korea; If, Why, and When?

It has become apparent that in this day and age warfare has become more diverse than ever leaving many United States citizens and its allies feeling uneasy on both political sides.

With the entire world on notice; Hermit Kingdom leader Kim Jong Un and his predecessors have vowed that North Korea could sustain itself without globalizing its economy and resources with the rest of the world. They refer to this idealism as the Juche theory translating to self-reliance or independent stability. After the Korean War came to standstill in 1953 with a ceasefire being agreed on by both sides, both countries began to rebuild their infrastructures and sustainable resources; meanwhile the damage done to the North was unknown to most of the world due to lack of modern day media and news outlets that would have covered the destruction if this took place today. My main purpose of this piece is the want to provide a little insight on to how much damage was actually done to North Korea during the three-year war, and why they teach death to American citizens to their up and coming generations.

If

Let’s fast forward a little bit and discuss what would happen if Kim Jong Un decided to use his newly acquired intercontinental ballistic missiles; that he claims can fit nuclear war heads in the crown and/or base of. While most of the common population believes that we would just shoot nuclear bombs at each other and that it would be some sort of war-torn apocalypse, my belief and with good reason is that this wouldn’t be the case. Few American military strategists believe that if a bomb was launched toward the American mainland from the North, we would be able to shoot it down with our newly and somewhat functioning THAAD system. This stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense but this weapon has not been mastered and is considered unreliable by many world (not US) officials. In the event that a missile was launched, my thoughts would be that the regime would understand that immediate retaliation would come by land, sea and air. A couple times a year, Japanese, South Korean, and American forces host what they call the annual war games in which they practice precession strikes in the event that Kim decided world peace was no longer an option. You would see a coalition of 3 different super powers fighting a hermit nation that is only sustaining itself with the threat of holding a major American or South Korean city hostage by nuclear missile. A matter of fact, the people that are most concerned right now with the world’s most erratic leader is the North’s neighbors to the south, and they’re former and current foes to the east, Japan. In WWII Japan invaded Korea and claimed it as part of the Japanese Empire. After the forces of Japan were defeated by the allies in 1945, Korea was given back to the people and the divided among the North and South. The North being backed at the time by Communist China/Russia; And the South being backed by a newly victorious democratic United States. Whilst the North eventually invaded the south and claimed it was trying to “bring unity back to Korea,” it was met with firm resistance by the United States military. The idea was to stop the spread of communism among all costs.

Why?

What a lot of people don’t know about the Korean war is that the U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, on North Korea, more than during the entire Pacific campaign of World War II. If you’re unfamiliar with what napalm is, it is a flammable liquid that was used in both Korea and Vietnam. It is a mixture of a gelling agent and either gasoline or a similar fuel that catalysts bombs into waves of fire that can spread miles. Put that into perspective, 92 percent of North Korean infrastructures like power plants, dams, run-ways and military bases were heavily damaged to a point of which they were no longer accessible. Every major city including Pyongyang had 80 percent of its buildings and housing shelters destroyed, causing catastrophic losses. So why are North Korea children taught in school “Death to the American imperialists?” and why do they have military parades that chant anti-west ideologies? They know us as the only enemy. These people are brainwashed into believing that they are a military equal to the rest of the world even though they have underdeveloped nuclear weapons as well as scarce resources labeling them as an ongoing famished nation.

When

By saying when, I’m not inferring that ‘When we go to war.’ When I say ‘When,’ I am referring to a time table on when this will all be resolved. Right now there is no argument that the United States has the most unpredictable president that has ever sat in the oval office which makes these tensions all the much higher. The fact is, is that Donald Trump has made comments towards Kim like ‘Little Rocket Man’ and how he’d be met with ‘fire and fury that the world has never seen before.’ This has to makes Kim feel pressured and threatened more than he ever has. Under the Obama administration, the cabinet felt that avoiding the North Koreans and letting them drive themselves into the ground was the only efficient way of dealing with the hermit kingdom without the use of warfare and casualties. Now, as the North continues its missile testing and complete disregard of the United Nations sanctions, I hope that one of these four leaders can conclude a solution in which nobody is hurt, and peace is restored in the peninsula. Though I don’t believe this will happen for possibly another decade and the idea is far from promising, a violent approach to this disputed point will only make things worse, and end in the deaths of millions of people in East Asia.