{"id":4899,"date":"2013-04-11T09:04:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4899"},"modified":"2013-04-11T09:04:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T13:04:00","slug":"scary-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4899","title":{"rendered":"Scary North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Post has an interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2013\/04\/10\/graphic-north-koreas-conventional-arms\/\">set of infographics<\/a> detailing the strength of North Korea&#8217;s conventional forces.<\/p>\n<p>I made an attempt to create a condensed version:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2013\/04\/10\/graphic-north-koreas-conventional-arms\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4900\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/dprk_forces_small.png\" width=\"583\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/dprk_forces_small.png 583w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/dprk_forces_small-300x257.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 583px) 100vw, 583px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But if it&#8217;s too condensed, it kind of loses its punch, so it might be wiser to study the original. The bottom line: they have a scary number of surface ships, submarines, landing craft, torpedoes, aircraft both relatively modern (e.g., Mig-29) and ancient (biplanes!), and a huge army with a large number of artillery pieces, shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, SCUDs, you name it. Probably some non-conventional (chemical) stuff, too, that they would not hesitate to use. And on top of that, maybe a few crude nukes, albeit without decent delivery systems.<\/p>\n<p>Then again&#8230; remember Saddam Hussein&#8217;s scary conventional army back in 1991, the world&#8217;s third or fourth largest at the time, and battle-tested during the Iraq-Iran war, equipped with SCUDs and WMDs? Didn&#8217;t do him much good, did it. Seeing SCUDs arrive in Saudi neighborhoods was a scary sight, but in the end, the damage they did was negligible. So maybe the numbers do not tell the whole story after all.<\/p>\n<p>Still, a war in the Korean peninsula would be devastating for South Korea especially, but also for the world economy. And although I have no doubt that North Korea would vanish as a result, reintegrating the North would be a task that&#8217;s perhaps even harder than winning the war.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4899' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Post has an interesting set of infographics detailing the strength of North Korea&#8217;s conventional forces. I made an attempt to create a condensed version: But if it&#8217;s too condensed, it kind of loses its punch, so it might be wiser to study the original. The bottom line: they have a scary number of <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4899' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-politics","category-25-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4903,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions\/4903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}