Korea was a forerunner to Vietnam fought right at the start of the Cold War. Korea had been under Japanese control since before WW2, and with Japan ousted, America was left running it and trying to set up a native democratic government, while Russia and China tried to turn it into a Communist puppet nation. This resulted in a division between North and South Korea along the 38th parallel as a peace treaty in 1950, with South Korea being democratic, and North Korea being communist, although communist guerillas continued fighting to overthrow democratic South Korea. Not long after, North Korea's Kim il-Sung decided not to settle for half, and invaded along with Chinese (and unofficial Russian air force) support, initially driving the South into a corner, and even with increasing American involvement, until only a tiny portion of southeast Korea remained outside communist control. ("They shall not pass" mission is presumably this.) The turnaround came with an amphibious landing at Inchon Harbor ("Turning Point" mission), designed to create a second front to relieve the besieged forces further south. This was wildly successful, and American forces quickly regained control of South Korea. However, against orders presidential orders, and in the face of a direct threat of open Chinese involvement in the war, General Douglas MacArthur crossed over the 38th parallel to invade North Korea and unite Korea. This led to the then-controversial decision to fire MacArthur, who was seen as a hero by most of the American public. This was initially successful, but China (and increasingly Russia) followed through on their threats of open involvement in the war, sending far more communist troops and slowing then reversing American advances (which would span from that "Chinese Funeral" back to "New Year's Day Offensive" mission). Eventually, after winding up fairly close to the starting battle lines, a cease fire was drawn up.
Note that the Korean War never officially ended. North and South Korea (and America and China) have been officially at war for nearly 70 years with just a "temporary cease fire" that has never ended. This is why the heavily militarized border between the two Koreas has armed guards on it paid to take shifts staring each other down all day every day for their whole careers just in case today's the day some nutball wants to restart the war. (Which will be fought with nukes and artillery, anyway, so the soldiers are just there to maybe trip the alarm and definitely add to the body count.)
If it restarted total warfare style, fighting would still be fairly similar to other wars as there are a lot of limitations in the use of successfully deploying WMD (which do not have the shock and awe factor that would completely kill resistance the way most modern forces are setup), and artillery naturally is limited. I think the biggest difference that we haven't fully seen yet would be a much larger presence in electronic warfare from jamming to meaconing due to the increased dependence on networking.
Realistically though, I think any conflict is/would be cloak and dagger, super squirrel secret stuff. The Cold War really never ended with the USSR collapsed, the threat just switched. If an overt war occurred, I think it would just be a relatively minor front for things happening in the background considering that the Korean War has a lot of political and logistical consequences today.
And of course, there's the nuclear program that has the capability to reach the United States now because Putin gave the North Koreans Russian missile technology to allow North Korea to do so, especially in the last couple years. The Kim family has pursued nuclear weapons explicitly because they see the US as an existential threat to their survival, and they're not rational actors and WILL launch nukes if cornered.
North Korea absolutely does have cyber warfare capabilities, but it's not like they're holding back on it - North Korea's only real economic activity is creating ransomware and using that money to keep the regime afloat.
All articles say it's still happening. North Korea has even stopped broadcasting their loudspeaker propaganda over the border and switched their time zone to match the South.
All the articles that pop up on a Google search for things like "Korea war ending" are from February or last Fall. Everything fell through just a couple weeks ago, so make sure you're looking up current articles.
darkspire91 said:
It was canceled for a year. Whoop-de-doo.
What did they get, exactly? No sanctions were lifted, so...
You severely underestimate how much North Korea has always wanted those joint training exercises to end. (Keep in mind, "training exercises" have always been how countries like Russia have excused military buildups to invade other countries. That's how the invasion of Ukraine started, for example. In fact, the same goes for several of Hitler's invasions.) The training exercises were always seen as one of the best bargaining chips America had, and it's now been cashed in for nothing.
Again, that isn't the case at all. The biggest bargaining chip we have is the one Trump created, the sanctions. If what you said was true, then Vietnam summit would have never happened. After all, by your stance Kim got what he wanted (again, Trump had already discussed the issues of other countries not pulling their weight over a year ago), so why would Kim show up to negotiate offering a partial de-nuke?
Wow... It's hard to know where to start with this...
OK, so you DO realize that North Korea has been sanctioned since the war 'ended', right? Also, the sort of sanctions being leveled against North Korea are meaningless unless they are backed by an international coalition, because it's not like North Korea's been doing that much business in the United States for us to actually have the ability to do anything to them financially, which is why they've been under UN sanctions for decades. They were, however, significantly upped as punishment for the nuclearization... during the Bush Administration and onwards by a unanimous vote of the UN security council.
Which brings us to how the sanctions are pretty toothless, considering as the Chinese and Russians are brazenly breaking the embargoes and trading with North Korea explicitly to keep it afloat and as a weapon against the United States. North Korea's still a shitshow because it's so badly mismanaged, but China in particular has a vested interest in feeding it whatever resources it needs not to collapse because they don't want millions of refugees from a collapsed state crossing their border. Putin, meanwhile, has been doing it just to undermine the US.
Also, while Steve Mnuchin has been trying to sanction North Korea, Trump's been repeatedly trying to lift the sanctions just because he "fell in love" with Kim Jong Un against the efforts of his own treasury department, state department, and congress, including just recently announcing on Twitter he was lifting sanctions placed on 'North Korea' (which turned out to refer to two Chinese countries caught breaking the sanctions, but Trump was confused). Trump also cited the sanctions being bad for jobs in China as a reason. (Just because a government body - which might not even be the United States - does something doesn't mean Trump did it. For that matter, just because Trump declares something doesn't mean he's doing it, as he's frequently made utterly hollow claims or made false signing ceremonies over no actual policy change. It's hard for "Trump said X" to mean much when he only SAYS it, and then does the opposite tomorrow or even when "The Trump White House" does something, and then he actively works against that the next day depending on who he listened to in the last 5 minutes.)
But beyond that, Kim wanted all he could get, as well as the publicity and legitimacy of making a world leader come and shake hands with him. This is why he loved having Dennis Rodman come over even though there was absolutely nothing on the table, there. He wanted what he could get before he inevitably reneged on whatever deal would involve losing the nukes, because North Korea has never moved from the stance that they consider nukes necessary for the continued survival of the regime. In some of the news reports leading up to the talks, there were things that Kim was willing to negotiate over, like that "actually ending the war" thing or foreign worker programs or easing tensions with South Korea that were on the table so long as North Korea kept its nukes, but, as that previously linked article stated, John Bolton appears to have gotten Trump to insist on total denuclearization first as a means of deliberately scuttling the whole deal, since, after all, it's John Bolton, and he prefers war.
Also, please try to cite a source when you make claims countering ones that have cited sources. If we're allowed to just claim anything we think we may have seen once on /pol/ is true sight unseen, these conversations just become a lot of "nuh-unh".
Again, that isn't the case at all. The biggest bargaining chip we have is the one Trump created, the sanctions. If what you said was true, then Vietnam summit would have never happened. After all, by your stance Kim got what he wanted (again, Trump had already discussed the issues of other countries not pulling their weight over a year ago), so why would Kim show up to negotiate offering a partial de-nuke?
You mean the summit that ended with Trump leaving while sources give contradictory reports as to what, exactly, the North Koreans were asking for and what we were going to do. North Korea is sort of in the position of East Germany in that they need to spend most of their time trying to keep themselves alive as a state and a major part of this is clamping down on their own population tighter than a hard to think of metaphor.
This is just me, but I think more than anything Trump, or the United States or anyone said or did, the collapse of one of their testing sites is what led to them changing their turn since at least for awhile they didn't have anything else to do get people's attention. With reports that they are trying to get a new site up, and that they so far have managed to get a lot of promises from us while they've done fuck all on their end.
The training exercises have always been a show of force, primarily led by America because we wanted it. I don't get this transnational viewpoint that everyone we work with has to be 50/50 with us. We flex our muscles for a reason, and that's to show what we have and make Stalin's ghost jealous. Trump is obsessed with appeasing his base, and he will do anything and promise anything to keep them happy, even if it has massive issues since he'll just deflect and obfuscate until he foams at the mouth and falls over backwards, never letting anyone get a word in edgewise.
And of course, there's the nuclear program that has the capability to reach the United States now because Putin gave the North Koreans Russian missile technology to allow North Korea to do so, especially in the last couple years. The Kim family has pursued nuclear weapons explicitly because they see the US as an existential threat to their survival, and they're not rational actors and WILL launch nukes if cornered.
North Korea absolutely does have cyber warfare capabilities, but it's not like they're holding back on it - North Korea's only real economic activity is creating ransomware and using that money to keep the regime afloat.
Most of North Korea's artillery can't even reach the northern edge of metropolitan Seoul, and that which can has to be concentrated north of the DMZ in a very limited area, where South Korean and US forces can counter-battery that artillery with brutal efficiency due to the limited number of adequate sites for the size of artillery we're talking about. Add in the massive number of duds shells within North Korea's arsenal, and the concentration thousand of Chinese expats in the Northern Seoul Metropolitan area, and North Korea's ability to actually threaten Seoul with conventional artillery is hugely overblown. https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-the-gap-between-rhetoric-and-reality/