Threatened North Korean Nuclear Test Will Lead to North Korea’s Downfall

North Korea is moving toward conducting a nuclear test and some nations involved in the six-way talks with North Korea are threatening to take the North Korean problem to the U.N. Security Council. Pyongyang has said that if the Security Council imposes sanctions that it would consider it a “declaration of war.”

What could the North Koreans do?

They could attack South Korea with the third largest army in the world, or hit Japan with Nodong missiles, or attack U.S. Navy ships that are in the region.

But it’s more likely they would do something to keep the United States and South Korea off-balance and not get into a shooting war with them. The North Koreans might do this by attacking the vast US/South Korean minefields that are between the two Koreas with heavy artillery fire and then stopping once the minefields in the DMZ and south of the DMZ were reduced or neutralized.

The U.S. has used these mines to keep the million-soldier North Korean Army from crossing the DMZ for decades, and North Korea employs minefields of it's own to keep the U.S./UN/South Korean armies from invading the North (or to keep their own people from escaping south). It is estimated that there are over a million mines planted into the DMZ (here's a report). And that's just the mines used by South Korea and the U.S.!

This would fit into North Korea’s pattern of negotiation. They always like to talk from a position of strength. But if they persist in their recklessness they may find themselves embroiled in a war that they cannot win. It would mean the end of North Korea as we know it (a united Korea free from communism would be good, but not at the cost of thousands of Korean, American and Japanese lives).

It’s very doubtful that it would escalate into a localized nuclear exchange between the United States military and North Korea, but if a war were to start, there’s no telling how it might end. The loss of life could be catastrophic.

North Korea’s communist government has to realize that it’s finished if the talks are unsuccessful. They have everything to lose by going forward with their nuclear weapons program. Hopefully they stop their blustering and start to talk business.

Then it can get around to...voting their government out of existence, outlawing the Communist Party, holding free elections and bringing their leaders up on crimes against humanity.