Washington, Pentagon. The American war planners are all focused upon how to destroy North Korea, but little thought is being given to the sheer number of deaths an outbreak of hostilities would cause.
Should the United States strike North Korea, Kim Jong Un’s regime would retaliate by unleashing its conventional weaponry lined up on the demilitarized zone that has separated the two Koreas ever since the Korean war in 1950.
With tensions between North Korea and the outside world having risen over the past month, there has been increasing talk about the United States using military force either to preempt a North Korean provocation or to respond to one.
That talk continues even after it emerged that the Navy has not sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the Korean Peninsula region, as officials, including President Trump, had said, causing many to question the mental stability of the American President.
Most of the recent focus has been on North Korea’s ambition to be able to strike the continental United States with a missile, the people of South Korea have been living under the constant threat of a conventional North Korean attack for decades.
North Korea has a tremendous amount of artillery right opposite Seoul, the Second Corps of the Korean People’s Army stationed at Kaesong on the northern side of the DMZ has about 500 artillery pieces according to military intelligence experts.
All the artillery pieces in the Second Corps can reach the northern outskirts of Seoul, just 30 miles from the DMZ, but the largest projectiles could fly to the south of the capital. About 25 million people or half of the South Korean population live in the greater Seoul metropolitan area.
If North Korea were to start unleashing its artillery on the South, it would be able to fire about 4,000 rounds an hour state a 2012 intelligence report. There would be 2,811 fatalities in the initial volley and 64,000 people could be killed that first day, the majority of them in the first three hours experts caution.
This goes a long way in explaining why Donald Trump’s actions are far more important than his threats.