[Vision2020] North Korea’s Simple But Deadly Artillery Holds Seoul And U.S. Hostage

Wed Apr 19 13:08:07 PDT 2017

Huff Post, April 19, 2017

“These perfectly positioned offensive artillery firing positions are
virtually impenetrable, extremely difficult to take out by counterfire.”

Burrowed into hard granite mountain faces and protected behind blast doors,
15,000 North Korean cannons and rocket launchers are aimed at the glass
skyscrapers, traffic-choked highways and blocks of apartment buildings 35
miles away in Seoul ― and the U.S. military bases beyond.

In a matter of minutes, these heavy, low-tech weapons could begin the
destruction of the South Korean capital with blizzards of glass shards,
collapsed buildings and massive casualties that would decimate this vibrant
U.S. ally and send shock waves through the global economy.

Unlike the undefended Syrian airfield struck by U.S. tomahawk missiles or
the Afghan caves destroyed this month by the largest non-nuclear bomb ever
used by the U.S. military
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-moab-bombing-afghanistan_us_58f066e3e4b0b9e9848af45e>,
U.S. air attacks can’t quickly or easily destroy North Korean guns.

This is why North Korea has shrugged off U.S. threats to end the country’s
nuclear weapons program, or answered them with oddly bellicose language
from its supreme leader, Kim Jong-Un. The most immediate risk is not that
North Korea might launch a nuclear-tipped missile. Instead, it’s a hostage
situation: In effect, Kim is daring President Donald Trump
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/donald-trump> to attack while holding
a gun to the head of South Korea.

Even a short burst of artillery shells could set off a panic in Seoul, a
metropolitan area populated with 25 million people. The city has barriers
that would make evacuation a nightmare: It’s intersected by the Han River
and bordered by mountains to the south and west.

That hard reality is why Trump is quietly turning aside from bluster and
taunts ― “North Korea is a problem
<http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/13/trump-says-north-korea-problem-will-be-taken-care-of.html>
; the problem will be taken care of,” he vowed last week ― and posturing
with an aircraft carrier strike group
<https://www.navytimes.com/articles/korea-crisis-deepens-as-the-us-dispatches-the-carl-vinson-strike-group-to-the-region>.
(That strike group, however, actually initially set out in the opposite
direction from North Korea
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/world/asia/aircraft-carrier-north-korea-carl-vinson.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1>
.)

Instead, Trump is exploring diplomacy, just as presidents before him have
done. That means backing down from criticizing China and asking for help.
As national security adviser H.R. McMaster acknowledged Sunday
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-high-alert-north-korea/story?id=46819310>
, the U.S. will “have to rely on Chinese leadership” to deal with North
Korea.

So far, at least, the embedded North Korean artillery has effectively
blocked any overt military action to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons
program.

“These perfectly positioned offensive artillery firing positions are
virtually impenetrable, extremely difficult to take out by counterfire,”
said retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales. “The terrain greatly favors
the North, this arc of south-facing granite mountainsides just over the
[Demilitarized Zone], in a position to pummel Seoul for weeks on end.” This
leaves South Korea and the U.S. “with very little real capability to
respond.”

Scales, decorated for combat valor during the Vietnam War, later served in
Korea as a battalion commander and ultimately as an assistant commander of
the 2nd Infantry Division. A frontal assault on the Korean guns by ground
forces could be suicidal, he said. “You look at that terrain with a
soldier’s eye, and … ‘holy shit!’” he told The Huffington Post.
STR VIA GETTY IMAGES
This undated picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central
News Agency on April 14 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (center)
inspecting the “Dropping and Target-striking Contest of KPA Special
Operation Forces - 2017” at an undisclosed location in North Korea. He has
overseen a special forces commando operation, state media said on April 13,
as tensions soar with Washington over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

The North Koreans “pose a threat today, with their hundreds of thousands of
rockets within rocket range of Seoul, to the 28,500 American troops that
are posted there, their families, the hundreds of thousands of Americans
who work in Korea, and our Korean ally and Japan,” Adm. Harold B. Harris,
the senior U.S. military commander in the Pacific, told
<https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/16-02-23-us-pacific-command-and-us-forces-korea>the
Senate Armed Services Committee last year.

It’s not known whether any of those guns are fitted with shells containing
chemical or biological agents. But Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, formerly
the top U.S. commander in South Korea, told the committee last year that
“they have probably one of the largest chemical and bio stockpiles ―
chemical, in particular, but bio capability ― around the world.”

It is true, as critics point out, that many of these North Korean guns are
old, obsolete and lack sophisticated fire control systems. But artillery,
unlike jet fighters or tanks, can be kept operational with relatively
little maintenance. And the relatively new 300-millimeter rocket launchers
<https://www.nknews.org/2014/03/the-threat-of-north-koreas-new-rocket-artillery/>
can
simultaneously fire 12 rockets with high explosive, incendiary or chemical
warheads to targets over 100 miles away.

“North Korea is powerless to prevent a U.S. strike on its nuclear program,
but retaliation is well within its means,” according to a new report
<https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/how-north-korea-would-retaliate>by
Stratfor, a geopolitical strategic forecasting firm.

A single volley from the North Korean artillery, the report said, “could
deliver more than 350 metric tons of explosives across the South Korean
capital, roughly the same amount of ordnance dropped by 11 B-52 bombers.”

Vice President Mike Pence visited the DMZ on the border between North and
South Korea this week, scowling in the direction of the mountains to the
north and warning that American “strategic patience is over.” Pence agreed
to hasten the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
<https://www.mda.mil/system/thaad.html> missile defenses in South Korea,
which are capable of intercepting ballistic missiles launched from the
north. The anti-missile system, currently under construction, is due to be
completed shortly anyway.

But the THAAD system is useless against the North Korean artillery, which
fires shells difficult to intercept because of their smaller size and lower
altitude than ballistic missiles. And even air attacks would be difficult.
The North Korean artillery emplacements are concentrated in a narrow line
roughly 45 miles wide. U.S. strike jets would have to operate inside this
narrow “kill box” while dodging anti-aircraft and missile fire. The North
Korean artillery positions are fitted with blast doors that open briefly
for firing and then close while the weapon is reloaded, further narrowing
the opportunity for an effective air strike.

That’s a demanding mission, far more difficult than the unopposed strike
missions over Iraq and Afghanistan attacking undefended targets in open
terrain.

North Korean anti-aircraft weapons “are not all that impressive,” Scales
said, “but there’s lots of them.” Could the North Korea guns be taken down?
“Sure, over time,” he said. “But by the time we do that, the damage they’d
inflict on Seoul would just be staggering.”

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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