An Analysis of Size and Structure of the Army of Reunified Korea

nemo said:

Both North and South Korea has 4.5 million reserve -- and have stored old weapons for them. If they only used Northern reserves, the equipment for the Southern reserves can be used by the Northern reserves, if there are any shortages,

While US may not want to get into land war with China, they may offer air force on "humanitarian" ground. In that case, PLA will not have air superiority. Let's assume that US air-force will only conduct defensive operation.

What made you think unified Korean army will not have unit cohesion? In the short term they can have independent commands that retains the old chain of command. At very minimum, you can have intact subunits, reinforced by other intact subunits -- such as North Korean Infantry reinforced by South Korean mechanized units. Yes, you will have doctrinal conflicts, but you can have a unit predominately Northern or Southern and operates accordingly in the assigned area of operation.

Note neither Korean and PLA have actual combat experience -- what made you think PLA will have advantage?

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Does Korea, even united, have the industrial base for supplying an army of 5 million? I highly doubt it.

Why do you think the US air force will conduct "defensive" operations? Are you positing a Chinese invasion of Korea? If you are, then the US would have no reason to restrict itself to "defensive" operations. If you are not, then how are defensive operations supposed to help an invading army of Koreans?

As for you unit cohesion, do you seriously need to ask that question? Nevermind the fact that most NK military officers will have grown up hating SK guts, the simple fact that the two Korean militaries have vastly different military doctrines will ensure confusion in the chain of command. If this was a game of Starcraft, then yes, you can simply send the NK army forth as cannon fodder. However, if you're talking about real life, using such tactics will breed incredible resentment from the NK soldiers.

While neither PLA nor NK soldiers have any direct combat experience in full-out wars, the PLA has a doctrinal heritage (civil war, korea, vietnam) to draw upon while the NK military does not. Remember that the NK army was all but wiped out during the Korean war.

Ok. Let's assume this scenario.

United Korea either incites ethnic Koreans in Manchuria and/or send special forces posing as nationalists. China send troops to suppress, and Korea protests, invoke territorial claims, and send troops to protect its 'citizen'. US secretly involves in the war by repainting Korean insignia on US warplanes, but prohibit their use outside Korean territory, and ships military supply to Korea under cover. Since SK economy is still operating, it can afford to buy those supplies.

While NK hates SK, it can be argued that they hate China more then they hate each other. Yes, different treatment is going to cause resentment, but SK can offer financial inducement to alleviate that.

As for doctrine, NK is not exactly idiots and they do try to keep up with times, and they do have experience in special ops, if nothing else. SK have experience from cross training with US troops. They can work something out.

Let's break things down.

North Korea has a highly trained army on paper. I'm not sure it's the same on the ground because of the economic problems. These supply difficulties might make them devote lots of time to growing potatoes and be really good at that. But North Korea does have a good military reputation and is a major supplier of military training for African armies. I would count the professional core of the North Korean army as having a very combat proven education, giving confidence to their troops.

South Koreans have more and diverse food since childhood, this means they are on average more capable (mentally and physically) than their less fortunate brothers in arms. I wouldn't dare to compare their education systems, but because South Korea is good in comparison to other countries, I'd also say that because of better training at knowledge adaption the output of training, including military training, is amplified.

And of course, the South Koreans have more money to buy toys than the North that has to make do with other means. I wouldn't exactly count North Korea as China's pupil. They are influenced by Russia and China.

Russia and Mongolia are what remains of China's powerful northern neighbours, with all the horse-riding nomad threats becoming oblivion by motorized progress. Mongolia doesn't seem a threat on its own, but they are capable of serving as an excuse if Russia decides to support these "poor buggers" and reclaim some old Mongolia. Futhermore Mongolia is a nice geographic region for military operations, see Soviet final land battle against Japan to get a feeling of the geographic importance of Mongolia. What China and anyone else is unlikely to be afraid of, is the modern Mongolian army.

Korea, especially North Korea, has a much neglected narrative that sets them apart from China and would actually serve as the reason for them to go on a warpath with China. It's the cleanest race narrative
From that point of view it's only a matter of preparation before a unified Korea frees her nationals from other "dirty" peoples and China will be one of the places to start. Money for the political groundwork will likely be donated by industries with strong competition from China.
If Korea gets unified and the Korean border issue with China is not regarded as settled by the unified Koreans, then I would place my money on the Korean military to have the ability to get what they want by force and hold on to it. The war would be about a limited territorial grab of ancient lands (important psychological aspect) and a strong defense afterwards that exploits Chinese economic vulnerability to irregular naval warfare while keeping strong entrenched positions on land. The air control can be defended by a combination of light fighters and air defense, while China would need a several times more expensive force for an offensive achievement of air supremacy. You could also bet that the US wouldn't let the opportunity slip to test lots of new sensor arrays that give the Koreans the right information to hit and hurt back.

The large numbers of military trained males and females in Korea are likely not decisive in a human wave attack in a military conflict and most of them would serve away from the fighting zone. The advantage of such a large registration and training of military skills is that you can assemble a large force of high quality soldiers out of the available trained manpool and do have ready replacements that already know a bit about military matters, thus will be more open to the rapid wartime trainings. I count on a very capable Korean force of 1-1.5 million soldiers to start the conflict and sustain their numbers and quality even during a prolonged fight. On short notice Chinese commandos could face well-organized "militias" throughout Korea that outnumber and pin them down until better troops arrive to settle the issue. This large number of part-time soldiers in local defense readiness would only need infantry equipment and communications. I mention them because I believe WWII showed the way and countermeasures for commandos in conflicts between competitors of equal military skill.

So I bet on Korea in an armed conflict because the goals of a conflict would be more important to them than to China that could find a way to settle the issue without losing face. China and Korea could both strangle each other's economy (especially North Korean commandos are a feared force), but because of the importance of the national unity goal Korea would be willing to hold their breath for longer than their enemy.
China has to lose prestige from a possible conflict, but could win politically by establishing a precendence for armed national unity (Taiwan & ?) and by achieving a Korean neutrality (finlandizing it), thus on a global scale weakening the US position by moving much of shipbuilding capacity out of their alliance structure.

The likelihood of such an armed clash is small because the ends can be achieved by other means and likely will be unless someone in the region goes really crazy.

ok.
so.

he is arguing for using Human wave tactics against China.

:rofl:

you guys should just starting laughing on cure right there and toss this pos into a garbage can where it belongs.

"South Korean naval officer" - gurhhh....
garbage like these is also another reason why Any combination of koreas would not win in a war against china.

---------- Post added at 03:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:30 PM ----------

pakje said:

Genghis Khan II is coming for us!!!

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... and he is Korean!

i.e. said:

... and he is Korean!

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LOL, everything is Korean these days, at least according to the Koreans.

Anyway, if Korea sends troops into modern-day China, it's pretty much GG, time to annex that peninsula.

It's kind of hard to cover up their aggression, especially if they try to masquerade as nationalists.

Once it's come to light that Korea instigated and provoked an invasion of China, everyone in the world would think the Korean leader was crazy. Should the US government try to, for some reason or other, help Korea out, they'd face a huge backlash at home and among NATO allies.

Even if, somehow, the Koreans manage to supply 5 million troops to break through the border at Northwestern China... what then? How large a territory do you think 5 million foot soldiers will be able to hold? Meanwhile, the rest of China will be mobilizing for war. China doesn't need to raise 5 million soldiers in a day: she can afford to keep sending in fresh troops over months or years while the 5 million Korean soldiers would become completely exhausted and run out of supplies. And this is just looking at foot soldiers.

How many tanks does Korea, both of them, have again? More importantly, how much fuel do they have?

We haven't even gone into airforce and missiles yet. How exactly is the US supposed to defense SK from missile attacks?

It's like Japan and US in WW-2 -- Japan thought it could do well enough initially to force US to sue for peace.
I don't know why, but both North and South Koreans think they are better than Chinese, man for man. It's conceivable that some of them may think they do have a chance.

nemo said:

It's like Japan and US in WW-2 -- Japan thought it could do well enough initially to force US to sue for peace.
I don't know why, but both North and South Koreans think they are better than Chinese, man for man. It's conceivable that some of them may think they do have a chance.

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I highly doubt every Korean, north or south, thinks that. However, it's always the loudmouths who get heard.

A more likely scenario would be something similar to the sino-vietnamese war: a border conflict arising out of a larger political climate. Although this is still unlikely, as Korea's only land neighbors are China and Russia. It's not by happenstance that Korea had been a vassal state of China throughout the centuries. It simply isn't worth it for Korea to piss off China.

I can understand why the South Koreans contradicted themselves with such incidents like with the Cheonan. Buried in all their outraged something obviously failed in their defenses. Making excuses puts them into denial. What I find interesting is the incident where their soldiers fired on an airliner coming in from China on a normal approach into Seoul thinking it was a North Korean intrusion. They never experienced an airliner flying over in a normal approach before? What made them think it was a North Korean invasion? The only two ways to explain these incidents is either it was a their own dastardly conspiracy which they of course deny or the easiest explanation is their military is all show and no substance. More bark than bite.

solarz said:

I highly doubt every Korean, north or south, thinks that. However, it's always the loudmouths who get heard.

A more likely scenario would be something similar to the sino-vietnamese war: a border conflict arising out of a larger political climate. Although this is still unlikely, as Korea's only land neighbors are China and Russia. It's not by happenstance that Korea had been a vassal state of China throughout the centuries. It simply isn't worth it for Korea to piss off China.

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I don't know about that -- Korean have a kind of aggrieved nationalism. They wanted to do one-up whenever possible, even when it's not the wisest thing to do. For example, KDX-III is the largest AEGIS destroyer in the world, even larger than US Navy's Burke class, just to exceed Japanese Kongo. There K-2 tank has every bells and whistle packed in, although it's less than reliable if domestic components are used. On Cheonan incident, they would rather go to the edge of war rather than admit they screwed up.

The positive side of this is that they are willing to sacrifice for national good -- in their last economic/currency crisis, people donated gold and jewelry to pay external debt. Frankly, I don't see this happening anywhere else, China included. This sort of nationalism remind me of WW-2 Japan.

I would not be surprised if Korea, North and South, got into a war because their face won't let them back down -- particularly so when they think they have an advantage.

I think a unified Korea has a reasonable chance to pull that off by sending only 1 million well-equipped and well-trained soldiers at a time into combat. The 5 million human wave is misunderstandable, it's unlikely in a modern conflict to have all eggs on the frontline. So 5 million under arms, but only a tiny fraction of them in actual combat near the zone of contact.
Tanks are totally overrated as weapons because low observeability, networked intelligence gathering and target management create a combined arms system with strong asymmetric capabilities and correspondingly reduced importance of armour.
Being a naval officer is a good qualification for assessing this war because initial army success and air force defensive ability is more of a given, while the naval campaign to end the conflict will be the hardest part. You can compare such a war in scope and inequality to the territorial conflicts in Latin America during the 19th century or the latest Sino-Vietnamese War and it's as crazy as the Sino-Soviet border conflict and the Chinese intervention in the Korean War.

Korea happens to be an ally/vassal of the USA and derives much economic benefit from that relationship because the USA is not a peer competitor in many fields that are of utmost importance to Korea. This makes the US-Korean alliance more beneficial for both sides with much less chances for friction than a relationship with China.
It's time to discuss the Chinese expansion. The Vietnamese and the Thai have both a narrative that they moved south because of the Chinese expansion south and in turn themselves destroyed their empire and displaced the Khmer. Korea had also been a direction of early territorial expansion under the Quin, but managed to regain their independence (by convincing the Chinese that they were willing to really hard fight for it) while recognizing official suzerainty under China (including Chinese re-unification and re-independence help from time to time). That was before the black US warships appeared in East Asia. Ever since, geopolitics have changed and the Pacific, like the Atlantic, are no longer endless oceans, but lakes with neighbouring countries all around. Considering China's eastern neighbours on islands and peninsulas, they are all unlikely to give away their economic profits from the China connection and their military and high-tech export profits from the US connection. So anyone dreaming of the old Chinese vassal system being reerected totally neglects that East Asia will never again be in the same powerplay position it was during that time and for this reason actors will behave very differently.