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Originally Posted by CedarMeter
You seem to be well educated on this subject..What do you think the odds are that these two countries go to war?
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If I was to guess its unlikely, as much as the North is slightly insane though. The goverrnment in the South is getting tired of living under the threat of the North and of its nuclear bomb project and 110,000 pieces of artillery zero'd in on their capital.
I still think its unlikely that anything happens unless the world sticks to the sanctions and doesn't give emergency aid. if that happens then one of two things could happen, maybe one of three
1) North Korea does nothing, they live under the sanctions since life can't really get any worse for a nation that's losing a lot of their population due to health and nutrition issues, North Korea is already having a serious depopulation problem due to death more then defection.
2) North Korea tries to up the pressure by selective activities. In Kim Jong-Il's playbook that junior seems to be following is an increase in special forces penetration into the south and possible terrorist activity. Murder some South Korean soldiers, attack a facility, shoot up the Blue House.
3) A conventional limited attack to show they are serious, something limited like shelling a low population area, or a torpedo or missile attack on a South Korean military asset.
The game changer is that America has been losing influence with the South Korean government, which means that the Yanks might not be able to hold back a response by the South to aggression by the North like they used to. In fact the American forces that are left in South Korea, about 28,000 soldiers aren't there to be anything but a gloried trip wire to get America into the war if it happens.
They aren't a significant prescience there and South Korea is pretty self sufficient.
South Korea's response to any violent act this time might be pretty large (air strikes, an invasion to increase the buffer zone between the North and South and to remove as much NK artillery as possible, to regime change)
I think its more likely that we see a destabilization of the North South border and see conflict limited to the DMZ.
3 chances out of 10 that we see some kind of activity out of the South
Maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 of an open war.