What if there really were a war on the Korean Peninsula? The rhetoric has been heated since the South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk by an explosion in March, killing 46 sailors, and it has been white-hot since investigators reported last month that a North Korean torpedo struck the vessel.
So suppose there is a local clash somewhere along the demilitarised zone between the two countries, or at sea along the disputed maritime frontier. Suppose it escalates. What would a full-scale war between North and South Korea look like?
We are told that North Korea has the fourth-largest army in the world, that it has heavy artillery within range of Seoul, and that it probably has nuclear weapons. So would an inter-Korea war be a calamity? Yes, but mainly for the North.
Imagine that the North Korean guns open on Seoul. The million-man army heads south, and the bulk of the obsolete air force takes off to support them. Meanwhile, a shower of short-range ballistic missiles, similar to the old Soviet-made Scuds, lands on command centres and air bases throughout the South.
What happens next depends on whether North Korea is using only conventional weapons. If it is, the attack fails quite fast. The North Korean air force is easily shot out of the sky, counter-battery fire and air strikes destroy the artillery, most of the Scud clones miss their targets, and the North Korean divisions are shredded by air power.
No modern army can survive without air cover. The South Korean and US air forces have around 600 modern military aircraft available in South Korea, and the United States can reinforce that number almost without limit in very short order.
