I have spent many years in complete disbelief that George Orwell’s 1984 was a physical reality in the 21st century. It is so hard to comprehend how a society can sustain and support such an ill-fated evil dictator and why, despite the dangers, thousands of North Koreans are not fleeing across the country’s borders.
The answer is as simple as it is shocking; the North Koreans are so kept in the dark that they do not know that life is better elsewhere, only that life is awful where they are. In such conditions, why risk evading one of the most dangerous and brutal military regimes in the world? The protagonist in 1984 only becomes aware of the hatred of the regime because he happens to work in a relatively sensitive governmental position that gives him access to information which clearly demonstrates the government’s lies. Equally, only a select few trusted members of Korean society, who are in direct benefit of the status quo, and who have probably proven themselves by snitching on neighbours and actively collaborating in the regime’s brutality, would be sufficiently aware of the regime and the outside world to challenge it. They would therefore not risk fleeing to another country or undermining the regime for fear of the justice that may follow against them.
But I want to focus instead on North Korea’s extensive military capability. Despite appearances of a failed medieval society surviving on sustenance farming, the military is a nuclear weapon state. Seoul, capital city of South Korea, is only 20 miles from the border and has a population of around 25 million! Not only would a nuclear missile reach South Korea in just 15 minutes, it would probably not be able to be shot down by the United States as they only have missile defence over their bases for certain types of ground-to-ground missiles and the flight path of the missile isn’t long enough to present opportunity to shoot it down until right before impact.
More importantly, North Korea has ten of thousands of artillery pieces on wheeled tracks buried in the mountainside all within range of Seoul. These pieces could level the city in 60 minutes, and it simply is not possible for intelligence to ascertain 10,000 strike targets and have them destroyed in 60 minutes. Even with several nuclear submarines and an aircraft carrier, the USA would probably still not have enough Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy that many targets in the region. Even if they did, the missiles are not bunker-busting and neither is the 500lb or 1,000lb JDAM enough to guarantee complete destruction of the artillery pieces with direct hits due to the slight protection afforded by being buried in the mountain side.
In other words, North Korea – despite being as advanced as 17th century England – would in all likelihood comfortably win a war against South Korea, and in doing so probably destroy the entire country of South Korea in a day, with the United States powerless to stop them. Obviously in the long run the United States could easily destroy the military of North Korea in a week, but that is 7 days and 12 hours too late to save South Korea. And with artillery pieces in this case threatening the lives of millions of people and the possibility of WMD, the threat of escalation is terrible, especially as we have already seen North Korea’s mistaken belief that “only” using artillery isn’t enough to cause mass escalation in tension and warfare at the border with South Korea. Should the military feel the need to re-establish itself following a power struggle by invading South Korea, then the worst conflict since World War 2 would result, with the death toll reaching into the millions extremely quickly.
Anonymous
This Affected Youth 
From everything I know about North Korea, and it’s as extensive as it can be minus meeting defectors or visiting the country, I think the chance of this happening is zero. They hold it over us, sure, but actually following through? Not a chance.
I’m not denying that they have the ability to start a world nuclear war but North Korea’s nuclear weapons serve only as a deterrent and they aren’t as stupid as they look. They know they could quite possibly destroy a good deal of South Korea but they also know if they did that they would be entirely obliterated too. It’s like the whole Bee/Wasp thing; they’re more scared of us than we are of them.
We need to stop obsessing over their nuclear weapons (as many countries do have them so it’s hypocritical) start building relationships with the country and bringing them in to the 21st century. If they were to have more stable relationships and feel a part of world politics maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to use nuclear weapons, much less have them.
Lets focus instead on the fact that millions have died because of famine there, not helped by aid being withheld due to the nuclear weapon issue, and that there are 200,000 people at any one time in concentration camps across the country being tortured, starved and tested on.
Although, it is a completely twisted regime, I can understand why they want nuclear weapons. They are almost entirely isolated now and their biggest “enemies” have large stocks of nuclear weapons. If I was them; I would want nuclear weapons too.
Any ways I rant. Good piece. Just wish everyone would shift to constructive discussions on how to fix this, and it’s not going to be by imposing our will on them.
Great comment. Totally agree with you on the hypocrisy, I am staggered that so much of the western world is adamant that states like Iran and North Korea should have no nuclear capability. What gives us the right to get up on our high horse and claim that we should be any different, should in fact have a sprawling arsenal of nuclear weapons? Given the Americans’ pre-emptive strike agenda over the last decade I think these countries are well justified in feeling pretty paranoid. The US showed particularly with Iraq its willingness to intervene in other countries with little or no reliable intelligence behind such invasions – why shouldn’t these countries feel the need to protect themselves against this kind of arbitrary madness? We live in such dangerous times precisely because the western world does not realise or understand that it is the interventionist school of thought itself that is chiefly responsible for global tension.