Welcome back to Task and Purpose. I'm your average infantryman, Chris Cappie. The border between North and South Korea is one of the most likely locations for World War III to break out. The two sides are simply incompatible.
One has K-pop, the other has gross human rights violations. Are their forces actually stronger than we think? I can do that. We need to analyze North Korea's often misunderstood geopolitical importance and its true military capabilities in order to understand how war could break out.
We need to first look at how we got to where we are today, about one arm's hair length away from nuclear war. North Korea's population is 25 million people. They border China to the north and Russia to the extreme northeast, and of course South Korea to the south.
They're only about 650 miles away by water to Japan, and they're roughly the same exact size and land mass as England. The mountainous interior is isolated and sparsely populated. leaving most of the citizens living in the western provinces. The current state of the Korean peninsula is the result of the division of Korea between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II. Negotiations were held in 1945 between the two nations that failed to compromise for a single Korean state.
So they decided to split the country into two halves along the 38th parallel, with a Soviet-backed country to the north and an American-backed country to the south. It's easy to forget, but in the 1950s and 60s, North Korea actually had an economic and military advantage over the South. And that's why in 1950, North Korea got a little bit overconfident and they decided to invade South Korea.
The United States and the UN quickly responded and pushed the North Koreans back. China saw that the North Koreans were quickly losing the war, so they intervened before it got too close to their border. The front lines of the three-year war hovered back and forth along the 38th parallel, with an eventual ceasefire in 1953 and an establishment of the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, along the 38th parallel that exists to this day. Approximately 150,000 troops from South Korea, the United States, and the UN were KIA. An estimated 800,000 communist soldiers were KIA during this war.
The war has never officially ended, and tensions in the region have remained extremely high ever since. The geopolitical tension is unbearable. Since those days, economic mismanagement has completely eroded all of the North Korean advantages with 43% of their people today reportedly facing food insecurity.
Now, the modern North Korean government operates under what's called Sangun policy, which is a military-first philosophy of government, which gives the armed forces of North Korea first dibs on any and all resources that they might need before any other aspects of society. This policy was started by Kim Jong II in the mid-1990s. The military is the central organization of the entire country, which is what allows it to be on record the second largest standing army in the entire world, despite the extreme poverty in the country itself. North Korea on record spends 24% of its entire national budget on its military. The CIA estimates North Korea's total GDP to be around $40 billion, but it's hard to get exact numbers.
Spending 24% of your total national GDP on defense is insanely high. The U.S. and most modern nations spend between 2 and 4%. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is known as an extremely isolated hermit kingdom.
So why is this tiny economy with no control over any major trade routes over land or sea so important to world stability? To understand the geopolitical importance of North Korea, all we need to do is look at its proximity to neighboring China. There's a Chinese saying, if the lips are gone the teeth will be cold. It's often used to describe their relationship with North Korea. It means that North Korea is the lips protecting the teeth which is China.
against US troops stationed in South Korea, which I think in this analogy is the left nostril. This is North Korea's entire strategic value on the world stage. This gives China the chance to reduce their cost of needing to keep up major military deployments in Northeast China.
China spends the absolute minimum, a few billion dollars per year, to prop up North Korea, prevent them from failing, keep them afloat, and in exchange, they get a guarantee of no NATO forces on their border. The KPA is split into five service branches. A 2018 Korean white paper revealed that the North Koreans field a massive number of special forces personnel at 200,000 soldiers.
For comparison, the United States military has 35,000 SF soldiers. Recently, we've seen these units sporting what appears to be modern gear with digital camouflage, night vision, and plate carriers and in 2017 designated these more modern units as lightning commandos specifically designed to count ...U.S. Navy SEALs and South Korean special forces.
Since the late 60s, North Korean special forces have periodically conducted infiltration missions over the DMZ, either conducting small sabotage missions or to test South Korean responses. In terms of force numbers, the North has double that of the South, but the balance of power is relatively even due to the South's economic and technological advantage. All combined, 30% of the entire population serves in some military capacity in North Korea. For reference, less than one half of 1% of the population in America serves in the military.
The largest of these North Korean military branches is the ground force, consisting of about 950,000 active personnel and 420,000 reserve personnel, according to the US Department of Defense. With other sources like the Institute of the International Strategic Studies, Listing the total number of active and reserved to be around 1 million. There are reports from South Korea's Ministry of National Defense that there's 7.62 million reserve troops and none of these numbers involve the population of civilians that could be roughly organized and take up arms against any invaders. According to Global Firepower, approximately 5 million total people are potentially fit for service in North Korea.
The most important factor that's often overlooked is the geography of the Korean Peninsula. And to see how it would affect a future breakout of a conflict, we can look back at how it affected troops during the 1950s in the Korean War. The Korean Peninsula, north of Seoul, is made up of 80% steep mountain terrains, with population centers typically residing in the low, flat areas between the mountains.
High mountains coupled with large population centers is essentially nightmare fuel for conducting large-scale warfare. And most analysts predict that the majority of the conflict would occur just at or north of the DMZ. These mountains greatly benefit North Korea for several reasons. North Korea over the decades has constructed numerous networks of tunnels and mountain support systems, artillery firing points, bunkers, supply caches, you name it, with between 3,000 and 4,000 estimated underground facilities located throughout North Korea, and most of them being within 113 kilometers of the DMZ. At least 800 of these are capable of concealing up to an entire brigade of fully equipped light infantry.
This means North Korea considers its mountainous terrain and vast subterranean network a safe haven from enemy observation and destruction, and they're probably correct. They recruit citizens in their late teens into military units that are basically simply construction jobs on the underground facilities. They sign a confidentiality agreement, and then they work in that same facility digging tunnels until they turn 60 years old. They're forbidden to marry until they've served 10 years in the military construction unit.
The North Korean government doesn't allow these workers to even see their families. We know all of this because of defector reports from North Korea. These bunkers and underground facilities not only conceal troop numbers and locations, but logistic supply trains, command and control nodes, weapons caches, communication lines, motor pools, anything else.
an army would need to conduct a prolonged defense. These mountains create choke points that forces armies into very narrow areas and causes enormous casualties. Most experts agree the North Koreans would be the one to launch a strike first. The priority of North Korean government, by all measures, is to stay in power.
They have a total dictatorship over every aspect of the nation in order to cement this, and they'd be willing to do anything to stay in power. A strike by North Korea would more than likely be an effort for Kim Jong-un and his cohorts to maintain control. But what are the most likely causes for a conflict to be sparked?
We gotta remember North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un has been glorified much of his life as some kind of god-king who's infallible. That kind of praise could go to his head and make him think that he could reunify Korea as his legacy. Not so much unlike what we've seen with some other dictators recently. It's likely that the North Koreans would have a Chinese blessing in order to initiate this strike.
According to the CIA Factbook, open source intelligence information on North Korea, the vast majority of their service members are conscripts with an obligation of 10 years of service for men starting at the age of 17. When we look at their individual soldier equipment, we see a massive variety of weapons from single shot Soviet anti-tank rifles from World War II to Chinese knockoff high-speed M4s. Because of their long list of human rights violations, it's illegal for most countries to do any trade whatsoever. with North Korea.
Combine that with the extreme poverty and it's incredibly hard for North Korea to obtain or manufacture new military equipment. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was more than happy to trade and provide arms and equipment to their military. But since the fall of the USSR, China has become North Korea's only real trade partner. According to this exhaustive 332-page declassified army document on North Korea's military tactics, doctrine, and geopolitics, China is North Korea's only real major ally, with bilateral trade including over half of North Korean exports and almost 75% of its imports. This is why their forces are equipped with leftover Soviet and Chinese uniforms and kits while sporting old AK-style rifles, though we have seen a few of them rock some sick looking silver engraved weapons.
I can only assume the tactic behind that is to reflect sunlight into the enemy to blind them. Try hard weapon skins aside, your average North Korean soldier will be carrying the Type 68 or Type 88 rifles. The Type 88, which is a locally manufactured version of the AK-74 firing the smaller 5.45 cartridge and it accepts a unique yet massive 150 round Helica Magazine. It's unclear why North Korea decided to go with these magazines considering the huge increases of weight, greater possibility of malfunction, and the complexity of reloads. But hey, who cares about reloads if you never have to reload?
After North Korea is given this hypothetical thumbs up to attack the South, they would attempt to overwhelm as much of South Korea's defenses as possible. But quickly, they would be pushed back by South Korean troops and about 30,000 US soldiers permanently stationed there. who are probably just happy something exciting finally happened for once. The majority of North Korea's soldiers carry 20th century Soviet gear and similarly old uniforms and steel helmets. Expanding our view from the infantry and onto the vehicles of North Korea, you again see a mixture of equipment from over the past century.
According to reports, North Korea owns approximately 4,200 tanks, 2,300 armored vehicles, 8,600 pieces of artillery, add to that 5,500 rocket artillery batteries, with most of these vehicles stationed close to the border, but more on that later. Their most common tanks, making up just short of 3,000 in number, are the T-55 and T-62 tanks. Very old, though formidable in their day. They are greatly outclassed by any modern tank.
Even a decent RPG or AT-4 shot can completely disable these things. After acquiring these tanks during the Cold War, North Korea sought to domestically produce their own tanks as rough copies of the Soviet ones that they had in stock. These resulted in the Chanmo Ho series of tanks, which were a bit of a Frankenstein mixture of T-55s and T-62s, incorporating aspects of each tank and gradually improving on the design.
North Korea also sports a small number of T-72s acquired by Russia, but only after they were rejected from receiving the more powerful T-90 tank. I was also denied my request to purchase a T-90 recently, so I know their pain. Their newest tank on display, currently called the M2020, While analysts think it looks a lot like Russia's T-14 tank, but it's likely these are purely cosmetic similarities.
While it might function as a tank in terms of driving and firing a 125mm round, its actual armor, missile launching capabilities, active protection systems, and apparent new targeting systems are unlikely to be anywhere close to modern specifications. Looking at their armor and infantry, we can see their only real strength comes in the sheer number of people they have capable of carrying a rifle. Your average Korean soldier will be won't have any modern equipment by today's standards. They don't have any weapons, optics, night vision, body armor, and only a few of them have any effective camouflage uniforms.
Their vehicle fleet suffers from similar problems with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles lacking any effective night optics, practical armor protection, or targeting systems. There is a misconception that North Korea and Chinese military used simple, massive human wave tactics during the Korean War. And while there might be some truth to it, the reality is far scarier.
It's more accurately a short attack that uses a combination of infiltration and shock tactics. The North Korean and Chinese militaries were experts at moving in stealth formations until they got within a few hundred meters of the US front lines before launching surprise attacks. This strategy has since been abandoned and would not work today due to far better surveillance systems like drones and night thermal imaging that would detect enemy movements many miles in advance.
It's likely that Western and South Korean forces after wiping out the North Korean Air Force, Air Defense, and Artillery using counter-battery, would advance through North Korean defenses, but we'll see what they would have to deal with. The real question falls in where the fighting would stop. How far would they be able to push and advance before Kim Jong-un would use nuclear and biological weapons?
They invested a large amount of their budget into one single military asset that would make their other forces unnecessary, their Strategic Rocket Forces Branch. which operates their nuclear missiles. I think what happened was North Korea saw that a lot of authoritarian countries that didn't have nuclear weapons were getting invaded post World War II.
They likely calculated that if they had nukes, it wouldn't matter how old their tanks were. Since Kim Jong-un came to power in December, 2011. He's launched three times as many ballistic missiles compared to the entire reign of his father. We did a full deep dive on these kind of ballistic missiles right here if you get a chance to check it out.
Link in the description. Between 2011 and the end of 2016, North Korea launched a total of 42 ballistic missiles, 20 short-range Scud-type missiles with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers, 10 of the medium-range No-Dong missiles that can fly up to 1,500 kilometers, and 8 of the intermediate-range Hwang-Sung-10 missiles traditionally assessed to have a range of 4,000 kilometers. Then they launched four submarine ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.
Both China and North Korea made their rocket force into its own branch and invested heavily into their capabilities since 2012 because they realized this was their greatest asset against the United States. North Korea is currently in possession of 40 to 50 nuclear weapons and it's ranked third in the total number of stockpiled non-nuclear WMDs like biological nerve agents. It's estimated that the country possesses 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons.
It's possible that the North Koreans could use these to devastating effects, killing millions in just a few minutes and essentially wiping Seoul off the map. But the overwhelming and likely nuclear retaliation by the United States and other Western nations would be suicide for North Korea, and greatly negatively affect China. While exact capabilities and accurate specifics of type and number of ballistic missile stockpiles are Closely held secrets by the North Koreans, we do know they possess about a thousand short and medium-range missile platforms theoretically capable of hitting anywhere at or beyond the DMZ, and several hundred Scud missiles in service, similar to the ones used by Saddam in the Iraq wars. The artillery and rockets owned by the North Koreans are a bit of a different story.
In order to negate the US bombing advantage, North Koreans use what's called HARTs, which are hardened artillery sites, a complex network of concrete that's Reportedly 40 centimeters thick with steel reinforced rebar, this subterranean chamber connected by tunnels which have three to eight shooting positions for artillery pieces. Satellite and surveillance imaging has confirmed approximately 500 of these Hart's positions in central and western corridors, the most likely avenue of advance for an enemy offensive from the south. This is one of the largest concerns regarding a breakout of war between the north and the south due to the aptly named seal.
fire strategy in which North Korea would launch thousands of fire missions using rockets and artillery against military and civilian targets, namely the South Korean capital of Seoul. One study suggests that North Korea would likely focus on civilian rather than military targets in the initial outburst and could inflict up to 30,000 casualties in the first few hours alone. Moving away from super uplifting topics like 30,000 civilian casualties, now to talk about the North Korean naval forces. Comprised of around 146,000 sailors, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the North Korean Navy deploys a total of 780 vessels, and only about 10 of those could effectively deploy further than 50 kilometers offshore, those 10 being a small handful of old light frigates and covert ships.
The remaining ships are largely landing craft patrol boats, torpedo craft, and small submarines. The light frigates are wildly outdated, with their frigate designs being built in the late 60s, possessing only a few outdated missile systems that reportedly are more dangerous for the crew to fire than for them to be fired at you. Their submarine capabilities are slightly better, however, owning between 70 to 80 operational submarines at any given time. And they've fielded newly designed and manufactured submarines as recently as 2014 to serve as ballistic missile launching platforms specifically for nuclear weapons. And more common use of submersibles in their navy is the deployment of miniature submarines designed to carry small teams of special forces undetected into South Korea and conduct clandestine military operations behind the border.
Turning now to the air and anti-air force manned by an estimated 110,000 troops and consisting of about 950 aircraft and over 8,000 anti-aircraft guns and missile launchers, about 570 of which are the ancient MiG-17, 19, and 21. They do however have aircraft capable of performing on a modern battlefield, with 35 of the multi-role MiG-29 and 34 of the Su-25s, the equivalent of an American F-16 and A-10 respectively. It's been reported that North Korea has built one of the densest air defense networks in the world, making it on paper one of the hardest air spaces for any country to operate within. On paper, this is all very impressive and does pose a serious threat to outside militaries.
but there is more to consider than just hard numbers here. The North Korean Air Force, by all measures, is poorly trained and poorly equipped, with pilots flying at most 10 to 15 hours per year based on our surveillance. American fighter pilots, for reference, fly an average of 200 hours per year.
Not only that, but there are... The ability to fix and sustain a fleet is likely to be non-existent. Military aircraft on average require 10 hours of maintenance per hour of flight time.
According to the Army Manual on North Korean Military Tactics, North Korea cannot fight a long war due to the lack of petroleum products, ammunition, and spare parts. At most, North Korea is estimated to have a fuel enough for two months before it needs to get resupplied from external sources or use capture stores. If North Korea cannot end the conflict quickly, it will likely take steps to slow the tempo and prolong the conflict.
While their direct fire anti-guns aren't the greatest danger to western pilots, their missile systems are. However, due to the age of their weapons, missile systems, and lack of training, they would be quick and easy targets for suppression of enemy air defense and long-range artillery fire. In short, North Korea would have zero hope of any air superiority. Sorry Kim, no flying for you. Now, While it's almost guaranteed that North Korea would be swept in case of all-out warfare, we've seen a greater push for diplomatic reasoning in the past few years, with Trump and his recent visits and continued talks between North and South formally trying to end the war that started 70 years ago.
The weird thing is, the best case scenario right now is for both sides to maintain a balance of power where each side is unsure if they would win or not, and they would each believe that the cost of winning would be enormous. This is the main guarantee of no war. So thank you for watching. I want to thank our associate producer Andrew Tucker on this episode and for Justin Taylor for helping research and write this episode.
Also a big shout out to Michael M who edited this video. He makes me sound almost coherent. If you get a chance check out this other video he edited.
I think you guys will really like it. I'm your average infantryman Chris Cappi. Thank you for watching Task and Purpose.