How Credible Are North Korea's Threats?
When it comes to talking a big game, no one does it better than the North Koreans.
Just this week, Pyongyang vowed to turn Seoul, the capital of archrival South Korea, into a "sea of fire," promised to launch a "pre-emptive strike on the headquarters of the aggressors" (read: the United States) and called on its army to "annihilate the enemy."
And that's nothing new; the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency churns out similar fare daily.
Most experts and Korea watchers believe the latest rhetoric is just the usual propaganda engine cranked up to 11. But if North Korea should suddenly move to make its threats a reality, how bad could it be? Are the North's nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles push-button ready? What about its massive tank and artillery forces?
South Korea's Defense Ministry says the North's air force consists of 820 fighter jets, but that Pyongyang lacks enough fuel to fly them much.
By contrast, South Korea has just 460 jets, but most are combat ready. Likewise, the North has a nearly 2-to-1 numerical advantage in tanks (4,200 to South Korea's 2,400), but according to Reuters, Seoul's armor is "more modern and better maintained."
A Large Military With Limited Capabilities
Jennifer Lind, an associate professor at Dartmouth College, says a big part of the reason that Pyongyang has been so keen to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles is precisely because its 1.1 million-strong army, the world's fourth largest, is a paper tiger.
She points to a detailed analysis of North Korea's conventional capability done by some of her colleagues in 1995 that showed Pyongyang was "pretty hopelessly outgunned" by the U.S. and South Korean forces.
"They had completely inferior tanks and artillery," she says. "Their air force was so antiquated that it would have been shot out of the sky in the first few hours of a conflict."
Instead of improving, the situation deteriorated in the intervening 18 years, Lind says, likely because of North Korea's isolation and its long-running food shortages.
"As bleak as things looked back then, I think they've only gotten worse," she says.
'A Cold War Relic'
Enlarge image i