5 Reasons Why U.S. Cannot Attack North Korea

Reason 1--DPRK is a military power
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a country which has a disproportionably strong military power given its size and population--more than a million-men regular armed forces, tens of thousands of special combat units, a huge amount of weaponry of various types including missiles, millions of reserves and citizens who are well trained and all set to join a war at any moment, a completely fortified land with bomb-proof rocky mountains, and the close unity of the military and the people behind the Supreme Commander. Moreover, the U.S. speculates that North Korea has already one or two nuclear weapons. More important is the fact that Washington finds no excuse to urge Pyongyang to disarm itself, unlike the case of Iraq.

Reason 2--DPRK has retaliation capability
North Korea, unlike Iraq, not only has explicitly stated that it would promptly retaliate on the U.S. once the latter should dare to make a preemptive attack on the former but it has enough power to do so. Pyongyang says that a preemptive attack is not a monopolistic privilege given the U.S. At the time of the "nuclear crisis" in 1993-94, the U.S. government under Bill Clinton attempted to preemptively attack North Korea. But it had to withdraw the plan because its consequences would be devastating and horrible for the U.S. as a result of a Pentagon's war simulation. This structure remains unchanged basically even today. Currently, targets of North Korea's retaliation include U.S. bases in Japan and even a part of the U.S. mainland, let alone U.S. forces in South Korea. In the case of Iraq, Baghdad has no such a retaliatory capability as North Korea has. The United States would intensively launch an attack on Iraqi soil in the initial stage of a war by using thousands of more sophisticated missiles than those used in the first Gulf War, to be followed by merciless bombings to devastate the country, and then by a landing of armed forces to occupy Baghdad to put an end to a second Gulf War. It will result in a "complete victory" over Iraq. This is obvious. On the other hand, however, Washington can never overlook the potential retaliatory capability of North Korea. This has played its role as a major deterrence to a second Korean War.

Reason 3--U.S. alliance in Northeast Asia strains
During the days of the first nuclear crisis in Korea, the then president of South Korea, Kim Young Sam, opposed a U.S. bombing on North Korea, and Japan was totally unprepared to help the U.S. in such a military action because of the war-renouncing constitution of Japan and of the lack of a relevant law enabling the economic giant to mobilize and procure public and private facilities and resources for the U.S. armed forces in a "contingency." Still now, neither Seoul nor Tokyo wants war on the Korean Peninsula because they know that they will be the direct victims of such a war, not the U.S. Though Japan, the major ally of the U.S., expresses support for the U.S. going to war against Iraq if only an additional UN resolution authorizing it has been adopted. However, it stresses a peaceful and negotiated solution to the current nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula rather than an imposition of UN "sanctions" on North Korea.







Reason 4--Seoul-Washington ties worsen
President Roh Moo Hyon, former human rights lawyer representing the post-war generations of South Korea, has pledged to succeed, and develop, his predecessor's "sunshine policy" or reconciliation policy toward fraternal North Korea. He is an explicit advocate of revising the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and of more matured South Korea-U.S. relations based on an equal footing. He also declares that Seoul should be a main player in addressing the aggravated situation on the Korean peninsula including the nuclear issue by acting as arbitrator between Pyongyang and Washington. Roh's election pledges won the ardent support of voters. In his inaugural speech on February 25, the new South Korean leader stressed peace, stability, dialogue, reconciliation and common prosperity of Northeast Asia. His emergence as a new type leader came true against the background of unprecedentedly strong anti-American sentiments in South Korea in the wake of the USFK military court's acquittal of two GIs who killed two Korean teenage school girls by an armored vehicle in June last year, in particular. The South Korean public was angered by Bush's calling North Korea a member of an "axis of evil." Such unfavorable developments in South Korea have aroused serious concerns in Washington over its relations with Seoul, baffling George W. Bush's unilateralist hard-line policy on North Korea.







Reason 9--International relations change
A paradigm of international relations as regards the Korean Peninsula has drastically changed over the past years. Among the changes are: the DPRK's normalization of relations with the EU and other Western nations, its admission into the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) as a full member, a historic inter-Korean summit of 2000, DPRK leader Kim Jong Il's brisk diplomatic activities with the EU, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, and Washington. These moves have contributed toward breaking the Cold War regime in Northeast Asia, a significant factor making harder for Washington, now under the unilateralist government of Bush, to apply its old-fashioned power politics to stifle North Korea in the same way as it is doing on Iraq.