4 ms·

Iran is not presently capable of flattening a city the size of Seoul on a few moments' notice. Different situation, different response.

• dba7dba 14y ago
  N Korea can NOT flatten Seoul in a few moments' notice because of the following: 1) Seoul is a HUGE city. 2) N Korea actually doesn't have UNlimited number of artillery tubes capable of reaching Seoul. There are hundreds (maybe a few thousand) tubes but these are heavy ones, meaning they would be lucky to get off a shot every few minutes. And they would have to be concentrated in a relatively small area near DMZ to reach Seoul, not smart move considering SKorea/US's jets. 3) You can BEN SKorea/US jets/artillery are already targeted for some/many of the known N Korean artillery sites. 4) N Korea's most interested in preserving status quo for their leaders and the elites that support the top leaders. Flattening Seoul would certainly mean they would be eliminated. Yes N Korea can damage Seoul, but will not really 'flatten' it. Well, I hope...
  • 27182818284 14y ago
    The op was referring to "flatten" in terms of using a nuclear weapon not conventional artillery. Regardless, I think either way is so improbable it probably isn't even worth speculating about.
  • ISL 14y ago
    I sit partially corrected: http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-how-north-korea-could-destroy-seoul-in-two-hours-2010-5?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-how-north-kore... http://atlanticsentinel.com/2012/06/north-korea-cant-really-turn-seoul-into-a-sea-of-fire/ http://atlanticsentinel.com/2012/06/north-korea-cant-really-... https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korean+artillery+capability https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korean+artillery+capab...
  • Spooky23 14y ago
    5) The Chinese don't have a reason to allow North Korea to flatten Seoul.
  • jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago
    There are some very detailed writeups of PRNK's ability to damage Seoul based on open sources around on the web. The short summary is that 'flatten in a few moments' may be an exaggeration, but they do present a very real and very large threat. They do have a fair number of dug in artillery installations that could survive several airstrikes. The basic template of these installations are bunkers under mountaintops that artillery can move rapidly in and out of. So instead of shoot and scoot more like shoot and turtle up. They may have limited resources, but the PRNK does appear to know how to deploy them quite effectively. Chemical shelling is a particular concern. It's not that the PRNK would win an outright war, it's that they could extract a massacre no one else wants.
• redthrowaway 14y ago
  Neither is NK. They could wreak some havok with conventional weapons, but their last two nuclear tests were 1 & 2 kt, respectively. That's enough to take out a couple city blocks, with a fireball about 100 ft across. Couple that with the fact they can barely get a missile to go into the sky without blowing up, let alone land where they want it to, and NK's nuclear threat is pretty minimal. They'd cause far more damage with conventional weaponry.
  • Turing_Machine 14y ago
    "Wreak some havoc" is a gross understatement. Look into how much artillery they can bring to bear on Seoul (they have the world's largest artillery force, and Seoul is only 35 miles from the border). That's what the OP was talking about, not nukes.
  • InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Current best estimate is about 10,000 artillery shells per minute, landing in heavily populated parts of Seoul. How long that takes to match and then exceed the death counts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an experiment which hopefully will never be carried out.