This spring, American military planners fought a second Korean war by computer at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. This time, says a well-informed source: "It went nuclear."
No one is certain whether Pyongyang has succeeded in making one or more nuclear weapons, but American officials are counting on the familiar principle of deterrence to prevent another Korean conflict from escalating into a nuclear war. They say that if North Korea, which at most has a few crude nuclear weapons and no bombers or missiles to deliver them, set off a nuclear device in South Korea, it would invite a devastating American nuclear counterattack. But starting another conventional war would be suicidal, too, and if a desperate Pyongyang took the first step, it might also take the second.
Two at most. A Congressional Research Service report titled "Korean Crisis, 1994" concludes that: "[North Korea] currently possesses no more than one or two `primitive' nuclear weapons, if it has any at all, according to most open source estimates. Neither do North Korean armed forces have any credible aerial delivery vehicles. The director of central intelligence suggests that truck transportation might be feasible, given the probable size and weight of DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] weapons. Commercial boats and ships might infiltrate South Korean ports with one or more atomic bombs embarked....
"One realistic and potentially devastating alternative remains," the report continues. "North Korea could position one or more nuclear weapons in tunnels beneath the demilitarized zone and detonate them when windborne fallout from a subsurface burst would drift south. A huge crater and radioactive cloud would instantaneously breach U.S./[Republic of Korea] coalition lines which hug the DMZ. Electromagnetic pulse would disrupt radio communications and computers. North Korean troops then could pour south over safe routes while confusion reigned following the first use of nuclear weapons against armed forces in world history. ... Catastrophic failure, however, would follow initial success if the president of the United States ordered nuclear retaliation against the DPRK."
The same report, however, says that a pre-emptive attack on the North's nuclear facilities is unlikely to succeed: "All concerned consider direct military action to incapacitate or eradicate North Korean nuclear weapons plants as a last resort. Targeting problems are tremendous, since intelligence about key sites is sketchy. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. [Merrill] McPeak acknowledges that air strikes `are not a very attractive option; quite frankly ... we don't know if the North Koreans have nuclear material off site about to be weaponized. We don't know where that is so we don't know how to attack it.'"
North Korea's subterranean facilities magnify the difficulties. "If you build them deep enough underground," McPeak admits in the study, "we can't get down to them." GBU-28s [the Air Force's deepest-penetrating precision-guided bomb] can cut through only 100 feet of earth or 20 feet of concrete.
"Success would not be assured, even if intelligence were perfect and air strikes achieved pinpoint accuracy against exposed targets," the CRS study concludes. "Direct hits that breached the core of North Korea's 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, could cover Seoul with radioactive fallout within a few hours, and southern Japan the next day."
If Pyongyang does have a working nuclear weapon or two, it might get more mileage out of not using them. Some U.S. officials, for example, worry that if the North Koreans succeeded in capturing Seoul, they might truck in a nuclear weapon and threaten to detonate it if the United States and South Korea did not agree to the North's peace terms.
