Reply #45: Nope.

[Xithras]

The U.S. military presence in SK has been referred to as the "Korean Speedbump" for years (we may slow them down a little, but there's zero chance we could stop them), and the top US general in Korea made waves earlier this year when he said that the North Koreans could "rain fire" on SK, and there's little we can do about it.

They have more artillery, and outnumber our troops by more than 5-1. The U.S. military plan for Korea basically boils down to this: "The North will take most of the peninsula at first, but we'll launch airstrikes from Japan and pour in troops via a southern invasion point to drive them back out." The U.S. troops sitting on the border are there primarily as a deterrent...North Korea would have to kill them all to invade, and it's widely understood that they could do so without much effort, but doing so would provide America with the political ammunition to pull us into another full scale war with them "We HAVE to invade! They killed thousands of our soldiers!"

The bigger issue is that North Korea has spent many decades building hardened bunkers for their artillery. It isn't sitting on the surface, but is underground with relatively small firing slots facing southward. Artillery can't take it out. Nukes would have a hard time taking it out. There aren't enough cruise missiles in the entire U.S. military to take it all out. Taking it out will require a full scale ground invasion, (which would have a WW2-level casualty count), or bomber-dropped bunker busters. Either of those solutions would require days or weeks, and they can level Seoul in 30 minutes.

They can make this...


...look like this...


...in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Futurama.