Does a Second Korean War mean we'll get a gritty M*A*S*H reboot?

Alright, this is probably much ado about nothing, but . . . 

During a live-fire exercise being conducted Tuesday morning on the island of Yeonpyeong, artillery units of the South Korean Army fell under attack by nearby North Korean units, sited on the nearby coastline.  The South Korean artillerymen were targeted by about 50 or 60 rounds, and returned fire with about 80, according to various sources.  During the hour-long exchange, some houses and light infrastructure were damaged, and two marines were killed.  There were three separate rounds of firing from the North Korean guns, each one retaliated to and each one weaker than the last, according to some sources.  

Okay, those are the facts as reported.  Now let's make some deductions, shall we?  We'll start by pointing out the obvious: the South Korean artillerymen are quite well drilled, while the North needs some new gunsights.  An American or NATO artillery battalion can do quite a lot of damage to an enemy with a well-targeted 80 rounds.  Because we trained them, and they listened well, the South Korean army is probably almost as good - and the fact that they were in the middle of a live-fire exercise of their own (aimed safely out into international waters), just means that they'd spent the night before studying their duties.  

So basically imagine spending all night studying for a calculus exam, and then the next day your test was interrupted by a guy waving a gun in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other while screaming, "I'm gonna start killing motherfuckers unless someone solves this differential equation!!"  Assuming the student body isn't completely full of assholes, at least someone studied the night before and could step in to save the day.  The South Koreans were fresh off their own targeting practice, and responded with vigor.  It's likely that the North Koreans stopped so soon because they had taken significant losses in the exchange.  

On the other hand, I might be giving those kids too much credit . . .

Next, we can deduce that the South Koreans still like to stir things up.  Yes, the live-fire exercise involved shooting blank rounds to the west, out to international waters.  However, the island of Yeonpyeong lies behind a line claimed by North Korea as it's maritime boundary.  In reality, the actual boundary was set at the armistice in 1953, which hit a three generation "pause" button on the Korean War.  In real life, the South Koreans own the island.  However, real life does not often sync up with the magical world that Kim Jong-Il resides in most of his days, so that means the island is "disputed".  The same way if I decide I want to own your swimming pool, I can just redraw my property line to include the diving board and the shallow end . . oh, and that sturdy plastic trunk with all the goggles and pool toys inside.  Hell yes!

"Yeah, that one."

However, it's well-known by both nations that the island is considered disputed by Kim Jong-Il.  To go back to the backyard pool scenario (like we ever left), imagine that you know your neighbor is just crazy enough to think that he actually has a fair stake in your pool, and also reacts poorly to loud noises.  Now imagine you decide to throw a party, and in the middle of that party you start launching fireworks when you know your neighbor is standing on his back porch staring at you with a gun in his hand.  Now I'm not saying the North Koreans were at all justified - I'm simply proposing that the South decided to kick it up a bit and give them something to think about that morning, and the North decided to do much more than think.

The third and final deduction I offer from this episode is that neither side is willing to back down.  The South Koreans are still pissed off about the sinking of the Cheonan, a patrol frigate of the South Korean navy, by a suspected North Korean submarine.  The frigate was sunk in late March, barely 75 miles from the site of today's incident, and 46 South Korean sailors perished in the attack.  Though investigation of the wreckage seems to confirm that the frigate was sunk by an enemy torpedo, the North denies responsibility and blames the South for violating it's territorial waters - which again, is a completely fictional claim.  So when the South Korean gunners got a chance to take revenge on their opponents yesterday morning, they did so with gusto, and probably under fairly recent orders to react with force to any attack.  This is a good tactic, because if the South backs down from a confrontation, Uncle Kim is just crazy enough to think this means open season.  

On the other hand, the North Koreans are showing signs of going balls-to-the-wall in their effort to provoke the South, or incite an incident large and ambiguous enough to use as pretense for war.  In other words, the North is playing a game of brinksmanship, but doing so with strong-arm tactics.  These are the kind of tactics that, when applied consistently within most conflict scenarios, generally end up leading to war.  And this is a bad thing.

I will go ahead and make a controversial claim - that if a war between the North and South should happen, let it happen now.  God forbid we wait another decade, because by that time the North will likely have mastered the technology to throw live warheads at the West coast of the continental United States.  They already have nukes, and though their long range missiles keep blowing up shortly past liftoff, it's only a matter of time before they get things right.  As it is, they probably do not have many nuclear weapons in their current arsenal, but every passing day brings the chance that more will be hoisted off the assembly line.  As a matter of fact, the simple existence in this world of a state like North Korea is a travesty of epic proportions.  The entire world knows the North Koreans are a starving people, subjugated into what is essentially slave labor at the whims of a tin-pot dictator in a shiny palace.  It's no secret that Kim Jong-Il is a horrible sexual pervert, a deviant and sadomasochist of the worst sort, with a collection of eccentricities that would make even the English look twice.  The man has kidnapped people, including Japanese film director Shin Sang-ok, who was held for eight years and forced to direct films for the Dear Leader.  Clearly this is not a man fit to run a Boy Scout troop, much less a nation of 24,000,000 people.

" . . . and after the soda-drinking contest, we'll play king of the hill.  With hunting knives."

The other problem is that his regime is propped up by China, which keeps him there in full view and knowledge of the world, to act as a puppet - pulling the strings of war and peace to the tune they dictate, and sometimes on his own.  It doesn't stay that way for long though, because the puppeteers in Beijing know exactly what they're doing.  If and when they need a war to be fought, they can count on Kim to pull it off.  Though he is thought to be giving up power to his son, Kim Jong-un, sometime soon, as long as he remains the leader the Chinese have their man.

Of course, this shootout is all malarkey.  This latest incident is no more likely to lead to a large-scale war than any of the dozens of other small skirmishes that have happened in the past between North and South, and neither side seems truly eager to start one up.  Though this latest incident is troubling, it's not even close to being war-worthy, even by Uncle Kim's mystery metrics.  Let this serve instead as a clear warning to all of us.  The world is a fucked-up place, and there is the chance of something popping off within this next decade - hell, within this next election cycle - between the Koreas.  If it does, we should bear in mind that the North has it's own nuclear arsenal, and whether we admit it or not we have nukes there too, defending South Korea at their request.  Our military has several brigades on the DMZ, the heavily mined and guarded land border between the North and South.  Should an attack happen, there would be little warning, and the result of massive surprise on the North, and high technology weapons and training on the South, could be an unwelcome exchange of megatonnage across the DMZ. The part that makes this scenario especially bad is there is no way to bet on cooler heads prevailing on the North Korean side of the curtain.

So if it does lead to a M*A*S*H reboot, you can bet it'll be quite maudlin the whole way through.