Stopping a North Korean Invasion: Why Defending South Korea is Easier than the Pentagon Thinks

Abstract

How likely is a North Korean invasion of South Korea? And what would be its chances of success? Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution begins with a claim that there is “a strong body of evidence and a wide array of analytical methods [that] argue…that the Defense Department’s official image of war does not apply to the Korean peninsula.” Specifically, O’Hanlon questions the findings of the Pentagon’s 1993 Bottom-Up Review and its 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, which suggest that North Korea could possibly achieve an initial breakthrough—including the capture of Seoul and perhaps much of the peninsula—before finally being defeated by U.S. and South Korean forces. O’Hanlon counters this assessment with an emphatic statement that “joint U.S.–[South Korean] forces are, with very high confidence, capable of stopping a [North Korean] attack cold.”