http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/khabarovsk-khasan-border-russiadprk.html

While North Korea’s nuclear and missile technologies are certainly worthy of attention, there is comparatively much less coverage of what is, in fact, a far more determinative factor in the North Korean “equation.”

I speak (of course) about the conventional “sea of fire,” to use the phrase of a North Korean diplomat referring to what Seoul could become at a moment’s notice from old fashioned conventional rockets and artillery.

Geography – not technology – is the underreported determinant.  Seoul sits within range of the vast majority of North Korea’s 50-year long artillery and rocket force buildup. 

According to the Military Balance 2004-05 North Korea had then an estimated 10,400 artillery pieces (in addition to conventional missile and rocket launchers).  Some 80% of their total firepower was amassed in the DMZ area, according to a publication from the Center for Defense Information.  The crux of the matter (from the same document) is this:

U.S. military estimates in 1994 were that those artillery pieces could bombard Seoul with 5,000 rounds in the first 24 hours of any attack.  Such an attack could mean tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties and billions of dollars of damage in Seoul.

A few years back The Atlantic had an article describing a simulated war-game with North Korea, where the “cabinet members” deciding on possible responses to the Korean “threat” were made up of various respected and experienced military and foreign policy figures of diverse political backgrounds (namely war-games guru Colonel Sam Gardiner, author of the blueprint used by Tommy Franks years later to invade Iraq; former weapons inspector David Kay; Robert Galluci, dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown; Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney; Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment, and Kenneth Adelman, who was at that time a member of the Defense Policy Board.)  The article was North Korea: The War Game from July/August 2005.

It makes for interesting reading, not least because it shows how the “hostaged Seoul” factor might play into any actual decision making.  (For my own inscrutable reasons, even to myself, I had been looking for some official US-ROK military exercise reports to see how they might factor in this very factor, but haven’t yet run across any.  The Atlantic article might be just as good from a human decision-making standpoint.) Consider, as Gallucci role-plays the Secretary of State, Mathews the Director of National Intelligence, and McInerney the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

North Korea, [McInerney] conceded, has the potential to use Seoul, which lies only thirty-five miles south of the DMZ, as a “hostage”—to threaten to turn it into that “sea of fire.” But he strenuously disagreed that this means “a military option is not thinkable,” as some U.S. policymakers say. “A military option is clearly thinkable, and doable,” he argued. “If threatened with the transfer of nuclear weapons from North Korea to terrorists, we have to do something.” […]

Director of National Intelligence Mathews disagreed that Seoul could be shielded: “My understanding is that we cannot protect Seoul, at least for the first twenty-four hours of a war, and maybe for the first forty-eight.” McInerney disputed this, and Mathews asked him to explain.

McInerney: “There’s a difference between ‘protecting’ Seoul and [limiting] the amount of damage Seoul may take.”

Mathews: “There are a hundred thousand Americans in Seoul, not to mention ten million South Koreans.”

McInerney: “A lot of people are going to die, Jessica. But you still prevail.”

Mathews: “I just think we’ve got to be really careful. We’ve got to protect Seoul. If your daughter were living in Seoul, I don’t think you would feel the U.S. military could protect her in those first twenty-four hours.”

McInerney: “No, I do. I believe that we have the capability—whether from pre-emption or response—to minimize the casualties in Seoul.”

Mathews: “‘Minimize’ to roughly what level? A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand?”

McInerney: “I think a hundred thousand or less.” […]

Gallucci added that the North Koreans would be foolish to waste their artillery on Seoul. “It is insane for them if they are engaged in ground combat,” Gallucci said. “They’re going to be in desperate need of that artillery for support of ground operations.”

McInerney agreed: “If they try to use Seoul as an artillery target, we would destroy their army that much quicker.”

No judgments here, I certainly don’t know what the right course of action would be, but I do know the geographical realities of any war in the Koreas are more complex than just the nuclear weapons aspect… and I guess that’s really the only point I’m making with this post.

Moving on slightly, but still on the topic of North Korea: at North Korean Economy Watch I found an amazing Google Earth resource – North Korea Uncovered.  It’s an overlay which is, according to the blog, “the most authoritative map of North Korea on Google Earth,” offering “an extensive mapping of North Korea’s economic, cultural, political, and military infrastructures.”  Frankly, I can believe it is the most authoritative map of North Korea on Google Earth –  hundreds if not thousands of sites are marked here (with a separate file for power grids, apparently, although I haven’t looked at that one yet).  The picture to the left (of the Pyongyang area) gives you a small sampling of how much stuff there is identified, and the project (apparently in its 16th version) seems current and actively updated.  Highly recommended for all Google Earth fans.

Finally, there’s an interesting thread at militaryphotos.net with some good info and analysis of North Korea’s conventional military fortifications.

• Update: A chapter from a RAND report here describing the problem of neutralizing the DPRK artillery through counterbattery fire in the Seoul/DMZ theatre context. The timeline seems to be in the 1-2 minute stage for counterbattery fire, with 60 seconds given to detect and send coordinates back to the allied platform. Unfortunately this source presents data that seems only useful for comparative purposes (comparing the Paladin and the Crusader) and not in terms of absolute “enemy-battery kill” (to make up a term). Even so, the process is described as a very challenging problem of timing:

• Chapter 3: Crusader Offers Considerable Firepower Improvement.

Source: NYC Office of Emergency Management.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Karte_Luganersee.png

For you see, that particular shade of red was the color reserved by the game for highlighting the Queen’s Dominions, those parts of the world over which the Union Jack flies proud and whose inhabitants we impress for service in our lucrative and vital Marmite quarries.  Naturally a good portion of the known world was shaded British, as well it should be, but outposts in the North Sea – and a mere Kaiser Roll’s throw from the frightful Hun, at that… surely some mistake had been made?  Clicking on said island with my electro-pneumatic hand-rodent revealed the offending land masses’ name: British Heligoland, a moniker so dubious as to be underlined in red by all respectable spellchecking apparatus.

Scratching my pith helmet in befuddlement I resolved to consult the Encyclopædia Wiki on the matter.  Sure enough from 1807 to 1890 the island was indeed British territory, it being first captured during the Napoleonic Wars and in 1814 ceded by Denmark to the United Kingdom.  During the early period of British sovereignty one gets the impression that Heligoland was a sort of Mos Eisley Cantina, a den of rogues, pirates, and fugitives which the British were happy to tolerate inasmuch as it constituted a thorn in Napoleon’s side and offered a convenient staging area for espionage against Continental Europe.  It then became a popular health spa for a time, popular among artists and émigrés, until the British traded it for cessions in Africa from Germany in 1890.  Despite being used as a bombing range after World War II, the island is today once again inhabited and something of a holiday resort – although bombs are still being unearthed.

Above is from Chart of the North and Baltic Seas &c. by John Thomson (1816) hosted at the David Rumsey Map Collection.

The Iconography of Manhattan Island is a six volume work by Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes published between 1915-1928.  They contain what must be a lifetime’s amount of research into the physical character of said island.  In the preface to Manhattan in Maps (1997), authors R. Augustyn and P. Cohen note that the Iconography “…has been called ‘the greatest single reference work of any American city.’”

The first page of Volume 1 reads, “OF THIS BOOK THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED ON ENGLISH HAND-MADE PAPER AND FORTY-TWO ON JAPANESE VELLUM.”  I’d prefer a Japanese Vellum one if you have sets to spare, but otherwise Columbia University has very nicely scanned them all in their entirety.

Almost 150 years later the map is still routinely consulted by engineers today – as this NY Times article illustrates – because accurately determining the locations of these waterways would be near impossible given today’s level of development.

To my surprise I was unable to find any high-quality digitized versions of the Viele Map online.  One website hosted a 9mb screengrab mash-up while the New York Public Library hosts the map online but only viewable with an applet. 

In 2000 the New York City Department of Environmental Protection Bureau of Water Supply scanned a 400dpi copy of the Viele Map in five separate chunks.  The data is available at the NYPL and is stored in SID format.  I decided to convert the SID files to JPG’s (without reducing them in size) and to make them available to the public here.  At some point I will try to put together a full-resolution mash-up but for now here are the five sections of the Viele Map in all their high-res glory (click on the thumbnails to view or download):

Section 1	Section 2	Section 3	Section 4	Section 5
8800×11200	8800×11200	8800×11200	8800×11200	8800×11200
~10.2mb	~13mb	~12.2mb	~12.3mb	~11.4mb