I Remember all the doom predictions about Saddam's "million man army" in Gulf War I. How they were a bunch of "hardened combat veterans" after years of war against Iran etc etc. We saw how that went.
I don't doubt the NK's will fight should it come to that, I think they'll be much more aggressive than the Iraqi's turned out to be in GWI...but they're still a conscripted army from a dirt poor country that hasn't seen combat in 50+ years, where as the US military is chuck full of combat veterans ATM.
I'm not sure of the state of the SK Army, but I'm sure it's 1000% better than it was in 1950. Add to all this the fact that I think the Allies would in short order control the skies over NK and that the NK forces will probably be in the field en masse and thus be subject to all the punishment such forces suffer when caught out in the open.
Also, there's very little possibility of a massive 'sneak attack' this time with SAT sitting overhead all day everyday. And should the Dear Leader get stupid enough to lob missiles at Japan...I'm not so sure they would sit this one out.
I'm also not to worked up about and WMD from NK being used outside of the Korean Peninsular, we have Ticonderoga class cruisers that now have the capability of -at least- shooting at outbound ICBMs and there's the ABM sites in Alaska that have again scored -at least some- hits on test targets that might head for the US West Coast...and any NK aircraft trying to make some kind of 'bomb run' on Japan or Okinawa would be lit up by Allied aircraft/navy ships long before they got anywhere IMO.
Yes, from a manpower POV the US would be challenged in the opening phase of combat, however air assets could easily be shifted from the ME and possibly offset NK numbers on the ground until greater forces arrived.
This is of course just my opinion on all this.
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