Defense Secretary’s trip to South Korea underlines the grim realities of conflict for Seoul.
SEOUL — Speaking after a meeting with senior South Korean defense officials on Saturday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis offered unequivocal support for American allies in the face of threats from North Korea.
“Make no mistake,” Mattis told reporters after the meeting, “any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.”
But despite the reassurances offered on Saturday, the defense secretary’s visit also underlined arguably the biggest problem in containing the threat from North Korea: The conventional weaponry at the border that would put millions of South Koreans at risk if any conflict were to break out.
Mattis got a sense of this first hand the day before, when he visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two countries with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo. While there, Song pointed to North Korea’s long-range artillery in the distance and suggested it would be “unfeasible” to defend against them in a conflict.
“Understood,” Mattis responded, according to Reuters .
Over the past seven decades, North Korea has amassed a huge amount of artillery along its border with South Korea. Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., a senior imagery analyst at North Korea-focused website 38 North, estimated earlier this year that the Second Corps of the Korean People’s Army stationed at Kaesong on the northern side of the DMZ has about 500 artillery pieces alone.
That is just one part of a much larger arsenal. One estimate for the total number of weapons of this sort is 8,000.
