NORK Artillery and South Korea

Via Mizokami, this website makes some interesting claims about North Korean capability to hit Seoul with artillery in the first hours of a renewed conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The typical argument regarding North Korean capability is that the Norks could wreak severe havoc on Seoul’s civilian population through conventional artillery bombardment from just across the DMZ. This leads to the conclusion that North Korea has a pseudo-nuclear deterrent in the absence of actual weaponized nuclear devices; North Korea can threaten to rain enough destruction down on South Korea that the US and Japan and South Korea could never consider acting aggressively towards the North. The author of the website challenges this argument, suggesting that the North Koreans lack enough long range (50km or greater) artillery to do really serious damage to Seoul, and furthermore that the limited number means that the guns that can hit Seoul would be destroyed by airstrikes at the beginning of any war. Moreover, limitations on tempo, equipment degradation, and morale would severely restrict the ability of North Korea to lay down an extended barrage.

I tend to think that active military belligerance towards North Korea (as opposed to assertive diplomatic and economic action) is a bad idea in any case, but the author isn’t really arguing that the US should invade, just that the consensus on North Korean capability is wrong. I don’t know quite what to make of the argument. Eyeballing the situation on Google Earth, it seems to me that Seoul’s northern suburbs are a lot closer to the DMZ than 50km, which would mean that the extent of North Korean destruction could be much greater. But I haven’t been there, and don’t really know how densely populated these areas are (not to mention other populated areas near the DMZ). Anyone have a better sense of how many people live in close proximity, or a sense of how to evaluate the argument otherwise? If Nork artillery doesn’t pose much of a threat, I’d prefer not to repeat the claim in class…