Seoul Plan for Pre-emptive Strike as part of Full-Fledged War with North Korea

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The Defense Ministry is drafting a new plan to thwart a full-fledged North Korean military offensive and occupy Pyongyang within weeks without waiting for U.S. troop reinforcements.

* preemptive strikes against North Korean nuclear weapons and missile bases and assassination of top North Korean officials
* identify 1,000 North Korean targets for missiles and precision-guided weapons and deploying airborne troops and Marines

This is reported by the Chosun Ilbo. This is one of the major newspapers in South Korea. With a daily circulation of more than 1,800,000. The Chosun Ilbo Establishment Union was created in September 1919, and the Chosun Ilbo company was founded on March 5, 1920. The newspaper was critical of, and sometimes directly opposed to, the actions of the Japanese government during Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945).

The old plan, OPLAN 5015, was dependent upon US aircraft carriers and other forces.

South Korea’s GDP is 45 times larger than that of North Korea, so Seoul’s defense capabilities should easily overwhelm those of North Korea.

North Korea has a $10 billion military budget (22% of the its GDP)
South Korea has a budget of $37 billion and spends 2.7% of GDP

The Republic of Korea Armed Forces is one of the largest standing armed forces in the world with a reported personnel strength of 3,725,000 in 2016 (625,000 active and 3,100,000 reserve).

South Korea has 29,000 marines.

South Korea has 10,000 to 20,000 special forces.

The 20,000 special forces would be the main airborne troops.

North Korea has 1.1 million active and 8.2 million reserves in its military and 80,000 to 200,000 special forces.

South Korea’s 630,000 troops under arms and equipped with advanced hardware had been scheduled to take wartime command of its own forces by December 2015, but the United States agreed to delay the transfer of command to allay the fears of South Korean conservatives until about the mid-2020s.

North Korea’s large forces are mostly trained and equipped with antiquated Soviet hardware from the 1950s and ‘60s.

None of the North’s tanks are a match for the ROK Army’s (ROKA) nearly 1,600 modern indigenously built K1, K1A1 and K1A2 main battle tanks—let alone the new K2 Black Panther.