Heres hoping the U.S. military can destroy 99% of North Koreas firepower pointing south over the border within the first 1 hour of conflict because if they can't the damage they will do will be immeasurable.

scary things happening in the Korean pennisula

If there is a war, you can bet that thousands of NK soldiers will defect to the South. Kim Jong Il has made his country such a miserable place that I can't imagine its citizens would have any loyalty to him.

I wouldn't trust the US as much as I do South Korea. The US will ensure air superiority, of course. But its going to be up to ROK arty and MLRS to disable DPRK arty that could endanger Seoul.

Fortunately, the DPRK big guns - the ones that can hit Seoul - are well documented, and their cordinates known.

I am sure the ROK has a ton of these bad boys trained in on the said positions:

The ROK has about 100 of these launchers, loaded with 12 missles each. 1200 missles would make a mess of the DPRK if they all landed :-p

Although I fully agree that Kim Jong Il is the worst leader since Pol Pot, one can only wonder how brainwashed the North Koreans are in believing that South Korea, as well as the US, is a totally evil empire that will kill, muder, and torture every North Korean citizen on sight.

I saw on a discovery channel show that each missle can devastate about 1^2 mile, is that right? They fire a field of variously nasty little subprojectiles into an area and detonate them all at once.

Yes, North Korea has five nukes. NATO combined has hundreds. The armed forces of NATO (and indeed, the UN) dwarf those of DPRK. There is a Communist dictator with nuclear weapons next to a democratic country, and we're doing NOTHING to stop him.

It's like the opposite of Iraq. Saddam had no nukes. Kim Jong-Il has nukes. Guess whose country we invaded? >_>

To be fair, it's quite clear that the Bush regime had their sights targeted on North Korea. If you study the Bush Doctrine, War on Terror, and the Axis of Evil, it becomes clear that after Iraq, Iran and North Korea were next. The problem was that the White House completely ignored the need for any peace building process in Iraq (in fact, Powell was strictly against it at first), which severely delayed and damaged their plans.

Each rocket has nearly 700 submunitions. Each missle can actively deny 1 square kilometer of territory - ie, it all gets blasted.

Korea has just under 100 of these M270's. The US has 1,000.

The general mood here doesn't seem too serious. People I've talked to feel that aside from the issue getting used by candidates in the upcoming elections, Not too much is going to happen. People's main concern is that something is done in regards to the Cheonan.

Relations have been in a downward spiral for the last 2 years or so. It started when Ee Myeong Bak was elected promising a reversal of Korea's "Sunshine policy" of diplomatic engagement and aid to the North. Not long after, an SK tourist in North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort was shot during a morning walk. The South halted all travel to the resort until NK held a joint investigation in to the matter and promised safety to all SK tourists. The North refused the joint investigation and threatened to seize resort assets if SK didn't open the resort back up to travel (NK just did seize the SK owned hotels after the Cheonan accusation).

The North also arrested an SK worker at the joint industrial complex on NK land. They accused him of attempting to lure an NK woman to the South. The man was released when his boss met with NK diplomats, but a seperate row over the wages at the industrial zone and general tensions led to that being shut down too (I think it's closed now, though I could be wrong).

The resort and industrial zone brought in a lot of funding to the North. The loss of those, plus these new sanctions will be brutal to the country. NK might actually have to make amends if it wants to avert another massive famine, hundreds of thousands dead and a possible uprising.