Breaking! North Korea Invades South Korea

Breaking News! North Korea Invades South Korea!

By Justin Magoon

Don’t worry, it’s not ACTUALLY breaking news, this is just a simulation. For now... Realizing its inability to maintain a functioning government and dwindling natural resources and capital as a result of UN sanctions, the Democratic People’s Republic (yeah right) of Korea has mobilized all active and reserve military personnel in a surprise attack on its southern neighbor in hopes of seizing the entire peninsula and capturing the riches of the South. North Korean forces, among some of the largest in the world, combine to make a grand total of over 10 million members fit for service, armed with 6,600 tanks, just under 6,000 artillery units, approximately 950 aircraft, and 1,000 ships, all of which are now pouring south into South Korea. Even though the DPRK would love to land missiles or soldiers on the shore of America, they would be unable to due to technological, logistical, and military limitations. Given time, the North Koreans, supplied but not joined by China, are bogged down in the large cities of SK, facing superior technology, loss of air control, and fierce resistance from South Korean and American forces. Eventually, the North Koreans are driven back into their home country by the arrival of new US units and are forced to fight guerilla style battles against a technologically and qualitatively superior coalition force. Even though sporadic battles continues all over the peninsula, the Stars and Stripes fly over Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and Kim Jong-Un, now ousted by a coup from within his own government, can do nothing to prevent the seizure of his nuclear weapons. The war is over, and the oppressive regime is no more.

But what was the cost?

Seoul, the capital of South Korea, the 9th most economically powerful city on the planet, home to massive corporations such as Hyundai, Samsung, Kia, LG, and more, the heart of the Korean economy, would essentially be the 9th most economically powerful hole in the ground. What does this mean to Americans at home? For beginners, the technology market across the planet would take massive hits as a result of the war, given that the headquarters of major companies like Samsung and LG are piles of rubble. This would usher in a shift towards the Japanese and American companies, assuming that North Korea never used its nuclear arsenal on Tokyo. New, strict laws would be implemented to prevent the remaining tech giants from establishing monopolies now that some competition has been removed, and the rapidly-advancing technology market would slow to a crawl. This means that American consumers would face a near halt in the available personal tech for sale, with TV, cell phone, tablet, and communication technology prices skyrocketing to make up for the sudden shift away from the pre-war competition. Not only that, but Hyundai and Kia would be practically non-existent, their capital shot and shelled into oblivion and their wealth scattered to the four winds. The car industry would see the vanishing of Korean competition, and so what happened to the tech industry could very well follow in the automobile industry, although with the Koreans removed from the car market, the need for cheap, affordable vehicles would arise, and so some companies might step in to fill the void. The effects on the international automobile industry would be unknown, but drastic regardless.

But Korean companies, or what would be left of them, are not the only ones that would feel the heat. China would face a massive crisis.

Proof that China’s economy is primarily manufacturing based is so common, all that need be done to find it is to simply check the back of the computer you are reading this post on, or your pen, or your notebook, or your shirt. Given the likelihood of China’s indirect involvement in this fictitious conflict, their economy would get knocked out faster than a college freshman at their first party. While China would not risk open war with the United States and her allies, China would not hesitate to provide military supplies to North Korea, a country which is infamous for preferring guns over butter. As a result, the United States would likely impose strict economic sanctions on China, in lieu of war, and put tremendous pressure on the rest of the world to do the same, declaring economic total war on the Land of a Billion People. It’s anybody’s guess as to what would happen to the world economy at that point, but to simplistically put it, cheap will be a word resigned to the history books. While China is far from holding a superiority in exports to the United States, they do produce vast quantities of all the stuff Americans hold so dear: food, computers, phones, clothing, cars, commodities, toys, instruments, furniture, novelties, etc. Let the data speak for itself.

Given the immense necessity of these items, trade with China would not die, but economic sanctions more powerful than a nuclear bomb would have a devastating effect on China’s economy. China’s immense manufacturing market could either cease production and suffer the consequences or carry on, which would result in overproduction and underconsumption. China’s economy would take a staggering blow, not to mention the upcoming and unknown effects of the gender population disparity, which could lead to unrest in the country. Regardless of what would happen to China domestically, internationally, their exports would tumble and Americans would likely face higher prices across the board on everything from computers to t-shirts to Hot Wheels, leading to more economic pain for the US.

Putting aside the atrocious casualties that would result from such a war, the economic damage would be vast as well. If you had any money in a Korean company or any money on the stock market for that matter, don’t expect to be swimming in dough anytime soon. While high schoolers high on Call of Duty and Mountain Dew love to taunt North Korea with their friends about how they’d be bombed back to the Stone Age by ‘Murica, and that said students likely know absolutely nothing about the first Korean War, their taunting would soon end when they saw and felt the results of a second Korean War. Their Call of Duty and Mountain Dew wouldn’t be so cheap, and the price of commodities that they took for granted would skyrocket like an ICBM. So to the average American, I say: even if you were able to avoid military service of some kind, your life would be drastically changed by a second Korean War, and the world you know today would be quite different after the dust settled.

Sources:

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/08/chinas-dominance-in-manufacturing-in-one-chart/278366/

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1897105,00.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article3386433.ece