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"  When North and South Korea trade artillery rounds, as they did this past Tuesday, killing four and injuring at least 16, some panicked hyperbole is understandable. First, there&amp;#039;s the unfortunate geography\u2014the opponents&amp;#039; capitals are just 120 miles apart, with Seoul within 35 miles of the border. The numbers only get worse, with estimates of as many as 13,000 artillery pieces positioned along that border, many of them within range and presumably aimed directly at Seoul, one of the world&amp;#039;s most densely-populated cities. Factor in the rate of fire of all those suspected artillery batteries, and throw in the potential launch of hundreds of missiles, and it&amp;#039;s easy to conclude that if North Korea is pushed hard enough, the result could be, as the New York Times put it yesterday, &amp;quot;the destruction of Seoul.&amp;quot; The more common term for the potential fate of the South Korean capital, casually dropped on recent radio and television news reports, as well as in two separate AOL news op-eds from earlier this year, is that it would be &amp;quot;flattened.&amp;quot; Analysis from Time magazine in 2003 went so far as to gauge how long this would take: &amp;quot;Its conventional artillery capability would allow North Korea to flatten Seoul in the first half-hour of any confrontation.&amp;quot; Forget that North Korea would be committing strategic and political suicide with a full-scale bombardment of Seoul. If a storm of artillery rounds fell on Seoul, would the city really disintegrate? &amp;quot;Artillery is not that lethal,&amp;quot; says Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and is a national security analyst for ABC News. &amp;quot;It takes a long time for it to produce the densities of fire to go beyond terrorism and harassment.&amp;quot; Even in a worst-case scenario, where both U.S. and South Korean forces are somehow paralyzed or otherwise engaged, and North Korea fires its 170mm artillery batteries and 240mm rocket launchers with total impunity, the grim reality wouldn&amp;#039;t live up to the hype. Buildings would be perforated, fires would inevitably rage and an unknown number of people would die. Seoul would be under siege\u2014but it wouldn&amp;#039;t be flattened, destroyed or leveled. If this sounds like squabbling over semantics, it is. But semantics and language matter. The casual, and largely unsupported references to Seoul&amp;#039;s potential flattening punctuates the notion that Kim Jong Il is holding a city hostage. It recasts a complex strategic vulnerability as a cartoon: an entire city facing a perpetual firing squad. It also ignores physical laws, and the realities of modern warfare. Barring the use of nuclear weapons or large-scale bombing runs, destroying a city requires an extended campaign of shelling and demolition, the likes of which the world hasn&amp;#039;t seen since WWII. When the Chechen capital of Grozny was all-but-destroyed by Russian forces in 1999, it was the result of months of artillery and missile bombardments, as well as air strikes. There&amp;#039;s no doubt that North Korea&amp;#039;s massive deployment of artillery, and potential deployment of roughly 300 ballistic missiles, could wreak havoc on Seoul and its population. What&amp;#039;s clear, however, is that a sudden barrage of shells and missiles would only mark the beginning of a battle for the city, not an apocalyptic fait accomplit. And as Cordesman points out, flattening, levelling or otherwise destroying a city is an obsolete tactic. The firestorms of the past century have been replaced with surgical, precision-guided strikes, which can disable a city&amp;#039;s communications, cut off its power and water supply, and pave the way for a ground invasion. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the real world,&amp;quot; Cordesman says. &amp;quot;Not Dresden.&amp;quot; The accuracy of North Korea&amp;#039;s roughly 300 ballistic missiles is either classified or simply unknown, but nearly all are believed to rely on &amp;quot;strap-on&amp;quot; guidance, cobbled-together targeting systems that can&amp;#039;t compete with modern smart bombs.  That North Korea and its astonishing array of artillery poses a significant threat to Seoul is obvious. But to understand the exact dimensions of that threat, and what&amp;#039;s at stake in a potential full-scale war, the caricature of a city wiped off the map isn&amp;#039;t helping anyone. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a6212/north-korea-and-flattening-seoul/>