The very notion of a capital city being hit by half a million artillery rounds per hour was absolutely staggering. He couldn’t let it happen. Then again, he wondered, how was he supposed to stop it?
“How long would it take for the North Korean army to roll across the border, defeat the ROK’s forward deployed forces, and take Seoul?” the president finally asked.
“It depends on their strategy, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“It all depends on whether they want Seoul intact or not,” Garrett explained.
“Assume they do.”
“Assuming all we have is the current twenty-five thousand American boots on the ground, along with the ROK and U.N. forces?”
“Right.”
“They could have Seoul in a week, maybe less — probably less. It’s only thirty-five miles south of the DMZ, after all.”
“Less than a week?” the president asked. “Even with the ROK reserves in place?”
“The reservists won’t be fully up and running for another two weeks, at bEST — if the North moves in the next few days, they’ll have the advantage, and they know it.”
“And if Pyongyang doesn’t want Seoul?”
“Then they use WMDs,” Garrett said.
“What do they have, and how much?”
“Mr. President, we estimate the DPRK is producing about three thousand tons of chemical weapons a year. Best we can tell, they’ve weaponized mustard gas, sarin — you name it, they’ve got it. As far as biological weapons, we believe they’ve weaponized anthrax, cholera, smallpox, and typhoid as well, sir. The last time I was at the DMZ — which was maybe six months ago — a top South Korean general told me their intelligence shows that the DPRK has between forty and seventy-five missiles armed with chemical and biological weapons, all deployed on the front lines. They can launch without warning and would kill upward of 40 percent of the population of Seoul in less than an hour.”
“And if the North goes nuclear?” Oaks asked.
Garrett was silent.
“General Garrett, I’m asking you a direct question,” the president insisted. “How many could the North Koreans kill if they choose to go nuclear?”
“Mr. President, everyone in and around Seoul could be dead in less than four hours.”
“How many people is that, General?”
“Twelve million,” Garrett said, “including a hundred thousand Americans, sir.”
Oaks winced.
“What’s more, Mr. President,” Garrett continued, “almost half of South Korea’s population lives within an hour of the capital. The casualties, sir, would be apocalyptic.”
The word jarred Oaks, though he took pains not to show it. Was that what they were seeing — the dawn of the apocalypse?
“How much warning would we have before they attacked?” he asked.
“I suspect they’re ready now, Mr. President,” Garrett said. “Jack’s plane was sent out to confirm that. And based on the North’s reaction, and all the other data we’re seeing, I believe they could launch at any minute. That’s why the South Koreans and Japanese were asking the SecDef to move so quickly, even before today’s attack and the nuclear attacks back home.”
Oaks could see it clearly now. Seoul and Tokyo were desperate that he not repeat the mistakes Truman and Acheson had made back in 1950. On January 12 of that year, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson had delivered a major address at the National Press Club in which he had actually excluded South Korea from the “defensive perimeter” of U.S. military strategy in Asia. Five months later, apparently convinced the U.S. would not intervene, the North made their move.
Oaks remembered how infuriated his father had been, believing that Truman and Acheson had effectively invited the war. He remembered General Dwight Eisenhower’s famous Cincinnati speech excoriating Acheson, stating, “In January of 1950, our secretary of state declared that America’s so-called ‘defensive perimeter’ excluded areas on the Asiatic mainland such as Korea. He said in part: ‘No person can guarantee such areas against military attack. It must be clear that such a guarantee is hardly sensible or necessary…. It is a mistake… in considering Pacific and Far Eastern problems to become obsessed with military considerations.’”
Compounding matters, Acheson’s top Asia expert at the time, Dean Rusk — then U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Far EasT — had actually briefed Congress on June 20, stating that despite rising tensions, he did not believe an invasion of the South was likely. Five days later, the invasion began, and the U.S. was caught disastrously unprepared to respond quickly and decisively.
There was no question now that South Korea was part of the U.S. security sphere in Asia. But the U.S. had been steadily downsizing the number of American troops on the peninsula. All U.S. tactical nuclear weapons had been removed from South Korea. The danger of miscalculating again was enormous, Oaks realized.
He turned now to Admiral Arthurs. “How do we stop them, Admiral? What’s it really going to take?”
The admiral, fast approaching his forty-fifth year in the navy, took a deep breath. “Mr. President, as you know, OPLAN 5027 is our contingency plan for a North Korean invasion,” he began, somewhat tentatively. “Secretary Trainor ordered an overhaul of all our war scenarios after the Day of Devastation, based on the dramatically changed strategic situation. I’m afraid that’s not yet complete.”
“Just give me an executive summary of what you have,” the president insisted.
“Well, sir, the version we developed for President Clinton in 2000 and updated for Presidents Bush and MacPherson called for more than 690,000 U.S. troops to be deployed into South Korea in the event of an invasion by the North.”
“Six hundred ninety thousand troops?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir,” the admiral said. “We scaled that up from 480,000 in the early 1990s.”
“But we’ve only got 25,000 U.S. troops there at the moment, right?”
“That’s true, sir,” Briggs said. “The plan is based on the Joint Chiefs’ assessment of how many U.S. forces would be needed to drive the North back up past the 38th parallel in the event of an invasion.”
“It assumes that the South would be overrun?” Oaks asked.
“Yes, sir, almost immediately,” the admiral said.
“And it assumes the entire peninsula would be held by the North until we could mobilize and deploy enough men and weaponry to drive them out?”
“Yes, sir. That’s correct.”
“How long would that take?”
“My staff is working on that right now, Mr. President,” the admiral explained. “But it would take several months, at least; I can tell you that.”
“How many troops could we get into Seoul in the next forty-eight hours?”
“Ten thousand, sir,” Briggs guessed. “Maybe fifteen.”
“How long would it take to get a hundred thousand troops there?”
“A month, maybe longer.”
“We don’t have a month, do we, Admiral?”
“No, sir, I don’t believe we do, Mr. President. Like I said, the DPRK could have Seoul by the end of the week, if that.”
“So now we’re back to my original question,” Oaks said. “How do we stop a full-scale North Korean invasion of South Korea?”
“Mr. President, I’m afraid the answer isn’t in OPLAN 5027.”
“But you do have a plan for this, right?”
“Yes, sir, buT — ”
“I want to see it.”
“Mr. President, I have to tell you thaT — ”
“I need to see it, Admiral. Now.”
55