MILITARY WEAK, BUT STILL A THREAT.

Byline: Ed Offley Seattle Post-Intelligencer

North Korea can't win a war with South Korea.

But the Communist regime still can destroy the South, some experts say.

Korea expert William Taylor of the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies describes the regime as ``a cornered, wounded wolf - desperate and dangerous.''

Not all experts are convinced North Korea's economic collapse and looming famine will lead to military action, and some say the military threat is receding as the North Korean army disintegrates.

Still, the military has a variety of scenarios.

One focuses on the threat from a North Korea driven to military action by economic desperation. The theory assumes dictator Kim Jong Il or his generals, facing the unraveling of the North Korean army and the internal threat of famine might launch a do-or-die war against the South.

Other scenarios include a collapse of North Korean central authority that could result in civil war or anarchy, with midlevel military commanders becoming warlords in charge of parts of the country.

In those situations, theorists say, feuding among North Korean rivals could easily spill across the border, triggering a South Korean counterattack.

Or, the experts add, if local commanders lose control of the population, the South could face a mass migration of refugees across the Demilitarized Zone - despite its mine fields and armed troops - in a desperate search for food.

``If you've got several million people who want to go south, the DMZ won't stop them,'' said Bob Gaskin, a retired Army officer who served as Korea analyst for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney from 1989 to '93.

The possibility North Korea would contemplate taking the southern capital of Seoul hostage warrants a hard look, experts say, because it would involve several components of the Korean People's Army that appear relatively intact and because such an operation could be a blitzkrieg to avoid letting U.S. reinforcements arrive.

Other experts say the central policy of the Pyongyang regime remains to reunify the peninsula under Communist rule. The worsening economic conditions could spur military action to try to reach that goal.

``I think they are going to see war is attractive because there is no alternative to keeping their regime together,'' Bruce Bennett, a Korea expert at the Rand Corp. research institute in California, said of North Korea. ``This is a last, desperate act to try to keep the regime together.''

Korea-watchers do not universally support the limited-attack scenario.

``I think the North Koreans would have to be very, very desperate to start a war,'' said Gaskin, the former Pentagon analyst. ``The odds of a North Korean attack succeeding today are far less than earlier in the decade.''

Gaskin said he is concerned that in the unlikely event of a war, the North Koreans would try to offset their weaknesses by ``going all the way'' with massed chemical warfare attacks against military targets in the South.

Without specifically addressing the taking-Seoul-hostage scenario, the senior U.S. military commander in South Korea recently confirmed the city's vulnerability.

``Seoul would suffer great damage in a relatively short time by massed (North Korean) weapons systems from their current protected locations'' north of the DMZ, Gen. John Tilelli told the House National Security Committee committee March 6. In the event of a war, Tilelli would command all U.S. and South Korean forces.

Despite reports of fuel shortages and even hungry soldiers, the Korean People's Army retains some advantages against the south.

First, more than 50 percent of the army is deployed within 60 miles of the DMZ, enabling much of the force to launch an attack with minimum preparation or advance movement that would warn the South.

The military publication Jane's Intelligence Review reported in 1994 that South Korea probably would have at best only 24 hours' warning before a full-scale invasion.

An attack in which the North Korean infantry pours across the DMZ is feasible because of a second advantage held by North Korea, officials say. Heavy artillery units in North Korea, many of which are buried in hardened sites with quick-opening armored doors, do not have to move to hit their targets. Most can easily reach peacetime camps of the South Korean Third ROK Army, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and the center of Seoul.

Third, Pyongyang is known to have chemical weapons - including sarin, tabun, phosgene and mustard gas - that it could fire with missiles and heavy artillery.

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Photo

Photo: North Korean leader Kim Jong II waves during a military parade in Pyongyang in October 1995.

Associated Press