 The Korean War never ended. No treaty has ever been signed, and the ongoing armistice of 1953 holds only a tenuous peace. And finding a lasting peace might just be the toughest nut to crack in all of international relations, because too many interests intersect on an all-too-heavily armed peninsula. Indeed, the Korean stalemate doesn't look like it will end anytime soon, if ever. That's the best realistic scenario, because if the stalemate somehow ends and war breaks out again, American and South Korean leaders face a daunting problem. North Korea is almost impossible to invade. Here's why. First of all, invading North Korea would be a game that involves playing with nuclear fire, because the country now has enough fissile material for an estimated 20 to 60 warheads. According to the Congressional Research Service, the North Koreans have the means of delivering those payloads onto targets all over the world, too. North Korea now has a diverse array of ballistic missiles in its arsenal. In late March 2023, the North Koreans purportedly successfully tested their Huizong-17 ICBM. The object reached an altitude of about 3,850 miles, over a 684-mile arc. If this object were to fly on a traditional ballistic missile arc, it would have a range of over 9,320 miles, making it capable of hitting any target in the continental United States. The Huizong-17 may potentially be able to carry more than one warhead, too. North Korea also has the 6,460-mile Huizong-14 and 877-mile Huizong-15, giving it the ability to reach most targets in the United States, even if the Huizong-17 doesn't work. It is still controversial. And there lies the first problem in invading North Korea. In the past, strategic retaliation by the North Koreans would have been impossible. Now, they can deliver at least several city-busting nuclear warheads with yields of up to 140 kilotons, which are seven times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. Any invasion of North Korea would now almost certainly prompt a nuclear response from the Kim regime. It could be directed at the American homeland, against bases in Japan or Guam or elsewhere. With nuclear deterrence now in place, an invasion of North Korea is pretty much out of the question. However, even without nuclear weapons, North Korea possesses another form of deterrence. The country has about 6,000 conventional artillery systems aimed directly at Seoul, the South Korean capital. Should the North Koreans choose to unleash a full-scale bombardment on Seoul, the Rand Corporation estimates that 200,000 people could die in the first hour alone. An invasion of North Korea would need to rapidly neutralize these artillery systems at targets all along the border to prevent civilian casualties the likes of which the modern world has never seen. Although American and South Korean intelligence undoubtedly knows where some of these systems are positioned, it's impossible to take all of them out in time to prevent significant loss of civilian life. North Korea has another ace up its sleeve when it comes to making invasion impossible. It's alliance with the Chinese Communist Party. The North Korean regime depends on China's support for its continued existence. It is through trade with China that North Korea can get around the otherwise crippling economic sanctions imposed on the so-called Hermit Kingdom by the rest of the world. Without Chinese imports, North Korea would quickly descend into anarchy, as it would lack food, energy, and other essentials. However, the relationship between the two countries hasn't always been on the best of terms. Even so, the North has significant leverage over China, despite its economic disadvantage. China is not always enamored with the North Korean regime, but it needs the Kims to stay in power for two reasons. First, North Korea is one of China's only allies on the Pacific Basin. Eastwood, from Japan to Indonesia, is a string of American allies or nations friendly to the United States. Geopolitical observers call this area the first island chain. This string of islands effectively cuts China off from the Pacific and Indian oceans and threatens Chinese shipping. Having North Korea as a projection onto the sea helps China to prevent complete encirclement and to keep American or American-aligned military forces off its land border. The possibility of American soldiers being stationed on that land border was the reason China intervened in the Korean War in the first place. The second reason that China has a keen interest in keeping the Kims in power is because if North Korea were to become destabilized, it would be dealing with millions of refugees flooding its border and causing chaos in the Chinese homeland. These are two unacceptable scenarios for Beijing and as a result, any invasion scenario that involves North Korea will almost certainly see China get involved, just like it did in the Korean War. For all these reasons, the Kim regime rightly feels secure in its power over its hermit kingdom. The costs of mounting an invasion are simply too high in any realistic scenario. But what if, in a hypothetical scenario, it was necessary for the United States to lead another international coalition in a war on the Korean peninsula? Would it even be possible to invade North Korea? Any land assault would be harrowing. To mount a northward offensive, Allied forces would first need to pass through the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ at the border, the only available land route to invade the country. The Korean DMZ is the most heavily fortified piece of land in the world. The size of land mines span its 160-mile width. In addition to the mines, the North has built an electrified fence and countless watchtowers would make excellent sniping outposts and machine gun nests. Although these would be spotted and taken out by artillery or air power, they would nevertheless slow the Allied advance and cause significant casualties in the opening hours of the war. And then there are North Korean assets that aren't as easy to deal with. Intelligence has estimated that there are at least 800 fortified bunkers near the DMZ, with each one capable of sheltering between 1,500 and 2,000 soldiers. These would serve as excellent rallying points, and although they too would eventually be destroyed, doing so would take a long time and would give the North Koreans room to create more casualties and chaos. North Korea also has a large army, one of the largest armies in the world at about 1.2 million personnel as of 2020, and about 70 percent of its army is within 50 miles of the DMZ. 50 percent of its naval and air forces are within the same range. Not all of the people stationed at or near the DMZ are combat troops, but the North still boasts a huge amount of armed soldiers and platforms within a short and narrow range to concentrate firepower on any enemy invasion force. North Korea has also now created a formidable short and intermediate-range ballistic missile force, which it will bring to bear in the event of an invasion. Several of its missiles can reach ranges between 930 and 2,795 miles. Even if the North Koreans decide to use only conventional payloads, these missiles can do serious damage to American bases in the region from Japan all the way to Guam. North Korea has already displayed enough ballistic missiles in its military parades alone to potentially overwhelm American missile defense systems like the THAAD, while estimates of the North's total number of ballistic missiles are hard to come by, there are more than enough to cause significant damage to American bases throughout the Pacific, even if the attacks do not escalate to the nuclear level. These ballistic missiles would not only potentially wreak havoc on American and Allied forces on the Korean Peninsula, but threaten their supply lines coming from Japan and elsewhere. North Korea also likely has, or is developing, tactical nuclear weapons that do not rise to the level of city-destroying yields, but would cause mass casualties against enemy forces on a battlefield. The North would certainly use them against an invasion force. There is also no guarantee that an attack across the DMZ would ensure that the North Koreans remain on the defensive. Between 1974 and 2000, the South Korean Army found and sealed four North Korean tunnels that crossed the DMZ and stretched into the South's territory. There are likely more that have not been found, although attacks through such channels would not by themselves halt an invasion of North Korea. They have the potential to cause significant chaos in the rear ranks of American, South Korean, and other Allied forces, further stressing supply lines. In fact, North Korea has long had plans for an offensive into the South, should another war on the Peninsula break out. This one-blow, non-stop attack would likely use chemical weapons in addition to conventional firepower. Kim Jong-il, North Korea's previous dictator, declared in 1992 that a lightning offensive across the DMZ would be able to break all the way to Busan in three days in spite of the concentration of American and South Korean firepower and manpower along the border. While this declaration was typical of North Korean boasting and would be unlikely to succeed in its grand design, the point to take seriously is that the North Koreans have enough manpower and firepower of their own to attack toward the South and potentially would need to be taken seriously in an invasion scenario. The use of tactical nuclear weapons, which the North did not possess when Kim Jong-il made this statement in 1992, would increase the threat. Bypassing the hellish DMZ and attempting an amphibious and airborne assault behind it would theoretically be an option, especially because the United States Navy, assisted by the South Koreans, would quickly establish sea and air supremacy. If there is one saving grace in a war scenario with North Korea, it is that the North's air force is weak. Many of its planes are 1950s-era fighters like the MiG-17, 19, and 21. North Korea even still uses a hefty amount of propeller-driven planes. The best fighters in its fleet are the third-generation MiG-23 and fourth-generation MiG-29 and SU-25, but North Korea probably only has a couple of dozen of these in working order. Because of the technology gap, North Korea's air force would be overwhelmed, and it would only be a matter of time before the American, South Korean, and Allied air forces established air superiority. However, what the North Koreans lack in quality, they make up for in quantity. The North Koreans have hundreds of planes and only need to patrol a limited airspace. These planes could harass and delay the invasion, increasing the costs even as the North Korean air force inevitably gets decimated in the process upon encountering hostile aircraft and modern air defense systems. However, North Korea's aircraft would not be the only threat to Allied planes. North Korea has been testing surface-to-air missiles as fervently as it has tested ballistic missiles. First, there is the KN-06, a medium range system similar to Russia's S-300. A longer range system closer to Russia's S-400 was also tested in September 2021. These systems and North Korea's liberal amount of anti-aircraft artillery units would create significant casualties even against modern aircraft. If North Korea lacks a modern air force, it can make up for it to a certain extent with a far more modern air defense system. And North Korea's ballistic missiles potentially carrying tactical nuclear warheads, those would pose a big problem for amphibious assault scenario. The North Korean Army, the KPA, may be far less formidable than it appears on the parade grounds. Its soldiers are often not in top condition. One famous escapee in 2017, Oh Jong-Sung, had several large parasitic worms in his stomach. Disease and malnutrition are common among the Korean People's Army ranks. However, there are so many soldiers that they would still cause extremely heavy casualties. Meanwhile, the North Korean Air Force and Navy may be hopelessly out of date, but there are enough numbers and firepower to make any invasion of such a heavily fortified country a nightmare scenario even for a highly motivated attacker. On their own, the North Koreans would most likely lose a war on the peninsula against South Korea and the United States, but the price of victory would easily be combined military and civilian deaths in the millions. And that's not even mentioning the fact that North Korea would not be acting alone. So far in our actual invasion scenario, we have not talked about the force that China could and would use to multiply North Korea's advantages. Because as we said in the start of this video, no Korean War II scenario would pass by without China getting involved in some way. China's People's Liberation Army, the PLA troops, are unlikely to be in worse shape than their North Korean counterparts and would add a hefty amount of manpower to the already dense defenses in the North's territory. China's PLA is the world's largest army with almost 2.2 million soldiers on active duty, and China would have the luxury of being able to concentrate most of these forces in the Korean theater, while the United States worldwide military commitments would make America less able to do so. The prospect of further Russian aggression in Eastern Europe would alone make concentration in Korea a more difficult prospect to accomplish. China's Air Force has more modern planes than North Korea's, including the fifth-generation Chengdu J-20, and would make establishing air superiority more difficult. Additionally, China has thousands of intermediate-range ballistic missiles as part of its anti-access area denial strategy. China would almost certainly use some of its stockpile to attack American bases in Japan, Guam, and elsewhere in the region, adding even more to the bombardment their North Korean allies can already launch. And the closer you are to the Chinese mainland, the more accurate the missiles get, which would make an amphibious assault on North Korea from the west, such as that seen at Incheon in the Korean War, an almost impossible task, ensuring even further concentration of North Korean and Chinese forces along the DMZ and the Sea of Japan. The Chinese missile threat would also make the supply situation already tricky even more difficult. With the likely destruction of Seoul, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and the risk of escalation into a general war between the United States and China, we should be thankful that the stalemate on the Korean Peninsula continues. The North Korean regime is an affront to all of humanity, but unfortunately, the Kims have successfully entrenched themselves into an almost unassailable position where stalemate is the least bad among a litany of bad options, all of which make North Korea practically impossible to invade. But what do you think? Is North Korea really impenetrable, or is there a way it could successfully be invaded? Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe for more military analysis from Military Experts.