The scariest place in the world...

I ran into a thread concerning the continued presence of U.S. troops on the Korean peninsula at ESLCafe (an online gathering place for English language teachers) yesterday. The thread turned into a discussion of the possibility of a North Korean strike against Seoul. You have probably heard it discussed on the news that North Korea has literally thousands of heavy artillery guns poised on the northern side of the DMZ, trained on Seoul, 35 miles to the south. This might seem a little abstract to the folks back home. The truth is, though, the North Korean guns could level much of metropolitan Seoul (home to over 20 million souls, including yours truly) in the time it will take for me to write this post. Imagine New York or San Francisco coming under a sustained assault of 500,000 artillery shells per hour. Also keep in mind that NK has the missile capability to strike targets Japan, and as far away as Guam. They have also tested missiles capable of hitting the west coast of the U.S. Finally, top this off with chemical, biological, and nuclear capabilities. The North, when you think about it, has actually created a credible military deterrent (at a stunning cost to its people, of course).
Of course, the North could not "win" a war against the U.S. and South Korea. They would not be able to forcibly reunify the peninsula, and the regime would almost certainly be toppled in a protracted conflict. But, being able to "win" is beside the point when you can effectively turn much of the east Asian economic miracle into smoking rubble in two days.
This situation would seem to lend itself to a mutually assured destruction type of deterrance from all sides (for any of you IR geeks reading this). This, of course, is pretty much what has transpired over the past 50 years on the peninsula. Unfortunately, the North Koreans are known for selling their military wares to the highest bidder. This is one scenario (albeit somewhat farfetched) under which a terrorist group could obtain nuclear weapons. This has made the more hawkish sectors of the U.S. foreign policy favor a pre-emptive strike against the North Koreans, even though such an attack would unleash the scenario described above.
This, in turn, puts the U.S./South Korean alliance in an extremely untenable position. The Americans desperately want to contain North Korea's nuclear capability. Doing so with a military strike, however, could easily cost a million or so South Korean lives (not to mention erasing the economic progress that has been made over the past 35 years). In other words, the South Koreans might be asked to sacrifice Seoul in order to protect New York and Washington.
Not good times, as my friend Rolfe might say.
So, what to do? Really, the only option is some kind of diplomatic initiative to get the North to surrender is nuclear capability. The North Koreans always cheat on these agreements, though. Likely, you'll be in another standoff with them in another ten years. The best case scenario is that we buy enough time for Kim Jong-il to kick the bucket and hope that North Korea dies with him. At that point, the U.S., South Koreans, Chinese, and maybe the Russians would pour in and try to seize all of Pyongyang's military goodies and prevent a crippling refugee flow. Then, the long road to reunification would begin, with the U.S. and China competing for influence on the peninsula.