North Korea: The national news agency broadcast a statement that any criticism of North Korea's nuclear program at the nuclear security summit in Seoul would be considered a declaration of war.
Comment: The North's media mouthpiece has a limited lexicon of threats. The declaration of war statement has been used and overused. No national leadership takes it seriously because the North Korean armed forces will lose a war on the peninsula. The North Korean media have run out words.
The Korean People's Army is capable of starting a conflict, whose initial hours would be deadly because of the concentration of artillery and ammunition just north of the Demilitarized Zone. Even that judgment assumes Allied air forces did not bury the gunners in their tunnels before than could shoot. The timing depends on strategic intelligence warning.
The North Koreans have had 60-plus years to register their guns. On the other hand, the UN forces have had the same time to target the North Korean gun pits and adits. If the North's guns were buried in their protective tunnels, the North would be unable to even start a war.
Even assuming Allied air ineptitude, which is not even plausible, the North Koreans still cannot sustain an artillery barrage for more than a few hours. The North Korean army has neglected and, thus, lost the logistics capability required to support forces who must hold ground. This is because the entire army has not trained to go on the offense in at least ten years.
The North Korean army has become a defensive force whose mission is to repel a South Korean counter-attack and invasion of North Korea, after the North has exhausted all its artillery ammunition.
The North's residual offensive capability is the ballistic missile units based along the China border. They can fire one salvo to harm South Korea, Japan and perhaps Guam. After that North Korea becomes a cinder, as the result o