What would happen to North Korea if it's successfully taken over by US?

China will not tolerate a shared border with the colonial aggressors.
WW3 would happen.

A clusterfuck, that’s what would happen.

@ragingloli If I’m not mistaken the news said that China has declared that it will remain neutral had US (and its alliances) decided wage war against NK. Not sure with Russia, though. Personally, even if China didn’t say that I believe they won’t risk their own country and their international integrity with other countries just for the sake of NK. If you positively believe that WW3 will happen (and suppose that US and alliances win) who gets to own NK?

@Darth_Algar Then in the end, what country do you think that will most likely have the authority and ownership over NK?

The US would probably make a plan for an interim democratic government (like “Occupied Japan”) and then after they have elections for a new leader the US would pull out and go home.

The same as if it were unsuccessfully taken over by the US.

The official goal of the US is reunification with South Korea, and it would be strongly in the country’s interests to follow through on that goal if it had the opportunity. The US would have no reason to annex North Korea when they could just hand it over to one of their strongest allies and get essentially the same benefits with fewer responsibilities.

Since you’re asking us to ignore the China factor, one difference to consider between North Korea and Iraq is that Korea was divided by force, whereas Iraq was consolidated by force. South Koreans are generally in favor of reunification (though less enthusiastically than they once were), and what little data we have about North Koreans suggests that they probably are as well. This is in stark contrast to the people of Iraq, who don’t have nearly as strong of a tie to the idea of a unified nation.

Another consideration is that South Korea has been thinking about the logistics and economics of reunification for a long time. It is well known that Korean reunification would be harder than German reunification due to the greater economic disparity between North and South Korea as compared to East and West Germany. That said, South Korea could really use the type of labor that the North Koreans could provide, particularly given the quick technological and economic expansion of the North that reunification would necessitate. This isn’t to say that everything would go smoothly. Such things rarely do. But there are reasons to think it wouldn’t be as much of a disaster as Iraq.

Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Of course, the US would never do that. The police action in Korea is and has always been a United Nations concern. If the situation could be resolved, the two Koreas might reunite and be controlled by a centralized, democratic government.
I totally agree with @SavoirFaire .

Bravo @SavoirFaire I will add that China might well prefer a non nuclear unified Korea on its border to the volatile, psychotic, potentially unstable nightmare.

First off, the US would not “take over” N. Korea. If it came to war, and the US won, we would do like we always do…support a new government, one that would be less…bizarre. Aggressive. Look what happened with Iraq, Japan, Germany, etc.

Seems like an unlikely scenario but given the provisions of the question, reunification with S.Korea is the only logical outcome. We have no interest in taking territory there nor setting up a new government where one already exists.

North Korea shouldn’t be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and the UN is quite clear about that. It is a big step to go from agreeing with this sentiment to talk of the US “owning” North Korea” and of “giving” it to worthy third parties. This is imperialist thinking from two centuries ago.

@flutherother
Why not?
Is it not the right of any country to defend itself by any means deemed necessary?

I can’t think of many worse ideas right now. That would be like asking the most dysfunctional family you know to take in a dozen foster children, half of whom have spent their school years in juvenile hall.

Both Koreas dream of reunification. The South wants a liberal democracy that respects human dignity; the North wants the South to join it in isolated “independence” under a supreme leader. The more we tried to interfere in and manage the situation, the less likely (it seems to me) that any workable and peaceful solution would be found. Acknowledging that we (together with Russia) devised the split, still, I think we should be tending to our own reunification right now and not thinking about orchestrating someone else’s.

To the North, we (the U.S.) are the enemy, and the South would have to eject us as a condition of reaching an agreement.

Here’s an analytical paper presented to the Brookings Institution in 2014 on the topic South and North Korea’s Views on the Unification of the Korean Peninsula and Inter-Korean Relations. Both Koreas have proposed unification plans featuring transitional stages. They don’t include inviting the U.S. to manage or oversee. A pertinent line: “it appears that North Korea has been pursuing a unification policy that aims to secure the survival of the North Korean regime” (page 16). The conclusion, which speaks about how both transitional plans need to be modified in order to align them, proposes no role for the U.S. Korea, north, south, and entire, belongs to itself.

The N.K. reporters will have to take a chill pill after their god falls from grace in handcuffs and taken to Guantanamo. Beef burgers will be called hamburgers again. Trade embargoes will be lifted.

True, @janbb, we do have plenty else to worry about. But I happen to think that NK is the most dangerous country on the planet, and not taking them seriously enough could be the biggest mistake we ever made. Our scrappy, vindictive, ego-driven, know-nothing president could be just the one to make it.

@ragingloli It is exactly that kind of thinking on the part of Kim Jong-un that created this situation in the first place. To be fair though it is similar thinking that has led the US to create military bases all over the planet.and to support unending military conflicts in half a dozen places at once.

Execute the leaders?
That is not our style.
Reunification is a goal, but highly unlikely.
I would like to see it listed on ebay, see who is willing to be high bidder.
The only way I see to end the north/south clashes would be if some country marched in, took both, refugee status the citizens, and take ownership.
I don’t think anybody wants the real estate badly enough to bother.

Kim Jong-un would could be given to N.K. custody like Saddam Hussein and tried. Might not work seeing they N.K. citizens think that he is a God or god. The North Koreans would probably be forced to sign a statement that Kim Jong-un is not a god. Like what happened in WWII with Japan’s emperor Hirohito .

Reunification with South Korea is the only workable outcome, but it ain’t gonna happen.

You never know. The present setup in the North is strained as word leaks in of the comparative splendors elsewhere.

@SavoirFaire has an actual answer and a correct one. Regardless of how this plays out it’s likely going to be a mess. The longer this goes on the worse the outcome will probably be.