NORTH KOREA: What If... ...War Breaks Out In

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Air strikes on Pyongyang might prove trickier. North Korean facilities are heavily defended by antiaircraft guns and long-range SA-5 missiles, with many of those deeply dug into the ground. The most urgent job for aerial forces would be to blunt the North's offensive with antiarmor smart bombs and cluster bombs. Southern airfields have strengthened their defenses, and the arrival of Patriot missiles should help fend off lethal Scuds.

The U.S. has a far better idea of the capabilities of its allies in the South than its enemies to the North. But Washington is in the dark about how % well the North might attack. Virtually all the military analysts studying the battlefront acknowledge that hard information about the quality of Pyongyang's forces is scanty. "Compared to North Korea, the former Soviet Union was a duck-soup intelligence target," notes a Pentagon's analyst. "Here, we just don't know much."

No one is sure if the Northern army has a strategic reserve of petroleum and diesel oil that exempts troops from the severe fuel shortage crippling the rest of the country. Nationwide food shortages and lack of spare parts may cut into the military's muscle. Nor does anyone know whether the North has the means to coordinate a major attack. Its communication systems are primitive, yet the military routinely conducts command-and-control training for large- scale operations.

"The difficulty of the situation is the proximity of the DMZ to Seoul," says retired General Robert RisCassi, who commanded the U.S. forces in South Korea until a year ago. "I truly believe that we would win -- and win handily -- but the cost in terms of civilian lives adds another dimension." Bill Taylor, a retired Army colonel now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts it more starkly: "Seoul will be destroyed almost totally in less than a week. That's the rub, and I think everybody knows that."

In the end, acknowledges Eliot Cohen, a war-fighting expert who is frequently consulted by Pentagon officials, "until the shooting starts, nobody really knows what's going to happen." Much depends on the will and determination of the North Koreans. And that is the piece of the puzzle neither Washington nor Pyongyang can calculate with certainty.

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CAPTION: MILITARY BALANCE