How dangerous is North Korea?

It's a mug's game to predict how a war would go. But let's look at North Korea, and recall the apocalyptic predictions about war with Saddam Hussein in 2003. The equations are different. Saddam's Iraq did not have nuclear weapons, despite what Bush/Blair and others said, but he had a million men under arms, Scud ballistic missiles, and, of course, the pledge to wage the "mother of all battles". In the end, the Iraqi military were found wanting. Even the so-called elite Republican Guard crumbled under America's shock and awe firepower, the Scud missiles were inaccurate and pretty useless, and the average ordinary Iraqi soldier preferred to give up rather than fight. There was no apocalypse, well not for the US-led coalition anyway. For Saddam it was a total disaster. His mighty military muscle looked pretty flabby. So how do we draw all the lessons from that war of 14 years ago and project them into a US war with North Korea? Some of the statistics are similar. Kim Jong-un has around a million men in uniform, a huge arsenal of ballistic missiles and artillery, AND nuclear weapons, although no one really knows yet whether the North Korea dictator has managed to shape nuclear warheads to fit on to his missiles. It definitely can't be ruled out. But if there is a war, a proper war, not the odd airstrike here and there, will it be the mother of all battles, will it be nuclear war, will it be the end of the world? My prediction is that North Korea will also be found wanting. The million men at arms doesn't mean anything unless they are a superbly drilled, disciplined, trained and equipped force. We don't know the answer to that but I suspect the "terrified factor" will play a role. They are not going to be 7ft tall supermen. You start dropping bombs on them and they could collapse. Kim has thousands of artillery pieces lined up on the border with South Korea. But many of them won't work properly, and a large proportion of them do not have the range to reach Seoul. So the much-predicted firestorm of artillery strikes that could kill tens of thousands of people in Seoul is probably over-egging it. The most dangerous component of Kim's arsenal is his inventory of ballistic missiles, and now, as the Pentagon has confirmed, his potential intercontinental ballistic missile capability that COULD be armed with a nuclear warhead. He just might be able to get one launched, from a mobile launcher, hidden from US satellite eyes. But every counter-measure the Americans have at their disposal - cyber warfare, Patriot missiles, THAAD anti-missile system, the interceptors based in Alaska - will be ready for action. I hope there will never be a war of any kind with North Korea because the potential consequences for the region, for the US and for the world, are scary to contemplate. But that doesn't mean that Kim Jong-un has the capability to defeat the US or even to kill so many people in South Korea, Japan and elsewhere that the military option cannot ever be considered.