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It's easy to poke fun at North Korea. They're the little
brother of South Korea that wears a plastic bucket on his head, only to tell
you it's an army helmet and that he demands to be taken seriously.
 Kim Jong-Il, the late leader of the country, was: the
largest individual importer of Hennessy
cognac; a western film buff and self-described auteur;
an amazing golfer who accomplished about four
holes-in-one each game; a composer of
operas; the inventor of hamburgers;
a fan of personal
waterslides. I could go on and on. His recently-enthroned son Kim Jong-Un
can be just as eccentric. Last week he and Dennis Rodman became best friends
forever.
It's not just the eccentric leaders that turn North Korea
into a mockery; Hollywood has done its share. The film Team America depicted Kim
Jong-Il as a slurring puppet, and--though I love this sitcom--the long-running
show M*A*S*H made light
of the Korean War, a war that claimed between 570,000--960,000 lives (to be
fair, M*A*S*H was actually a social commentary on Vietnam).
Despite
these jokes, North Korea needs to be taken seriously as it has become
increasingly  belligerent in the international community. In recent years
they've sunk a South Korean warship and shelled South Korean territory. Most
troubling, it conducted another nuclear test and released a video of a Korean
man dreaming of an America in flames from a North Korean attack. This past Monday, North Korea took the step
of revoking the armistice between it and the South, meaning the sides can
continue the hostilities of their never-ended war.
That same Monday, U.S. White House Press Secretary Jay
Carney said, "I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of
defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack." And while I like
to believe my government when they say they can defend me, Popular Science
recently disputed their capabilities to do so, saying America's missile defense
was "flawed" and "troubled." PS cites a lack of testing and design limitations,
and while many of their assertions are right, they don't paint the full picture
of the U.S.'s anti-missile operations.
 Deployed in 2011, Israel's Iron Dome is a missile defense
system meant to protect Israeli citizens from rockets fired by Hamas, the
Islamist government of Palestine. In 2006, Hezbollah of Lebanon killed 44 Israeli
citizens with a barrage of 4,000 short-range rockets. This prompted Israel to
develop a missile-defense system with 30% of the $1 billion in funding coming
from America. March 2012 was the first time the entire Iron Dome network was
able to be intensively tested by continuous rocket fire, and by November
defense officials were quoting Iron Dome's rocket interception rate as 85%
successful.
Iron Dome is a three-piece system consisting of radar units,
a control center, and launchers. The radar unit is placed along the front lines
to detect launches and begin tracking the rocket. The detection unit predicts
the trajectory of the warhead and uploads this information to a battlefield
management and control center, who initiate an Iron Dome launch if it's
determined that the rocket targets a populated area. Each system can protect
approximately 150 square kilometers, making them very effective in metropolitan
areas.
The most notable limitation when applying this technology to
the U.S. homeland is its area coverage. While effective for Israel, it's a
nation similar in size to the state of New Hampshire, or about 1/474th
of the land area of the U.S. At the moment, Israel  does not have hermetic
coverage, nor likely will it ever. Also, while Iron Dome is great for
short-range rockets, the kind of long-range missile needed for North Korea to
reach American shores won't be intercepted by Iron Dome. Rather, a ballistic
missile defense is required, such as the Aegis system currently deployed on
some American warships. Some officials warn that budget cuts have left the
Aegis system underdeveloped and understaffed, as noted by PopSci.
A ground-based missile defense system is optimal, but the
U.S. is unwilling to obtain permission from the international community to use
the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system it co-developed with Israel in the
1990s. The resistance of the American military to innovate new defenses, while
funding other more proven technologies, leaves American soil vulnerable to a
ballistic missile attack. There must be some comfort in knowing that North
Korea delivering a nuclear warhead by missile remains just outside their
technical grasp, even if by only a few years. Heck, North Korea can't even
develop an original propaganda video, instead relying on altered footage stolen
from video games (and copyrighted music, like Michael Jackson's 'We Are the
World').
 So while Iron Dome, Aegis and Arrow are not failsafe missile
protection programs, it's not long before the U.S. has--and needs--a ballistic
missile defense like Ronald
Reagan's 'Star Wars'. If/when hostilities begin again, the Korean
Demilitarized Zone (which is awesome for Tigers, by the way) will be defended
against by the some of the best technology the U.S. and its allies can offer. I
can only hope that if the war spreads to North America, that the U.S. has the
best technology to defend
itself.
Resources
(Image credits: NBC News; CBC; Rafael Defense Systems; Global Security; Wired)
PopSci - The U.S. Says it Could Stop a North Korean Missile. How?
Wikipedia - Kim Jong-il; Aegis Ballistic Missile System; Arrow (Israeli missile);
Rafael - Iron Dome datasheet (.pdf)
Time - Iron Dome: A Missile Shield That Works
Washington Post - North Korea releases another propaganda
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