North Korea’s Hidden Assets

H. John Poole returns to Fuldapocalypse with North Korea’s Hidden Assets, a warning about how North Korea may be stronger than anticipated. Or rather, that’s a central message in a meandering book. The content here ranges from loooong descriptions of Iwo Jima fortifications (because as a country occupied by Japan, they were undeniably influenced by its doctrine. Legit link, but not worth the obsession he shows) to constant tirades against the clunky, idiotic American doctrine and how the North Koreans have so much better military culture and small unit tactics.

Some of the book’s arguments are good. Poole spends a lot of time legitimately arguing against mirror-imaging a Second Korean War as being a repeat of the mechanized charge to take the entire peninsula that was the first. He argues and reasonably so that the north would be more likely to bite, hold, and wear the Americans and southerners down to win at the peace table. And the fortifications and tactics from the first Korean War are at least more relevant. So are the surprisingly few times he looks at contemporary North Korea (the nominal point of the whole thing)

But this book is mostly axe-grinding. It’s also hypocritical in that Poole portrays it as some kind of secret hidden source when almost all of its analysis comes from official US government documents-showing at least someone else already there knows of a worst-case perspective on North Korea. There are much better serious studies of that opponent out there.