... If I'm reading you right then your point is there is so much economic interdependency that conflict has been ruled out and time has made it no longer potentially explosive and I think this is where our opinions differ.
Not quite. What I was responding to was this -
10ringr said:
There is that little issue of the last time the North got into it with the South they had Chinese running across the Ya-Loo river in support of the North. Obviously whatever the case they are no match by themselves but then they're not by themselves. Perhaps they are looking at things a bit more globally.
The differences between now & then include but are not limited to -
1) South Korea now has well-trained forces with overwhelming superiority in airpower over the north, & huge superiority in quality of equipment for ground troops (except for artillery tubes), & dominance of the sea, even without any foreign help. There will be no walking over an outnumbered, outgunned, poorly trained Southern army by vastly more powerful Northern forces.
2) The North has no friends. The South may not be by itself, but the North is. China props it up largely because a collapsing N. Korea would be unpredictable & potentially dangerous. This leads to -
3) the North will not have a huge fleet of Russian aircraft to protect its airspace, nor any Chinese airbases to operate from. Russia just isn't interested, & China finds it an embarassment. In the event of S. Korean & US forces advancing on the Yalu river, I think the Chinese are more likely to quietly ask that the Americans stop well short & leave it up to the Koreans to occupy up to the border, than they are to invade, or loudly announce that they're occupying border areas to restore order, feed refugees, etc., & would like to open discussions with S. Korea over how to run the occupied areas in co-operation, & where to draw the boundaries of the temporary (pending a settlement of the status of N. Korea) occupation zone, while openly marching into border towns. China won't spill any Chinese blood for Kim Jong-Il, or start a war with either S. Korea or the USA. It might spill Chinese blood to finish off the mad dog & put itself in a position to influence the shape of the final settlement.
3) The North will have no resupply. It fights with what it has. It's broke (in 1950 it started out richer than the South) & nobody is going to give it war supplies. That means it runs out of fuel almost immediately. The South has secure resupply
and the means to pay for it. The South now has at least ten times the GDP of the North.
The North is doing to the South what has been described as "holding it at grenade point". Attacking would be suicidal, but is a threat because it would cause immense damage to the South (that huge artillery force would do a lot of damage to Seoul before running out of shells, or being plinked by PGMs) before failing. An internal collapse of N. Korea would be very undesirable for its neighbours: millions of starving refugees fleeing across the borders (a particular fear for China - the DMZ minefields & wire make it harder to go the other way) & a million-man army turning into armed gangs . . . S. Korea props up the North for the same reasons as China, & because it doesn't want to see fellow Koreans starving.
Considering that, do you see why I thought any reference to the Korean war irrelevant to the current situation?
Everything has changed except the physical division, the armies facing each otheR, & some peoples emotional reactions. The neighbours, their relationships with the Korean states, the relative economic & military strengths of the North & South - it's all different.
. Which could easily be mistaken for what I mean. I'm trying to convey that we have always been mentally geared to the realization that Korea was a war we fought and it didn't end well. In fact it didn't really end did it? Since we didn't expect China to intervene as they did the first time this discussion seems somehow familiar if you know what I mean? I respect you guys, very much and that respect is growing daily. I do say what I think but I'll try to be a bit more sensitive because I don't wish to offend you or anyone for that matter, especially the moderators who can shut me down like a bad habit 
