I genuinely believe that North Korea's ICBM program makes me safer.
To understand what I mean, consider that I'm speaking, specifically, of me – I don't mean, here, some generic "me." I mean, I am a guy who lives about 20 km from North Korea. On a clear day, I can see North Korea from the top of a nearby hill – and that's not Sarahpalinesque hyperbole, either.
To be clear, North Korea's ICBM program probably makes the world in general a much more dangerous place. But my specific spot in the world becomes notably less dangerous.
Here's why.
You see, this spot, 20 km from the DMZ, and 25 km from the muzzles of North Korean artillery, has always been quite dangerous. For the last 70 years, it's been in the targeting sights of North Korean bomb delivery systems.
This has not changed. But with ICBMs, the North Korean has military has acquired a vast new selection of possible targets. 99% of these targets have greater strategic value, and fewer downsides, than bombing their own relatives in their own front yard.
What North Korean military planner wouldn't prefer to bomb Guam, or Washington, or even Okinawa or Nome, Alaska, over Ilsan or even Seoul?
So the chances of bombs suddenly raining down on Ilsan go down, each time they add kilometers to their overall ICBM range.
That's pretty basic.
In fact, I feel as if, to the extent that North Korea is able to attack the US directly, South Korea in general becomes safer. Why damage territory you hope to annex, when you can just directly attack that territory's current "protector"?
Now that doesn't mean I'm anything like complacent that I'm completely safe. To the extent that irrational minds (both in Pyeongyang and, increasingly, in Washington) walk down a path toward military confrontation, things get more dangerous, too. There might be an actual war, and if that happens, of course Ilsan is on the front line, so to speak. But the chances that Ilsan will be the "first victim" in some North Korean preemptive attack are fading quickly, and thus the area becomes a spot where "waiting out the war" becomes more plausible, to the extent you can accept that it seems unlikely that the North Koreans would be ultimately able to take any actual South Korean territory. I take that as a given in the current military climate. The North can only be preemptively retributive, if that makes any sense.
Maybe I'm just being unreasonably blind to military strategy and risks. But this is how I see it.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]