Wargame Scenario
It’s late January 2026. Despite stern warnings from Beijing, Taiwan’s public continues to flirt with ever stronger anti-unification positions. To the consternation of Beijing, the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Party finally secures more than five percent the vote necessary to secure state funding. Xi meets with his closest advisors and decides he must act now and absorb Taiwan using military force. He and his advisors, however, are concerned that Japan and the United States might intervene.
Xi sends his most trusted advisor, Wang Huning, China’s Kissinger, to consult privately with Kim Jong-un. Wang Huning tells Kim Jong-un that the time is now ripe both for China and North Korea to “become whole” —for China to absorb Taiwan and for North Korea to accelerate unification with the South. Wang Huning explains that China’s top military advisors recommend Pyongyang start a military campaign that would include launching a series of strikes against South Korea-2. These strikes should include an attack on South Korea’s Kori nuclear plant, located on South Korea’s southeastern coast near Pusan, the ROK’s second largest city. (an attack the North Koreans have previously publicly threatened to make).
Wang Huning returns to Beijing, meets with Xi and recommends Xi follow up with a private phone conversation. Xi calls Kim Jong-un and explains how critical North Korea’s support is to China’s reunification efforts. Without such support, Xi explains, China will have to wage its efforts alone and may be unable to afford to continue its generous support of the Hermit Kingdom. On the other hand, if North Korea should support China’s unification efforts with a North Korean military campaign of its own, China would be able to commercially and financially back the North in its efforts and would continue to support Kim family rule.
Kim Jong-un sees this as an opportunity to manipulate the political polarization in South Korea and play to the sympathies of South Korea’s radical left that favors some sort of confederation with the North. These left-leaning South Koreans see North Korea as more authentically Korean in many ways than a South Korea run by conservatives. These citizens believe that South Korea has been debased by American influence and has weakened itself by cooperating with its historical enemy, Japan.
Shortly thereafter, Kim Jong-un publicly declares his support of China’s efforts to unify with Taiwan. He also calls on patriotic Koreans in the South to join hands with their brothers in the North finally to consolidate the Peninsula. In the same statement, he urges South Korean to confederate with the North, cease its defense ties with Japan and agree to a peace that would result in the removal of American forces. If South Korea revanchists are unwilling to so confederate with the North, North Korea says strong measures will be taken.
China mobilizes its military to invade Taiwan and demands Taipei immediately agree to a timetable to integrate their economy and military with that of the mainland. Meanwhile, North Korea covertly injects a special operations unit into South Korea to neutralize the THAAD battery in Seongju— a decisive asset that protects high-value targets in the South. The operation is successful and disrupts the combined US and ROK ability to mount a successful ballistic missile defense of South Korea, including critical US military facilities previously protected by the THAAD system.
This brazen operation prompts South Korea to put its forces on alert. Shortly thereafter, North Korea accuses the South of having conducted a false flag operation and announces a complete mobilization. Having witnessed the non-action of NATO against Russia’s attack on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in 2022, the North Koreans then fire missiles against South Korea’s Kori’s reactors, a flagship project of conservative South Koreans. Their first strike constitutes a warning: the missiles land in the water (Sea of Japan) immediately offshore of the multi-unit reactors and the associated spent fuel storage ponds, all of which are unprotected and filled to the brim with highly radioactive fuel assemblies. North Korea then calls for South Korea to terminate the ROK-US Alliance and commit to the immediate expulsion of U.S. forces.