[dingaling]

'Flattening Seoul' is a strawman. Prior to the recent articles on the topic I don't remember anyone actually claiming that the entire metropolitan area could be reduced to rubble, nor that it was necessary or that North Korea would even desire it.

However it's a useful deflection from the fact that since the USA retired its enhanced-radiation weapons ( 'neutron bombs' ) in the 1990s, there is no prompt-strike way to negate several thousand hardened artillery emplacements linked by tunnels. Not without either hitting each individual emplacement or by using mass-effect weapons that in turn threaten Seoul.

Given that, I think it's likely that the USA-SK war-plan is to decapitate the North Korean command structure so quickly that the artillery doesn't even receive the order to fire.