As rhetoric between North Korea and the U.S. heats up, I thought I’d briefly consider how Kumamoto’s geographical location relates to all of this. I’m worried about the possibility of further escalation in general terms but I’m not feeling particularly vulnerable because I happen to be in Kumamoto. So, I’m not trying to be alarmist at all but am merely interested in clarifying where we stand geographically, so to speak.

Firstly, Kumamoto’s relative proximity to the Korean peninsula puts us, according to a report in the New York Times, within scud missile range (see first image). Of course, North Korea would be crazy to launch a scud missile at Kyushu but, nonetheless, that seems to be a technical possibility.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/10/world/asia/what-can-north-korea-reach-with-its-missiles.html

Secondly, in regard to the question “Would a missile launched at Guam fly over our heads?”, the short answer is “probably not.” Here’s a TIME.com report:

“The report said the Hwasong-12 rockets would fly over Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi prefectures in Japan and travel ‘1,065 seconds before hitting the waters 30 to 40 kilometers away from Guam.’”

http://time.com/4894948/north-korea-plan-guam-missiles/

But, you might see an image like this second one (taken from Korean media by the Guardian) that makes it look like the missiles will fly right over Kyushu:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/north-korea-details-guam-strike-trump-load-of-nonsense

There are two problems with this. First, the curvature of the earth is such that the straight line that was drawn on the screen in the TV studio is not a geographically correct “straight line” (a line that follows the curvature of the earth would transverse Japan a bit farther to the east). Second, I think it is generally being assumed that North Korea would launch from a point farther east than this image indicates. It is true, however, that if North Korean picked a point in the far western part of its territory for a launch aimed at Guam, the missiles tragectory would come a good deal closer to our area.

Well, that’s all I have to offer tonight. Here’s hoping that cooler heads prevail and that military conflict can be averted.

– Kirk