Iraq vs. Iran?

1. Half the Rodongs would never get of the launch pad, instead being complete duds or going kamikaze on the launchers.
2. Of those half that do make off the launch pad, one half of them would malfunction somewhere in mid flight, landing in the sea of Japan, S. Korea, or doing a u-turn and hitting Pyongyang.
3. The missile defense system purchased from the US would (faulty as it is) probably take out half of the 25% that don’t malfunction in flight.
4. Of the 12.5% that make it to their Japanese targets, another half will not explode on impact, be disarmed, and their frames made into playground equipment for Japanese school children.
4. Of the 6.25% of the original rodongs that function perfectly, most of them will do little damage since their margin of error being too great for precision strikes on airbases, perhaps a few will cause random mayhem or kill a few service men.
4. None of the nuclear plants will be hit and even if they are, the regulatory requirements for most reactor cores will prevent a massive disaster by limiting the damage (most reactor domes in case of a meltdown are built like bomb proof buildings.)
5. The chemical weapons headed for Tokyo would most likely all be shot down, and even if not, provided that the missiles used to launch them were of the same quality/age would most likely be ineffective. That’s the problem with chemical weapons, to be effective they have to be launched in mass, in a highly concentrated area, with stale air which won’t allow them to be dispersed over a wide area to the point of non toxicity, with such a high failure rate in their missiles reaching the target, the chemical attack would kill very few at best, and be a complete failure at worst. Not to mention I would doubt highly the effectiveness of any chemical weapons that N. Korea might have, most nerve agents degrade quickly due to their instability and must be maintained (an expensive process). Due to the situation of the N. Korean economy and their recent focus on nuclear, I doubt that their chemical weapons are really all that effective.
6. The special forces would probably do the most damage, but only for a short time before the now alerted US military and SDF forces proceeded to wipe them out.
7. N. Korea would have the shit bombed out of it by the US. Kim Jong Il would be poisoned by the Chinese (who would now be in an hostile situation with its ally vs. America, Japan, and S. Korea; its 1,2, and 4 largest trading partners) and replaced by a better behaved puppet, and N. Korea would most likely lose all its economic support from the UN. Article 9 would be revised and the situation would be brought to an end.

This article shows the lack of imagination in the Japanese or Korean bureaucracy which spawned it. Kim Jong Il is smarter than this, he may be crazy, but he’s not that crazy. Granted the fact that there are N. Korean agents in Japan, many with falsified Visas, a more likely scenario for a N. Korean attack would be this: An agent or cell of N. Koreans assassinates the Prime Minister, or poisons the Okutama and Kasumigaura Reservoirs, or blows up the Ministry of Defense; or subcontract these duties to terrorists. All of these options would allow them to achieve the goal of attacking Japan without war and with the possibility of deniability