Geopolitics risk-off · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if North Korea shells Seoul's suburbs?

North Korean artillery on Seoul's suburbs opens a second Korean war: VIX +19, Nasdaq -8, defense bid as Asian risk and the KRW crater. The template is the 2010 Yeonpyeong shelling, which jolted markets briefly; full barrage of a 25-million-person metro is orders of magnitude larger. Transmission: Samsung/SK Hynix memory supply and Korea's export machine seize, hitting global tech. Forward angle: Seoul's proximity to massed artillery means the equity damage front-loads before any allied response, so there's little time to hedge into it.

7%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 7% · 90% range 0–14% · 38 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Pyongyang shells Seoul suburbs after a border incident, opening a second Korean War. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Defense spending ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.