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Felix, given the amount of time that the North Koreans have had to prepare for an invasion - and make no mistakes, their entire culture is centered around preparing for that invasion - there is no way that a "smart" war could pull the teeth of their army quickly enough to avoid a disaster (meaning South Korean casualties under a fairly arbitrary number, but probably 1M at it's highest). To take out all the armament on the DMZ, the amount of munitions necessary surpasses our ability to deliver it, which forces ground troops into action against artillery in hardened bunkers. Given that the North Koreans have a sophisticated air defense system, that would probably be an unsupported infantry invasion since the only plausible first objective of any invasion would be to neutralize the artillery that would be raining steel death down on Seoul the instant our troops put a toe across the border. Inchon is a great little history lesson in exactly how ballsy/foolhardy MacArthur was, but it's unrepeatable now given the amount of armament on the DMZ.
Nuclear weapons would only be useful in a retalitory fashion, and even then they're probably not enough to completely remove the threat since any fallout is necessarily going to obliterate South Korea and a large part of Japan. I sincerely doubt we'll ever see a first strike as a viable option simply given the geography of the region.
As an aside, if you think that Truman and Eisenhower were wrong in reigning in MacArthur, you need to read more about the man. He is, without a doubt, the closest we've ever gotten to someone in the military attempting to seize power from the President.
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