In These New Times

Kim Myong Chol

Asia Times

7th January, 2011

“The captured crew members of the armed spy ship USS Pueblomust be brought to Pyongyang for a photo session. Photos of thePueblo crew members arriving with their hands raised should be sent worldwide to show for all to see that the Americans are captured red-handed violating our sovereign territorial waters.”
– Kim Jong-il, January 1968

“The South Korean puppet regime of LMB [South Korean President Lee Myung-bak] and its American wirepullers have blinked at our prompt merciless counter-strike to their reckless provocation. They are again going to play with fire despite the mounting global objections. This time only a wiser course of action is to refrain from military retaliation at their face-keeping show of force, unless our territorial integrity is in direct jeopardy. We instead use the drill to expose LMB and his American masters to the world as dangerous, trigger-happy warmongers. ”
– Kim Jong-eun, December 2010

“It [South Korea’s December 20 live-fire drill] was aimed at serving propaganda purposes as much it was aimed at saving the face of the present puppet authorities. They find themselves in such a profound ruling crisis, it will be hard for them to complete their tenure of office. This is due to their ignorance and incompetence in halting the puppet military’s decline.

“This was nothing but childish playing with fire by cowards. They made much fuss, firing shells left unused during the militaryprovocation on November 23, after stealthily shifting the target in fear of second and third retaliatory blows in self-defense by the KPA [Korean People’s Army].

“The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] do not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation. The world should properly know who is the true champion of peace and who is the real provocateur of war.”
– Korean People’s Army Supreme Command, December 20, 2010

A series of much-ballyhooed military war games were launched by South Korea in the last two months of the bygone 2010, a 90-minute live-ammunition firing drill conducted on the Island of Yeonpyeong on December 20, a November 28-December 1 US-South Korean joint naval war game and on December 23 the greatest military exercise of the year. These drills carried not less than four important collateral messages.

Jealous guardians of peace
The foremost message is that supreme leader Kim Jong-il and his heir-apparent struck the Korean public, North and South – as well as the rest of the world community – as jealous guardians of peace on the ancestral Land of Morning Calm. As well as being the greatest of victorious, iron-willed commanders.

The constitution of the two leaders is such that they chose to watch musical performances despite tensions edging ever closer to catastrophic war.

Agence France-Presse ran a story with the headline on November 29, “While war games go on in his backyard, Kim Jong-il and his heir watch musical”.

“The Korean Central News Agency said the leader and Kim Jong-eun attended a performance by the state orchestra along with dozens of other top military and communist party officials.”

Like leader, like people. Even after the artillery exchange, it was business as usual throughout North Korea. The North Korean people remain totally unfazed by the increasing risks of war with the US and South Korea.

The New York Times reported December 2; “Inside North Korea, ‘Business As Usual.'”

“While North Korea’s state-run media continued to rage over the military exercises being held off the North’s coastline, saying the four days of drills that ended Wednesday afternoon had brought the Korean Peninsula to ‘the brink of war’, much of daily life in the secretive North appeared remarkably normal, or at least what passes for normal.

“Accounts from the North reaching Seoul suggested that residents of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, had been calmly discussing last week’s artillery duel with South Korea, foreigners living in the city were worrying about an escalation in tensions with the South and the nation’s leader was celebrated for his legendary contributions to ‘the brilliant tradition of Korean dancing art’.”

The most dangerous men
The second message is a widely shared international recognition of the Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama administrations as warmongers and brazen tin-foil hatters, still wishfully believing in a collapse scenario for North Korea.

This has generated international pressure on them to change their brinkmanship policy with North Korea.

The famed British daily Guardian warned December 12 that South Korea’s risked escalating tensions already slipping dangerously close to war. A Guardian article by its Beijing correspondent, Jonathan Watts, was headlined, “South Korea Brazen in Defence of Military Drills near North’s Border.”

“South Korea will step up the pressure on North Korea by staging another huge live-fire drill close to a border region gripped by the worst tensions since war devastated the peninsula 60 years ago.

“F-15 jets, K-1 tanks, artillery and hundreds of troops will take part in the military exercise tomorrow – the biggest of the year and the second this week, despite accusations of provocation and threats of retaliation from Pyongyang. The act of brinkmanship risks an escalation of conflict after two deadly attacks by North Korea and warnings from neighbouring nations that the peninsula is slipping dangerously close to war.”

An Asia Times Online article by Peter Lee on December 23 characterized Lee Myung-bak as “The most dangerous man in Korea.” (See The most dangerous man in Korea, Asia Times Online, December 23.)

“The big story in North Asia in 2010 was the destabilizing effort by South Korea to use its growing profile as a regional power to seize control of the reunification agenda and promote a policy for reunification under its aegis. Its initiative attracted the determined opposition of North Korea and China, the qualified support of the United States, and the glum acquiescence of Japan.

“But the Lee government has succeeded only in foreclosing alternatives. Fear of North Korean reprisal has constrained major, overt moves by South Korea to hasten the collapse of Kim Jong-Il’s regime.”

CNN aired a story December 16, headlined: “General: South Korea Drill Could Cause Chain Reaction”.

The US’s second-highest ranking military officer and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sharply dissented from the US State Department that supported the trigger-happy South Korean company of Lee Myung-bak.

F/A-18 pilot-turned Marine Corp General James Cartwright told the press in the Pentagon, “What we worry about, obviously, is if that it [the drill] is misunderstood or if it’s taken advantage of as an opportunity.

“If North Korea were to react to that in a negative way and fire back at those firing positions on the islands, that would start potentially a chain reaction of firing and counter-firing.

“What you don’t want to have happen out of that is … for us to lose control of the escalation. That’s the concern.”

Agence France-Presse reported on December 11 quoted former chief of US intelligence retired admiral Dennis Blair as predicting that South Korea would be taking military action against North Korea.

“The former chief of US intelligence warned Sunday that South Korea has lost its patience with provocations by North Korea and ‘will be taking military action.'”

The Associated Press quoted Admiral Blair as saying: “A South Korean government who does not react would not be able to survive there.”

Drill juggled to not invite KPA counter-strike
The third message is that Lee and Obama left no stone unturned to cover up their blinking at the merciless pinpoint counter-strike of the Korean People’s Army, nuclear-armed to the teeth, and ready and eager to torch Seoul and Washington.

An outdated attempt at gunboat diplomacy failed to intimidate North Korea, even with the participation of nuclear-powered USS George Washington carrier group in the November 29-December 1 naval exercise on the West Sea with a high-flying US J-STARS (joint surveillance and target attack system) surveillance aircraft.

The British daily Daily Telegraph reported on December 1 “The War Games Are Over, But North Korea Hasn’t Blinked. The US Is Running Out of Options.”

Joong Ang Daily reported on December 18, presidential defense adviser and chairman of the National Defense Advancement Committee, Dr Lee Sang Woo, said in a face-to-face meeting with Lee on December 6, “With such an army as we have, we cannot win a war with North Korea. The South Korean government, military and people are so intoxicated with small successes that they are arrogant enough to underestimate North Korea. No other country is less informed of the enemy. We were not able to take proper counter-measures while the enemy used EMP [electromagnetic pulse] shells and jammed GPS [global positioning] communications.”

The Washington Post reported on December 28: “S Korean president faces conflicting pressures as he toughens N Korea response.”

One day before the exercise, “a pair of top US officials in Seoul –ambassador Kathleen Stephens and General Walter Sharp, commander of US forces in Korea – showed up at Lee’s presidential palace to meet with a Blue House adviser, seeking reassurance that the drill was necessary, according to a US official familiar with the meeting who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks. “Lee Myung-bak realized late in the game that he had to respond,” said Patrick Cronin at the Center for a New American Security. “And then the fear was that he might over-respond … That drill seemed excessively risky to some officials in the US”.”

Lee and Obama decided to juggle the December 20 artillery exercise to pretend that North Korea blinked at the massive demonstration of South Korean and American fire.

Learning the hard way that the Korean People’s Army means what it says, Lee and his associates came up with a dubious plan to save face in eyes of the South Korean public and the rest of the world.

The December 23 Christian Science Monitor identified the aims of the military drills as “a full-scale display to prove to domestic critics how tough he is”.

“It is an elaborate two-tier plan to juggle the planned live-fire drill to make it practically harmless enough to deprive North Korea of any pretext to deliver on its avowed threats and then cite the anticipated absence of military reaction from North Korea to cover up the fact that Seoul has blinked and instead use it to pretend that North Korea has blinked at the sight of an awesome show of South Korean military assets such as F-15s, F-16s and an Aegis ship.

“The first half of the plan called for releasing file photos and stock video clippings to create a misleading picture of flights of F-15s and F-16s on a standby in midair and an Aegis ship-led flotilla in a forward position, ready to punish North Korea at the slightest provocation while K-9 artillery pieces on the Island of Yeonpyeong were engaged in live-ammunition firing exercise.”

As revealed in the December 21 editions of the conservative South Korean newspapers Chosen Ilbo and Joong-Ang Daily , the second half, designed to not provoke North Korea, called for:

1. Sending all the some 1,100 residents of the island to air-raid shelters ahead of the drill lest any of them should see the drill;

2. A ban on photographing or filming the drill;

3. Firing a total of only four K-9 artillery rounds, 1,500 Vulcan machine-gun rounds and less than 100 rounds by smaller artillery pieces, spread over a 90-minute period;

4. Making sure that all the fired rounds land not less than 10 km south of the disputed maritime border.

A K-9 self-propelled howitzer is capable of firing not less than six shells and not more than 15 per minute. A Vulcan machine-gun is capable of firing more than 3,000 rounds per minute.

Only one K-9 gun out of the 12 available on the island was used in the live-fire drill.

Joong Ang Daily reported: “An anonymous government official said: ‘‘The leadership psychology worked lest a full-blown war with North Korea should break out’.”

Chosun Ilbo revealed one tell-tale fact: “There was widespread relief Monday when an artillery drill in the West Sea ended without the threatened retaliation from North Korea or any other noticeable rise in tensions.”

The tangible fear of retaliation is indisputable proof of the degree to which Lee and Obama dreaded a war that see the booming South Korea and the metropolitan US bombed back to the Stone Age.

The farcical posturing nature of the live-fire exercise staged by Lee and company prompted the Kim Jong-eun and the Supreme Command of the Korean People’s Army to conclude that it is not worth reacting to in any way.

The fourth point is an international realization of the urgency to hold talks on removing the unilaterally-drawn Northern Limit Line of the West Sea which is in material breach of international law and consequently makes the West Sea of Korea a potential flashpoint for a total war.

Bloomberg reported December 17: “Defending Korea Line Seen Contrary to Law by Kissinger Remains US Policy.”

Bloomberg commented: “The sea border that has become the main battleground between North and South Korea 57 years after it was imposed by a US general has been called legally indefensible by American officials for more than three decades.

“Then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote in a 1975 classified cable that the unilaterally drawn Northern Limit Line was ‘clearly contrary to international law’.

“The line ‘was unilaterally established and not accepted by NK [North Korea],’ Kissinger wrote in a confidential February 1975 cable. ‘Insofar as it purports unilaterally to divide international waters, it is clearly contrary to international law’.

“Kissinger and other US diplomats privately raised questions about the legality of the sea border and South Korea’s policing of it in cables that have been declassified and are available to the public.

“‘The ROK and the US might appear in the eyes of a significant number of other countries to be in the wrong if an incident occurred in disputed areas, US ambassador Francis Underhill wrote in a Dec 18, 1973, cable to Washington, using the acronym for Republic of Korea. ”

In its December 23 report the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based international organization dedicated to preventing deadly conflict, called for talks on rewriting the illegal NLL.

The ICG sounded an alarm:

Washington should make it clear to Seoul that the NLL is not a maritime boundary.

The Northern Limit Line, drawn up after the Armistice of 1953, has never been recognized by the DPRK. The boundary, which is not considered an international maritime boundary because both Koreas regard this dispute as domestic, crosses an area of fishing grounds that are important to the ailing Northern economy and are close to busy Southern ports. The disputed aspect of the line, the economic importance of the area, the ambiguities of the rules of engagement and the long history of violent confrontations have made it a flashpoint for conflict.

The sinking in March 2010 of the ROK vesselCheonan and the shelling in November of Yeonpyeong Island are the most recent and deadly of the confrontations in this area. Relations are at their worst point in more than a decade with much of the progress of recent years undone. The South has found itself hamstrung, unable to respond to North Korea with any force for fear of precipitating a wider confrontation. Impatience is growing and there are demands from the right in Seoul for more robust terms of military engagement in the event of future clashes.

Kim Myong Chol is author of a number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea, including Kim Jong-il’s Strategy for Reunification. He has a PhD from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Academy of Social Sciences and is often called an “unofficial” spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.

(Copyright 2011 Kim Myong Chol.)