Two things that are certain to incite threats against South Korea and the United States are criticism of the North Korean leader, currently Kim Jong Eun, and the implementation of joint ROK-U.S. military drills. In the latter case, this means those drills that involve elements of America’s strategic nuclear umbrella: B-2 stealth bombers and B-52 strategic bombers, as well as nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.
This is why; though the externally focused North Korean media has been pursuing a conciliatory approach toward South Korea in recent weeks, it continues to criticize the impending drills.
“Uriminzokkiri,” a vitriolic Korean-language propaganda website via which North Korea targets public opinion in the South, said on the 14th, “Just last year the U.S. brought nuclear strategic bombers and nuclear-powered submarines, its ‘three major nuclear strike methods,’ to South Korea and started practicing for the nuclear invasion of North Korea. This created a volatile situation on the Korean Peninsula where nuclear war could break out at any moment.” It is the norm for the website to accuse Seoul and Washington of hypocrisy for mentioning North Korea as a “nuclear threat.”
The sensitivity has consequences. For instance, North Korea recently halted the release of U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae, who remains in detention in the country, allegedly because of a B-52 sortie over the west coast of South Korea. According to American broadcaster ABC News, former Ambassador Donald Gregg, who was recently in Pyongyang, heard from the North Korean authorities that this was why they had decided to keep hold of Bae.
“Rhee Young-Ho, a first vice minister, said that the memory of the B29 air raids are in the [North Korean] DNA,” Gregg told ABC News while at an airport in Beijing on his way back to the U.S. “[Rhee said that] to have B52s which are nuclear capable fly over their airspace is seen as a really terrible, terrible threat.”
The cancellation of U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues Robert King’s visit to North Korea at the end of last year is also rumored to have been down to B-52 sorties.
Though at the time of writing North Korea appears to have made the strategic choice to allow joint ROK-U.S. military drills to go ahead later this month while separated family reunions take place at Mt. Geumgang, initially Pyongyang was adamantly opposed to this, and the reason was similar.
“It would be nonsense to hold reunions of families scattered by a previous war in the midst of treacherously dangerous nuclear war exercises,” a National Defense Commission spokesperson declared on the 6th. “How can (South Korea) shout about building trust and improving relations while they are throwing open their sovereign airspace to allow American nuclear-capable bomber formations to crawl in?”
Why does North Korea react in this way? First, it is hard to completely refute the notion that the regime feels a type of communal “trauma” related to strategic bombers. This relates to past wartime experiences, which are instrumentalized by the authorities. According to military defectors and experts alike, the authorities seek to systematically remind military officials and soldiers, as well as civilians, of the carpet-bombing that took place during the Korean War, more than 60 years ago.
“During the Korean War, what the North Korean and Chinese armies feared most was the strategic bomber,” Choi Jong Seong, formerly of North Korea’s artillery forces, told Daily NK on the 16th. “They knew that if there was a clash involving the bombers the area in question would be devastated and they would not be capable of responding, so they just withdrew. At that time, just the sound of the bomber made people shiver.”
“We used to say that when the bomber went up, the angel of death came down,” Choi continued. “Though North Korea insists that it possesses nuclear weapons, if the U.S. were to use these bombers we know there would be no way to reply. Given North Korea’s level of anti-aircraft artillery, it would be impossible for us to intercept.”
This is one reason why, when a B-2 stealth bomber flew over the Korean Peninsula last year, Kim Jong Eun convened a late-night meeting of the country’s strategic rocket forces and placed units on standby.
However, a second North Korea expert added that a strategic element underpins the “fear” component of North Korea’s anger at the bombers. In other words, Kim may have convened the meeting in part out of fear, but it was all over North Korean television and radio for a another reason.
He explained, “Bombers that can carry out attacks from above North Korea’s air defense network are the target of their fear,” however, “North Korea also reacts sensitively to the B-52 bomber and B-2 stealth bomber as a way to reduce the military threat against it through a form of intimidation, and simultaneously create fissures in the bilateral U.S.-ROK alliance.”
