Amidst days and days of fiery rhetoric from Pyongyang threatening both the U.S. and South Korea with destruction, South Korean experts are also trying to establish what sort of physical actions might follow.
Publishing no fewer than 15 articles on the 7th against South Korea and the U.S., Rodong Shinmun even warned of a possible preemptive strike, saying, “We bear no responsibility even if we press the nuclear button first.”
Raising the stakes in this manner is normally intended to position North Korea for future dialogue, based in part on the assumption that without normalized relations with the U.S. there is no hope of relieving the sanctions burden. Showing a willingness to act aggressively is designed to bring the U.S. to the negotiating table in a more accommodating manner.
As such, experts say that North Korea is liable to conduct further physical, rather than rhetorical, provocations, especially in response to the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle military exercises going on in South Korea now, which Pyongyang calls “training for a war of aggression.” In terms of timing, any physical action is most likely to occur shortly after the adoption of fresh UN sanctions, which is likely within the calendar month.
The Ministry of National Defense believes that short-range missile tests are North Korea’s most likely response to the current situation, in particular the KN-02, which has a range of 120km. In accordance with that view, Daily NK sources inside North Korea recently revealed that transporters carrying short- and mid-range missiles have been travelling near the port city of Wonsan, while orders have been issued to military units telling them to watch the ROK-U.S. joint exercise period closely.
However, it is not possible to completely rule out the possibility of further nuclear tests, a DDoS attack like the one that took down Nonghyup servers or even something like the Cheonan sinking of 2010 instead.
Song Dae Sung, the director of the Sejong Institute even told Daily NK, “There is the possibility that they could conduct a provocation completely different to those of the past. Of course there is the chance of a mid- or short-range missile launch, but they might also do another attack using a submarine, a terrorist act in an urban area, one to bring down infrastructure during a holiday period, or an act of cyber-terror.”
An anonymous government official added to this, “North Korea’s consecutive threats have demonstrated to us that they could provoke in forms other than additional nuclear tests or missile launches. We cannot give an accurate answer in terms of time, but we are concerned about the possibility of a provocation shortly after a new UN resolution is adopted.”
