Absolutely, this was an act of war. For the first time since the truce was signed, North Korea started a direct military confrontation on the territory and with the people of the Republic of Korea.
On the afternoon of November 23rd, the North Korean military fired more than one hundred artillery rounds at South Korea. Two marines, Sergeant Seo Jeong Woo and Private Mun Gwang Wook, were killed in action, while another 16 soldiers and three civilians were wounded. Houses and facilities on Yeonpyeong Island were badly damaged.
Why did the Kim Jong Il regime carry out this act of aggression?
The priorities for the Kim Jong Il regime are as follows, in the order given; 1. Maintain the current system; 2. Hand down power with stability; 3. Draw up domestic and foreign policies to solve problems such as feeding the people.
North Korea’s attack on Yeonpyeong Island, and its revealing of a uranium enrichment facility earlier this month, are directly related to priorities 1, 2 and 3, and move the country one step closer to its stated goal of becoming a “strong and prosperous nation” by 2012. The regime’s intention to steer the Lee Myung Bak North Korea policy towards failure is clear, and there are two reasons for this; the short-term goals that lie openly before our eyes, and North Korea’s oft-repeated, broader goal of ‘resolving fundamental issues between the U.S. and North Korea’.
One short-term goal of the North is the easing of U.S. sanctions. On November 18th, the U.S. Treasury said it was adding Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation, both known to be under the control of North Korea’s No. 39 Department, to its list of sanctions targets. Stuart Levey, the U.S. State Department’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement that the two organizations are “key components of Office 39’s financial network supporting North Korea’s illicit and dangerous activities”.
Korea Daesong Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation manage foreign transactions and illicit trade conducted by the No. 39 Department, a government bureau that provides Kim Jong Il with governing funds. The U.S. Treasury struck the regime spot-on, although it took a long time coming. This is why recent provocations by the regime can be said to be directly linked with the first priority, protecting the current system, and second, securely handing down power. Kim Jong Il proceeded to launch missiles and conduct nuclear tests in 2005 amid sanctions against his personal accounts following counterfeit dollar laundering activities facilitated by Banco Delta Asia in Macau.
When the North demands ‘fundamental change in U.S.-North Korea relations’, it is ultimately asking for a peace treaty with the U.S.; in other words, the withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed in Korea and the cancellation of the ROK-U.S. military alliance. Regardless of its practicality, Kim Jong Il and his clique will never let go of their dream of “establishing eternal peace on the Korean peninsula”, which consists of breaking the alliance and usurping the South, just as South Korea will not give up on the idea of liberal democracy. What the ruling clique can easily dream of is directly translated into state policy.
Although the break-up of the ROK-U.S. alliance is quite impossible to imagine, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have been drawing up their strategies against the U.S. and South Korea with that goal in mind for a long time. Therefore, the North Korean regime will likely go all the way when it comes to keeping the upper hand in military matters on the peninsula. This is why Kim Jong Il cannot give up his nuclear weapons, which are the most important means to achieve the regime’s aforementioned three priorities. In light of this, the Kim Jong Il regime is not unpredictable, but rather, extremely predictable.
The recent disclosure of uranium enrichment facilities means that Kim Jong Il has entered phase two of his nuclear strategy.
Kim initiated the first North Korean nuclear crisis that led to the Agreed Framework during the North’s difficult years of 1993 and 1994, and continued to develop nuclear programs before bringing on a second nuclear crisis by acknowledging the existence of a clandestine uranium enrichment program in 2002. This was followed by two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, and Kim’s calling for North Korea’s recognition as a nuclear weapons state.
Through nuclear weapons development programs, Kim Jong Il formulated a cycle which starts with raising military tensions on the peninsula, setting the stage for two, four or six-party international negotiations, then receiving economic aid, removing North Korea from the international negotiating framework, and going back to upgrading the country’s nuclear programs. After several cycles of this, the North has now become a de facto nuclear weapons state. Achieving that status constitutes the first phase of Kim Jong Il’s nuclear strategy.
The second phase is the mass production of nuclear weapons. Inviting Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to reveal North Korea’s uranium enrichment facilities was an act equivalent to clearly stating to the Obama administration that the country has embarked on the mass production of nuclear weapons. Where Obama declares a “world without nuclear weapons”, Kim Jong Il is on his way to stopping him. Kim Jong Il will not surrender his uranium enrichment program, not least because it is easy to develop, and low-cost in terms of both development and management compared to using plutonium.
Then what is the third phase of Kim’s nuclear strategy? It can only be putting the nuclear weapons on the top of missiles and positioning them for use on the battlefield. This is when Kim’s strategy is complete. All that is left after this is to force the U.S. to “take its hands off South Korea” by threatening it with nuclear weapons in diverse ways, including psychological nuclear warfare.
Though it needs further verification, a recent incident had people wondering whether Kim is trying to hasten the third phase of his nuclear strategy.
According to Leon Sigal, a director with the Social Science Research Council who visited Pyongyang between November 15th and 18th, the North Korean authorities said that they have “nuclear warheads” rather than “nuclear devices”. “Warheads” here means warheads that can be loaded onto deliverable devices. Of course, there still remains the possibility that it was just a threat.
The main message Sigal received from the North Korean officials was that the country is “able to stop our nuclear developments if the U.S. respects the 2000 DPRK-U.S. Joint Communique”. The officials also said, according to Sigal, that “if the U.S. retracts its hostile policy, there will be no reason left for us to keep hold of nuclear weapons”, and that such a move could “even lead to a nuclear-free peninsula”. They added, however, that “if the U.S. does not accept our calls for negotiation, we will consider restarting the disabled plutonium processing facilities, in addition to enriching uranium.”
Hecker, who visited North Korea’s uranium enrichment facilities at Yongbyon from November 9th to 13th, stated in his report entitled “A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex”, published November 20th on Stanford University’s website, that he heard from a “high-level government official” that the October 2000 Joint Communique would be a “good place to start” in “addressing North Korea’s underlying insecurity”.
The DPRK-U.S. Joint Communique, announced by Cho Myung Rok, then-Director of the KPA General Political Department, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, includes vows that the two countries will endeavor to overcome mutual adversity, cooperate on economic matters, transit from a truce to a peace agreement, and resolve missile-related issues.
Of these issues, what Kim Jong Il desires the most is the peace agreement, and the recent disclosure of North Korea’s covert nuclear facilities and attacks on Yeonpyeong Island are part of this goal. Through such provocative acts, Kim Jong Il is basically saying, “As the peninsula is still in a state of war, the U.S. should sign a peace agreement that ensures eternal stability on the Korean Peninsula, withdraw its troops, and discard the anachronistic ROK-U.S. military alliance.”
However, North Korea’s constant claim that the U.S.’ withdrawal of its “adversarial policy” against the North would lead to a nuclear-free peninsula is a lie, much like Kim Il Sung’s statement to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during his visit to North Korea in 1994, “We have neither the ability nor the desire to make nuclear weapons.”
From the early 1990s until now, North Korean calls for the U.S. to drop its “hostile policy against Chosun” have been issued practically verbatim, invoking the proverbial broken record that repeats itself over and over again. However, this lie has allowed North Korea to become a nuclear weapons state, while South Korea and the U.S. have been unable to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem for more than 20 years. South Korea and the U.S. have been defeated by Kim Jong Il’s ‘nuclear strategy’. We have lost. The only way to solve the North Korean nuclear problem now is to acknowledge this fact, and look for new and decisive ways to tackle it.
So, how should the Republic of Korea react now?
The government must quickly draw up and implement a strategy to start a chain reaction, from the peaceful transition of power within North Korea to the establishment of an open and reformed administration to joint efforts by North Korea, South Korea, and the international community to modernize North Korea and the peaceful reunification of the peninsula. This is quite likely to be the only road to peace on the peninsula and a peaceful reunification of South and North. But, in order to take this road, it is necessary to first move the strategic front set up against North Korea into North Korea itself.
From the Korean War onwards, inter-Korean relations have followed the pattern of the North committing an act of aggression against the South, while the South defends itself. The North brought its strategic front against South Korea into South Korean territory, thereby setting up the oft-repeated pattern of North on the offensive and the South on the defensive. It is time to turn this unhelpful and unfortunate situation around.
The core strategy for changing this macro-structure is to put the sovereignty of North Korea not in the hands of the Kim dynasty but in those of the 23 million North Korean people. It is the task of ensuring that a new government, bent on reform and willing to open up its borders, is established. South Korea can lead the way, with the help of the international community led by the U.S. and China, in setting up a government of, by and for the 23 million people. This is the common-sense approach, and also the correct way forward. In order for this to happen, the strategic front against North Korea must be moved into North Korea itself.
The most important work must be done on the ideological front, in making the North Korean people realize that the owners of the North Korean administration are not members of the Kim dynasty, but rather the 23 million people themselves. It is the task of helping the people come to terms with markets, democracy, and human rights.
This will require first, aligning the ideological, geo-political, and economic fronts under a single, unified purpose, second, moving those fronts from beyond North Korea (in areas such as South Korea, China, and Russia) into North Korea proper, third, focusing more attention on the Hamkyung provinces, which have suffered under class dictatorship, and Pyongan provinces, which are close to China, fourth, concentrating on each class in the state; intellectuals, college students, and entrepreneurs, and fifth, building the capacity of those occupying seats in the lower echelons of Party and military, while lessening the number of people who fiercely support the Kim Jong Il regime in each region, class, and institution.
Through this process, we must facilitate the forming of a civil society within North Korea, however simple it may be. Of course, U.S. and Chinese support is vital. This is the way to bring peace and reunification on the peninsula, led by South Korea and supported by the international community.
As long as Kim Jong Il’s regime exists in the North, there will be no peace, whether on the Korean peninsula or in Northeast Asia. The tightening and loosening of military tension will merely be repeated. The Kim Jong Il regime can only live on by stirring up military tension on the peninsula. The speed of the process has just gotten faster. Until 2012, Kim Jong Il will continue to raise the stakes in his military strategy against South Korea. The attack on Yeongpyeong Island is a blatant sign of this. There is no time to waste. A new government must be built for North Korea.
