On December 19, 2013, the North Korean National Defense
Committee sent notification to the Blue House office that deals with matters of
national security warning that if South Korea made further offensive reference to Kim
Jong Eun, it would incur an act of revenge. The threat appeared to be related
to an event held at Gwanghwamun in central Seoul a few days earlier, during
which an effigy of Kim Jong Eun had been burnt.
Then, on Christmas Eve, Kim
Jong Eun visited a military base in Nampo, where he declared that North Korea “won’t
give prior warning at the outbreak of war.” Bearing in mind that the purge of Jang Song Taek was then very fresh in the mind, one can imagine that Kim was pursuing internal unity by fostering tensions with external rivals.
The New Year’s Address and “improving
South-North relations”
And yet, in the New Year’s Address, which was read personally by Kim
Jong Eun, North Korea declared the need to improve inter-Korean
relations. Even though Kim criticized the South Korean government, saying that
international cooperation over bilateral problems is an act of submission
and betrayal, this was a significant reverse compared to the “revenge” and “war”
that they had been talking about not so long before.
However, North Korea then rejected the separated family reunions suggested
by the South Korean government on January 6th. Claiming that it
would be impossible to take part in such reunions through the sound of gunfire, they
declared the need for further talks at a later date, presumably meaning once military exercises are not taking place. It appears that they took the decision to reject the reunions based on the judgment
that they would not have been able to obtain Mt. Geumgang tourism
even if they had accepted them. Either way, to reject family reunions
after talking about improving inter-Korean relations was an embarrassment no
matter how you look at it.
Was this really the reason? In a proposal signed by the
National Defense Commission on January 16th, North Korea suggested that slander
between the two Koreas and hostile military actions should cease, and that ROK-U.S.
joint military exercises be halted. Then, on the 24th, they changed
position yet again, promoting the idea of reunions just two weeks after
rejecting the same concept.
When North Korea suggested holding separated family reunions
on January 24th, they proposed doing so at a time “after the New Year when the weather has
let up a little.” Because such a time of good weather after the New Year could only readily be
understood as coinciding with joint military drills set to start in late
February and run into April, it seemed certain that North Korea would use the reunions to apply pressure
to the military drills.
However, with South Korea’s decision to propose hosting the
reunions right before the military drills, North Korea began to waver once more.
Given that South Korea suggested working-level talks for January 29th,
the North should have responded by the 28th. However, they did not
give a response in good time. When North Korea requested supplementary working
hours for the Panmunjom liaison communications line, which normally shuts down
at 4pm, they came back two hours later with the news that “we have no message.”
One may read into this that Pyongyang had failed to reach a
conclusion about how to proceed.
North Korea accepted Red Cross working-level contacts on
February 3rd, at the end of the long Lunar New Year weekend. Then,
in a meeting that took place on the 5th, they simply agreed to the
separated family reunions, making no specific reference to ROK-U.S. joint military
drills. They revealed an attitude that was once again completely different to that
with which they’d demanded that the military drills be halted.
After just one more day, their attitude totally changed once
again. On the 6th, a National Defense Commission spokesperson asserted, “Holding
reunions of dispersed families in the face of nuclear war practices makes no
sense,” thus turning back to a strategy of linking military drills with family
reunions. This was then turned into an enormous act of selfless generosity
during inter-Korean talks on the 12th and 14th.
Flip-flopping North Korea’s policy toward the South
In the Kim Jong Il era, it was possible to predict North
Korea’s actions. If they said they weren’t going to talk then they didn’t open
their mouths for quite a while, and if they said they were going to conduct a nuclear
test then they generally moved to do so. Though they did change their position
in accordance with the circumstances, such as when they left the Six-Party Talks
and then attempted to resume them, there were nevertheless few instances of sudden
policy shifts within a brief spell.
However, North Korea has recently seemed like a rugby ball on an unpredictable trajectory, precisely because there have been so many cases
of flip-flopping on prior statements. These changes may be a logical outcome of the inherently contradictory Byungjin Line, which proposes people’s
economic and nuclear weapons development at the very same time, but the
variability creates anxiety about the future of the Kim Jong Eun regime. It is
fortunate that the separated family reunions went ahead in the end, but one is
left with the conviction that North-South relations are not going to
proceed smoothly.
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Views aired in Guest Columns do not necessarily reflect those of Daily NK.
