Editor’s note: Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here.
North Korea’s two big political events at the turn of the year have wrapped up — the plenary session of the Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee and the session of the Supreme People’s Assembly. These two events are closely watched as barometers not only of Pyongyang’s policies for 2024 but also of its mid-term and long-term direction. The megaton bomb that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dropped with his anti-Korean and anti-historical hardline remarks at these events is continuing to reverberate.
The “strength-against-strength” approach to policy
North Korea made explicit in these two events that it means to further reinforce what it calls a “strength-against-strength frontal confrontation” based on self-sufficiency and an upgraded nuclear arsenal.
This unyielding line, which has been adopted in a situation where the “new Cold War” alignment pitting North Korea, China, and Russia against South Korea, the U.S., and Japan amid U.S.-China strategic competition, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the global supply chain crisis, appears to be based on several factors.
These include North Korea’s goals of successfully achieving its five-year plan for developing the economy and national defense on schedule by 2025; cementing its status as a nuclear weapon state; its strengthening of diplomatic solidarity with China and Russia over the coming year; the unwavering North Korean policies of the Yoon or Biden administrations; and the South Korean parliamentary elections in April and the U.S. presidential election in November.
Much attention has been paid to Kim Jong Un’s denunciation of South Korea as the “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” his definition of inter-Korean relations as “the relations between two states hostile to each other and the relations between two belligerent states, not [. . .] consanguineous or homogeneous ones,” and his orders for “preparations for a great event to suppress the whole territory of South Korea.”
But it should be remembered that this is a twofold tactic that, first of all, serves as “positional warfare” to give North Korea a pretext for bolstering its nuclear arsenal and increasing controls over its citizenry. Secondly, it is part of a “battle for the high ground” designed to pressure the U.S. and incite conflict in South Korea through psychological operations and a range of online and offline provocations.
Emergency rule to confront the enemy
Kim Jong Un openly declared an “anti-Korean war line” in speeches at major events for the North Korean government and the Workers’ Party of Korea and, through a future amendment, said that he would include language within the constitution regarding the two-state doctrine and the idea of unifying the peninsula through nuclear force. The measures he called for – including abolishing organizations connected with inter-Korean exchange, cooperation, and unification, the demolition of symbolic structures, and the prohibition of certain phrases – are likely to have enormous consequences for inter-Korean relations as a whole and bring about a Copernican-level of change.
Since Kim Jong Un’s remarks, North Korea has already taken the following measures: carrying out gunnery exercises with coastal batteries near the Northern Limit Line (NLL); test launching a hypersonic ballistic missile; shuttering departments responsible for exchange activities with South Korea including the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Mount Kumgang International Tourism Administration; halting broadcasts at Radio Pyongyang; and deleting the webpages of propaganda websites aimed at South Korea such as Uriminzokkiri.
North Korea has also announced that it will scrap symbolic structures symbolizing inter-Korean cooperation and exchange such as the Monument to the Three-Point Charter for National Reunification; eliminate language such as “northern half of the peninsula” and “independence, peaceful unification, and great national unity”; add new territorial language based on the “two states” narrative to the constitution; and treat an incursion into North Korean waters in the Yellow Sea as an act of war.*
North Korea’s extremely hardline approach is reminiscent of the “Yushin” self-coup engineered by Park Chung-hee, former president of South Korea, in October 1972. That is to say, Kim Jong Un is quite likely to have resorted to rhetoric about confrontation and war to consolidate his hold on the regime, just as Park used the U.S.-China détente on the Korean Peninsula, rapid changes in the Vietnam War and elsewhere in the region, and the search for a new policy toward North Korea – including the initiation of inter-Korean dialogue during a secret visit to North Korea by Lee Hu-rak, director of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency – to consolidate his.
To sum up, Kim Jong Un has resorted to the desperate measure of threatening a “war between two states” that could go beyond limited skirmishes to all-out war while denying the doctrine of unification through a federation, which was the legacy of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. This reflects both Kim’s confidence in his ability to upgrade his nuclear weapon and missile forces, and his desire to frame the April general election in South Korea as a conflict between those who favor war and those who favor peace. But beyond that, Kim’s measures were likely motivated by the North Korean authorities’ fear and anxiety that the regime will soon implode unless it can fundamentally quash the “South Korea fever” that is so rampant among North Korean young people.
In other words, I think that Kim’s measures are grounded in the belief that North Korea’s “united front” policy of promoting dialogue, exchanges, and cooperation under the slogan of “one Korea” has been ineffective at sowing discord in South Korean society and has instead undermined the North Korean authorities’ grounds for tightening controls over the general public, and teenagers in particular, and could even lead to a movement against the regime or Kim himself.**
But is Kim Jong Un capable of silencing the young generation’s desire for change? Can he stop the winds of truth and freedom from blowing in North Korea?
One axiom of world history is that one extreme leads to another. History shows only too well what happens to tyrants.
How to respond
The Moon administration’s poor diagnosis and prescription of the state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula gave Kim Jong Un the time he needed to improve his nuclear forces. But what about the Yoon administration?
Yoon correctly holds that “North Korea won’t easily give up its nuclear weapons.” He is also right to strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and Japan through his slogan of “peace through strength.” But the problem lies in his ability to put these ideas into practice and to keep them going.
The Yoon administration’s North Korea policy will now face a serious test. If the Comprehensive Military Agreement’s provisional suspension (by the South) and its revocation (by the North) last year were the prelude, the battle of wills that has been unfolding since the turn of the year will be a crucial “battle for the heights” that will determine the future of the North Korean nuclear issue and the normalization of inter-Korean relations.
The South Korean government needs to be bold and principled in its response. While its initial focus should be on managing the immediate crisis, it needs to thoroughly review its unification policy in the long term.
Kim Jong Un has already threatened to make armed provocations around the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea. South Korea needs to take all necessary measures to quickly sound the alarm and retaliate against any such provocations on the assumption that the Yellow Sea will be the proving ground — the place where sparks begin to fly.
However, Seoul must not take a strictly defensive stance. It needs to engage in a range of activities, both at home and abroad, to condemn North Korea for its “anti-Korean war line” and to realize universal values.
What about the South Korean public? South Koreans need to trust and support the government and the military without losing their cool over North Korea’s deceptive psychological operations, which seek to trigger fears of war or the increasing number of irresponsible reports in the international media about the possibility of war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula.
The South Korean military will successfully respond, just as it did to the bombing of Yonpyong Island in 2010 and the detonation of a mine in the Demilitarized Zone in 2015, based on its “immediate, forceful and final” response principle to North Korean provocations. Besides, an all-out war would mean the demise of Kim Jong Un’s regime at the hands of the ironclad alliance between South Korea and the U.S.
Newspapers and broadcasters need to be more cautious than ever when it comes to their reporting. North Korea’s psychological operations aimed at dividing South Koreans between advocates of war and proponents of peace should not be related uncritically to the public. It is also important to share the full truth about North Korea and recall the need for national unity. Needless to say, politicians must refrain from in-fighting and short-sighted maneuvers.
Look at Ukraine or the Middle East — or Korean history, for that matter. In times of national crisis, all Koreans are citizen-soldiers. We must all come together to boldly defend ourselves and develop our country.
It’s time to cure Kim Jong Un of his bad habits. We need to create genuine peace, not a false peace, for our descendants to enjoy.
*North Korea announced its own “maritime military demarcation line” in 1999 and “traffic arrangement” for five islands located near North Korea in the Yellow Sea in 2000, rejecting the Northern Limit Line, which is South Korea’s maritime border in the area, as an “arbitrary measure imposed without recourse to the armistice agreement.” Since then, it has argued that Baengnyeong Island, Yeonpyeong Island, and the other three islands in the area remain under the jurisdiction of the UN Command, but that the waters around those islands belong to North Korea.
**Along with completely closing the national borders following the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, North Korea has been concentrating its resources on halting the spread of South Korean culture through the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Exclusion Act, the Act to Guarantee Ideological Education for Youth, the Pyongyang Dialect Protection Act and the Inminban (Neighborhood Watch UnitNeighborhood watch units (inminban, people's units) are Nort... More) Organization and Operation Act (this last one from January 2024). Recently, the North even convened a National Meeting of Mothers to stress the importance of families raising their children properly.
Translated by David Carruth. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Views expressed in this guest column do not necessarily reflect those of Daily NK.
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