



Kim out of strikes as world sits tight


Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

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S Korea pledges 'strong response' against North

South Korean President Park Geun-hye pledges a strong and swift military response to any North Korean provocation.

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North Korea has outdone itself with its whacko rhetoric in recent days - it's even found a way to make women's clothing sound evil - but it's reached such a frenzy that we have to wonder whether it portends something truly serious.

For decades, North Korea has routinely threatened to destroy the capital of its capitalist neighbour, South Korea, in ''a sea of fire''. Seoul is still standing, a thriving metropolis and a daily rebuke to the poverty of Pyongyang's closed socialist system.

But consider Pyongyang's official ''declaration of war'' against the US and its allies including South Korea, issued two weeks ago. It declared: ''Time has come to stage a do-or-die final battle''.

Kim Jong-un discusses the strike plan with North Korean officers.

Kim Jong-un discusses the strike plan with North Korean officers. Photo: AFP/ KCNA via KNS

The people of North Korea were ''full of surging anger'' and were determined to ''annihilate the enemies''. Any provocation from the US would be met with ''merciless nuclear attack''.

It warned: ''They should clearly know that in the era of Marshal Kim Jong-un,'' the country's 30-year-old ruler who was promoted by his father from civilian to four-star general at one stroke, ''the greatest-ever commander, all things are different from what they used to be in the past.

''The hostile forces will clearly realise the iron will, matchless grit and extraordinary mettle of the brilliant commander of Mount Paektu'', the legendary birthplace of the Korean people.

<i>Illustration: Rocco Fazzari</i>

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

Giving some weight to its words, North Korea has cut off military and humanitarian hotlines that linked the North and South in the absence of diplomatic relations.

This is an escalation even by Pyongyang's standards. It has specifically threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US mainland and its Pacific bases in Hawaii and Guam.

Another novel rhetorical twist is that now that South Korea has its first female leader, Pyongyang has made her very femininity sound hostile.

North Korean army officers punch the air as they chant slogans during a rally.

North Korean army officers punch the air as they chant slogans during a rally. Photo: AP

It refers to Seoul's President, Park Geun-hye, not by name but as ''the sinister swish of skirts''.

This produces guffaws but the rising tensions are also producing some gulps. Remember that North Korea has the world's fifth biggest standing army of about 1.1 million soldiers. (For scale, Australia has a population similar to North Korea's 24 million but has fewer than 60,000 military personnel.) And if you include North Korea's reserve forces, it has the biggest army in the world with 9.5 million troops.

There are serious doubts about how effective Kim's massive army would be in a war - tourists have photographed soldiers on duty in Pyongyang carrying wooden replica guns. But it has a massed artillery capable of bombarding Seoul with half a million shells in an hour.

And, of course, it now has the nuclear bomb. Analysts in Seoul and the US estimate it has half a dozen to a dozen of them.

So the big question is, what is going on? What is Kim Jong-un's plan? Here we enter the realm of theory. Analysts of Kim's super-secretive kingdom have come up with three plausible explanations.

One is that North Korea's long-running protection racket is not working any more, and it is increasing its threats to see if it can restore the old game.

The protection racket? For decades, Pyongyang would threaten to do horrible things to its neighbours, and the West, led by the US, would agree to give the country assistance in return for peace.

But every time, Pyongyang took the aid, reneged on its promises and renewed the threats - and continued to work towards the nuclear bomb it now possesses. That racket is not working any longer.

''The United States will not play the game of accepting empty promises or yielding to threats,'' said US national security adviser Tom Donilon.


The theory is that Kim jnr is pushing the threats to new heights to see if he can ultimately force a return to winning aid by extortion.

A second theory is that the boy marshal is simply having trouble consolidating power, and is seeking to win over top military commanders with his bellicosity.

A third is that Kim Jong-un, who convened the annual meeting of the ruling Communist Party on Monday, is hatching a program of economic reform. He spent years at boarding school in Switzerland and knows first-hand that there is an alternative to the ''juche'' policy of hermetically sealed socialist self-reliance that has forced an estimated two-thirds of his people to live on a subsistence diet.

But to make such a dramatic policy change, Kim needs to strengthen his hand. The theory runs that he is doing so by putting the country on a heightened state of military alert.

If any of the theories is accurate, there is a high chance that Kim will proceed to an act of military aggression - bombard a South Korean base, sink a South Korean ship, or shoot South Korean soldiers across the DMZ, all of which Pyongyang has done in the recent past. But not proceed beyond, to the point of opening an all-out war.

But all of those theories assume the regime, ultimately, is rational. There is no such guarantee.

Seoul and Washington are remaining calm. There is no satellite evidence of North Korean mobilisation. The US has already decided that, if it sees the fuelling of any long-range North Korean missiles, it will strike them pre-emptively. And Park is calmly proceeding with her policy of ''trust-building'' by giving food aid to the North. How's that for a sinister swish?

Peter Hartcher is the international editor.


  • Someone with access to nukes has to always be considered a legitimate threat but when your economy creates zero revenue yet you continuously spend a fortune on arms, soldiers and your own personal pleasures, at a certain point your ability to continue becomes tenuous. Unfortunately, those close around him live high on the hog as he does. Hopefully one of them takes a look at everyone else in the country who's starving and questions why they're spending everything to defend against aggressors who are solely in the mind of Kim Jong-Un and unelects their leader for life.

    Date and time
    April 02, 2013, 7:24AM
    • Its just sad for the people of North Korea. I feel for their tragic lives under this terrible regime.

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 7:39AM
    • Yes, it's hard to figure this beyond the demands of dynastic continuity, but it does show the huge element of irrationality and hence unpredictability in the regime. So, why would China support NK as client regime? What's in it for them? Nothing at all, as far as I can see. It means US troops on the Peninsula whereas under a united Korea, the Yankees would go home - or over to Japan.The usual questions about (rational) national interest just seem to fail for both regimes. Locking up business people, targeting Google and Apple, hacking US companies and the Government, all of these look plain dumb from a national interest (economic) point of view. The greed of the West cannot be relied upon in the long term: another GFC would bruise it deeply. It's hard to see the interest of China in supporting N. Korea or the interest of NK in threatening the US. If irrationality is a large part of this story, things could get very rough.

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 7:56AM
    • North Korea's military expenditure is just a front. The real money is obviously being spent on Fat Puppy's catering bill. It's no wonder the country is starving.

      When Fat Puppy's father was alive at least the military got to eat but look at how thin they are looking lately. No need for any sort of military retaliation, I doubt they're even going to make it through to the next winter

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 8:08AM
    • It is a tragedy that the deluded ruling elite of North Korea have absolutely no interest in the health and welfare of the North Koreans. The North and South stand in stark contrast in terms of standards of living of their people. Clearly one system of government has worked and the other has become totally self destructive and dangerously isolated even from its allies. When will the people wake up?

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 8:28AM
    • Metternich - a possible reason for China staying involved is that they WANT the Americans tied up in North Korea. Keeping them there limits their ability to continually fight successful multiple fronts (look at how well Afghanistan and Iraq went; obviously not all down to fighting multiple fronts, but it didn't help).

      Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

      in your base
      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 8:31AM
    • I don't think that North Korea will ever go to a full scale war or use their nukes because they will ultimately lose despite the massive devastation they will do. The leaders only have their power and they are not going to do anything to risk losing that power because if they go to war they are dead or out of power and will have nothing but will probably be in a jail cell. All they are doing is trying to firm up their position of power and get some more benefits and nice things. They have all those weapons to ensure no-one comes in and takes their power away from the leaders not to start invading everyone else.

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 8:33AM
    • @Metternich, "So, why would China support NK as client regime? What's in it for them? Nothing at all, as far as I can see" There is a lot at stake that you can't see. For one thing if Korea's become united as a capitalist democracy, it would mean a direct route into China and Russia by the US businesses to sell their cars, trucks etc. Right now, the Chinese are the one's supplying the Chinese and Russians supplying the Russians. It's too expensive to fly stuff from Japan/SK to Russia and China, if they had the lands by route, it would save on Fuel etc.

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 8:37AM
    • Metternich, my understanding is that China doesn't want to have to deal with the humanitarian crisis that would eventuate if North Korea were to fall. I'm not sure if it's true, but I definitely read it somewhere (possibly even in smh!).

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 8:43AM
    • If North Korea were to fall, then its reconstruction would be South Korea's issue, not China. The two countries would be unified, and Korea would become the great rival to China, in place of Japan. However, unlike Japan, Korea shares a border with China.

      Date and time
      April 02, 2013, 9:13AM

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