Many speculate about why North Korea chose to torpedo the South Korean corvette Cheonan on March 24. Some say it was to help consolidate succession plans for Leader Kim Jong-il to install his twenty-seven year old son Kim Jong-un as heir apparent. Others say it is the North’s way to press for aid and concessions from South Korea and the West to bolster the tottering regime in Pyongyang. These and others may be right, but on the basis of the scant evidence available, we cannot be certain.
One thing we do know is that Kim Jong-il appeared to be in the peninsula’s driver’s seat for ten years under the “Sunshine policy” of former South Korean Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo Hyun. Through bluster and threats, he won his hard regime the food, cash and fertilizer it needed to survive. But in December 2007, a new president, Lee Myung-bak, was elected in a landslide after campaigning for a reversal of the conciliatory approach of his predecessors.
One specific concession of former-President Roh that new President Lee reversed was an offer to open the waters west of the Korean peninsula as a “zone of peace and cooperation.” The concession had been made during a North-South summit hastily arranged on the eve of the 2007 election—obviously to influence voters in the south to continue to support the “Sunshine policy.” Lee cancelled this and other agreements on taking office, interpreting this as well within the mandate of his victory.
On November 10, 2009, North and South Korean patrol boats engaged in a firefight in the western zone for which they naturally offered different explanations. Common to their accounts, however, was that the South was victorious and the North suffered the loss of one of its ships off Daecheong Island.
One thing we have observed about Kim Jong-il and the North Koreans: they do not let defeats go unanswered. After the loss of the North Korean ship, the commander of its component, known as Unit 586, General Kim Myung-guk, was demoted to three-star rank. But on April 25 this year, a month after the torpedo sank the South’s Cheonan, Kim received his fourth star again, personally from the Dear Leader. This strongly suggests both a desire for vengeance and a need for the North’s leader to maintain his close connection to the armed forces.
We have to assume that the North’s commanders believed they could pull this operation off without being clearly implicated, even though they would be widely suspected to be responsible. After all, would not the torpedo destroy itself and the evidence would sink to the bottom of the sea? This was intended to reduce the chances that the North would be forced to pay a price directly. And it would give voice to dissidents in the South to criticize and oppose the new Lee Myung-bak government, a consistent goal of the North.
Now, North Korea and its friends have been surprised by the clear evidence that it was guilty of launching the attack. The quality and integrity of the evidence assembled by the South and its international advisors have thrown Pyongyang (and Beijing) on the defensive. Both North and South have begun the process of sanctioning and threatening each other, though with discernible limits which signal intent to avoid outright conflict.
As events unfold, the South will seek censure of the North at the UN Security Council and conduct military exercises to bolster its defenses and the alliance with the United States. Again, the North will not let these go unanswered and can choose among many means to rattle the voters in the South, ranging from another nuclear test, to missile launches, to other forms of saber rattling.
As we go forward, it will be important for President Lee Myung-bak to continue to demonstrate the cool statesmanship he has shown thus far. The United States can best support him by taking measures and choosing military exercises that demonstrate strength but do not constitute dangerous provocations.
North Korea and its leaders are desperately in need of money to survive. Washington and the civilized world should cooperate in gradually tightening their grip around the banks used internationally by Pyongyang. By adjusting the grip to the scale of the North’s provocations, they can send a useful message to Kim Jung-il that he is no longer in the peninsula’s driver’s seat.
Douglas H. Paal is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Comments
To the “outside” world intellectuals who don’t read Korean, This is a remarkable story of people – the governed(although they are in theory supposed to be the actual governor in democracy), not their government - making difference in the world (history). 1. Compare and contrast.“More enlightened” American people, Congress and media; Bush; WMD; War (and huge suffering),(http://whitehouser.com/war/CIA-confirms-... )and,“Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people; Korean President Lee; Cheonan; prevention of War (so far).(I am including among ‘the Korean people’ the Korean-Americans.) 2. Also remarkable is that the “inside” Korean people braved the government prosecution.Caveat: Under the current South Korean regime, South Korean citizens can be sued for defamation by their own government officials, and defamation in South Korea is a crime (as well as a civil offense) prosecuted by the government’s own centrally controlled national prosecutors who selectively choose or choose not whom to prosecute.Recently, Shin Sang-cheol, “an expert placed on the JIG [Joint Investigation Group] by” the National Assembly, got (criminally) sued for defamation by a government official for expressing disagreement over the current South Korean regime’s version of the Cheonan Incident. (http://www.zimbio.com/Mizuho+Fukushima/a... ) (South Korean people’s firsthand knowledge about the pro-government polls is that they are ridiculously overinflated.A proof: war-fear-mongering South Korean President Lee Myung-bak got unexpectedly humiliated on the June 2 election by the “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people,when “survey conducted by the major daily [pro-government]Dong-A Ilbo and the Korea Research Center from May 24 to 26[7-days-before] forecast[ed] that Oh would beat Han by 20.8 percent.”Actual election result: 0.6 percent(=”47.4 percent”-”46.8 percent.”)Source: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/v... ) 3. A list of early English publications on Questions on the Cheonan Incident and the Power of South Korean Netizens can be found at http://korea.true.ws (by LetsTry Reason) and newer writings at http://letstryreason.wordpress.com . Also, look at: “the U.S, South Korea, the U.K, Canada and Australia, but not Sweden, contributed to the second-statement findings [claiming that North Korea might be guilty]” – “Five reasons why the the JIG’s 5-page statement cannot be considered scientific and objective, nor … ‘international’”http://japanfocus.org/-JOHN-MCGLYNN/3372 ;“Russian Probe Sees No North Korea Hand In Cheonan Sinking! Russia Says Sea Mine Sunk Cheonan”http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/201... ;http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/06/... ;http://nature.com/news/2010/080710/full/... ;http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/... 4. Compare and contrast.9/11; Al-Qaeda; brags We did it(, was not wrong, not sorry about it and we will do it again).Cheonan; North Korea; brags We didn’t do it (therefore, presumably, was wrong, sorry about it and we will not do it). (Why the difference?)Crime and punishment. If we are taking consequentialist moral philosophy, and if the utilitarian utility of punishment is to prevent future crime, then punishment serves little or no purpose (maybe to others but not)to North Korea who says ‘We didn’t do it,’ because either (a) the North didn’t do it, therefore the punishment will be outrageous injustice,or (b) the North did do it, but ‘We didn’t do it’ basically implies ‘We will not do it.’(This particular ‘it’ hardly gives the North any payoff.)*If you don’t get scared of us, how can We become the terrorist, and if you don’t know We did it, how can you get scared of us? 5. Representative democracy is not pure democracy. (Pure)Direct democracy of a nation-size is now (or becoming) possible, through recent developments in computer science and technology, making secure private Internet-voting, democratic online discussions, cheap instantaneous micro referendum and freedom of choice to vote directly on an issue or use an agent possible.The science (computer science) should finally make the people, the governed, the actual de facto governor in democracy. 6. I take this honor of hereby formally asking the folks in Norway to consider awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people including myself,who in early days, among various activities, proposed the “outside” world contact initiative for the Cheonan peace, providing email addresses of all the foreign embassies in Korea, U.N., Hillary, Obama, and the foreign media.