Is North Korea about to Attack?
Posted By John Moore on March 7, 2003
[UPDATE] Since this post, it was revealed that North Korea attempted to capture an RC-135 aircraft and crew. This is an action more consistent with extortion and less consistent with the attack that much of this article discusses. However, the situation is still very critical and the probability of war within the year is quite high.[END UPDATE]
North Korea has been steadily increasing tension on the Korean peninsula. This activity coincides with heavy US military commitment in the middle east.
There are three possible explanations for this behavior:
- To extort bribes from the United States, as was done in 1995.
- To maintain domestic tranquility by misdirection to external threats.
- To lead up to a casus belli incident justifying an attack into South Korea.
Most commentary has focused on extortion. The domestic tranquility explanation is unlikely.
I believe that the casus belli explanation has a significant likelihood, with horrible consequences.
Unification of the Korean peninsula under the rule of the North has long been the primary strategic goal of North Korea. Their first attempt was the Korean War in which, at the orders of Stalin, they invaded the south on June 15, 1950. The fighting raged until June 8, 1953, at which point an armistice was reached and the de-militarized zone (DMZ) was created. The US provided most of the troops for the South, although several other countries made significant contributions.
From 1966 through 1971 North Korea engaged in a campaign of increasing violence that cost 40 American lives, and involved DMZ incidents, terrorist raids, a commando raide on the presidential mansion, the capture of the USS Pueblo and the downing of an unarmed US Navy reconnaisance plane [carrying an acquaintance of mine]. These incidents ceased when the US and South Korea demonstrated increasing resolve and greatly improved their defenses. However, North Korea then increased their construction of infiltration tunnels into the South, ordering each division along the DMZ to produce two tunnels.
In early August 1976, the North Koreans accused the US of preparing an invasion. On August 18, 1976 two Americans at the “Peace Village” in the DMZ tried to cut down a tree that was blocking the line of site of a checkpoint. They were beaten to death with axes by the North Koreans. Rather than retaliate, providing a casus belli, the US decided to simply cut down the tree. However, it was done with a great show of force, by an armed platoon backed by 27 helicopters and a number of B-52 bombers flying along the DMZ (Operation Paul Bunyan).
This incident was an attempt to start the war for the South. The US had just suffered its defeat in Vietnam and the North miscalculated American resolve.
Since that time North Korea has engaged in numerous small level attacks against the South, including bombing a meeting at which many high level government officials were present; blowing up an airliner; various infiltrations and small sea battles; and, bizarrely, kidnapping a famous South Korean actress for the pleasure of the current leader, Kim Jong Il.
Today, taking South Korea remains the North’s primary goal. They have a million troops forward deployed along the DMZ, even as their population is starving. They see the US military tied down in the Persian Gulf. They must perceive as cowardly the anti-war sentiment in much of the world, but believe it would hobble the US. Furthermore, they now possess deliverable weapons of mass destruction (chemical weapons) and probably have nuclear weapons.
It is not unlikely that they believe that a war for the South is now winnable.
They correctly believe that our forces would be divided. They think that the world will try to restrain us. They believe that holding Seoul hostage will deter us. They may try to force Japan to stop our Japan-based forces by threatening Japanese cities that are in range of many of their chemical-tipped missiles. They may try to deter us by threatening us with agents pre-positioned in the US armed with chemical or biological weapons. If pressure on them increases (as it must to stop their WMD programs), they may see war as inevitable, in which case they may pre-emptively attack the South. Furthermore, they may seriously overestimate their own military capabilities, since absolute dictators often are told only the “good news.”
If they attack the South, the US will not be deterred. We cannot allow North Korea to succeed - in fact, we cannot even allow them to continue to exist today if they continue their WMD programs. A second Korean war would be very bloody. The North would be likely to use weapons of mass destruction. The US might be forced into nuclear retaliation, or might use nuclear weapons in any case if the war goes badly or to eliminate the most threatening WMD sites. But the US would fight and the North Korean regime would be extinguished.
Depends On How Suicidal They’re Feeling
John Moore thinks North Korea may be about to attack the south. I think they are a long way from that right now, but John makes some interesting points.
Good Post! I’m somewhat more skeptical of whether DPRK has the actual capabality to successfully carry out a push to the South. I think that the internal problems of the last few years may have closed that particular window of opportunity. That said, realizing this, they could make an incremental grab, push as far south as possible, and then sue for peace with a recogniztion of their newly established border.
I think the current strategy is to no longer countenance the DPRK’s assertion that are a legitimate world power and let them collapse from the weight of their own internal rot. It should be pretty interesting, not to mention downright terrifying.
I also doubt the DPRK can succeed. However, it is not clear what sort of information is reaching their decision makers, and the rationality of their decision making process is suspect. And as you say, they could try something incremental - they don’t have to go very far to capture 20,000,000 people.
I don’t think that we can afford to wait for them to collapse on their own. Totalitarian societies tend to last an extremely long time - much longer than mere authoritarian ones. And while we are waiting, they would most likely be selling nuclear material and nuclear weapons on the world market. Another post addresses that issue, and includes a link to an extremely scary article by Stanley Kurtz.
Thanks for your comments!
John
Unfortunately, I think when you examine the decision making, you don’t have to look any further than Dear Leader. He was groomed for this position by his father, has only left the country, I believe, two or three times, and actually believes that the DPRK is on the cusp of becoming a world power, hence the demands to speak with the US bilaterally (as if we really stand to gain from an association with them).
I agree with you on the longevity of autocracies, and I’m probably letting my judgement be clouded by hope with regard to North Korea.
Of course NK wants to unite with the South on NK terms, not on SK terms. They know that eventually Korea will be united and they definitely see it as a zero sum game. Many Westerners do not understand this and so their analyses are flawed.
The desire for unification on terms favorable to the North is always an underlying motivation for everything the NK regime does. The question at any given point is whether the North is trying to achieve unification on favorable terms in the short term or as some future goal. If the North was planning an attack then I don’t see what the point would be for all the saber rattling. Perhaps the purpose is to build up in their population a greater sense of conflict with the West to psyche them up for their attack.
The biggest motivation for the North’s development of ICBMs and nukes is to make the North immune from US attack. In order to unite with the South on favorable terms the North first has to manage to not be conquered. The North already has a powerful deterrent in its ability to kill millions of South Koreans. But it wants an even more powerful means to deter the US.
North Korea is trying to use the current conditions to quickly become a nuclear power and to get the US to accept North Korea as a nuclear power. However, the North would have a decent chance of managing to become a nuclear power even if the US wasn’t building up for an attack on Iraq. After all, an attack to stop North Korea would have huge costs in human lives for the South and even would cost the US a lot of lives.
I don’t see the North preparing for imminent attack on the South. Why attack now if they are about to be able to build nuclear weapons? Doesn’t it make sense to wait? If the North first developed a large number of nuclear weapons then I’d expect the chances of attack would become much greater.
The reason for the current timing would be a combination of two accidents:
1) The US war on Iraq, leaving our forces and attention divided.
2) The US discovery of the covert NK nuclear program, making it less likely that they will be allowed to develop a nuclear deterrence.
Furthermore, with the resources of the south, it would be much easier to develop nukes and the delivery systems.
Finally, they may believe they have a nuclear deterrent. We don’t know where their weapons are… they could be sitting at the bottom of New York Harbor, waiting to be activated!
I agree that the logical thing for the Norks to do is develop a nuclear deterrent, and then take the South. However, history is full of miscalculations in such areas. Also, we don’t know either the rationality of the top level decision makers nor the quality of the information they have access to.
John, I agree that NK is getting edgy, and that things could get hot over there.
I’m most afraid of us using nukes (neutron bombs) on the DMZ if the North launches an attack. They can lob 500,000 conventional artillery shells a DAY into Seoul, so they don’t even need nukes to effectively destroy the South Korean economy (almost half of their population is in the Seoul metro area).
The only way to stop a charge of over a million men in the short distance between the DMZ and Seoul is with the small yield neutron bombs we developed for use against Russian tanks if they happened to charge through the Fulda Gap in the Cold War.
And we didn’t give all of them up, we kept enough for Korea or Europe if things heated up.
But they ARE might clean low fallout little nukes, designed to not have measureable fallout mere miles away.
But then the Chinese might get frisky and try for Taiwan…
So if things drop in the pot in Korea, I’m not sure what I’m afraid of more, us going nuclear right off of the bat and sparing the South (and their economy), or panty waisting around and getting involved in another land war in Asia.
Yes, keeps one up at night.
David,
From what I have been learning, the US and ROK troops should be able to stop the NK army from getting very far.
If that is true, the real problem is the Nork ability to cause massive casualties in Seoul especially but also in other cities in South Korea and Japan (via missiles).
Because the artillery (and possible rocket launchers?) is in tunnels, and only comes out to fire, I don’t think any sort of nukes other than ground burst would be effective, and ground bursts produce massive fallout.
With regard to fallout, see this reference on this site. It discusses a lot of issues about nuclear weapons. One point: *any* air burst nuke that goes off high enough will produce no local fallout or persistent radiation. Only if the explosion is in the ground or too close to it do you get local fallout. Thus there was no fallout at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I don’t think the Chinese are going for Taiwan. They have too much to lose commercially (by world embargo) at this time. Also, they currently are not believed to have the capability of taking Taiwan. They do certainly have a long term strategic goal of absorbing Taiwan.
I know that NK wouldn’t get very far, but they could easily wreck the SK economy with preemptive artillery strikes.
I don’t think China could normally take Taiwan, but what if the US is tied up in the middle east, and Korea goes hot…but Taiwan and China are getting closer and closer all the time economically, so I’m not too worried about that really.
I’m more worried about Israel going nuclear if they get backed in a corner by idiots in Syria/Lebanon during our upcoming Iraqi adventures. Worst case would be if that triggers (was triggered by?) a pan-Arab war against Israel, causing Pakistan and India throw down, and going nuclear there.
But I’ve been paranoid about Pakistan and India nuking each other since before they HAD nukes back in the 80s.
Korea attacks the South through the tunnels. Then retreat back into the cities. US and South Korean troops follow across the DMZ. The North sets off its underground nuclear weapon under the DMZ. 50000+ dead. May, 2003.
Not likely. Small nukes against spread out US Army formations wouldn’t do as much as your think (check out the nuclear weapons data on this web site).
Also, I think the tunnels have probably been found with ground penetrating radar.