North Korea Attacks South Korea at Yeonpyeong Island (Part 3)

From Ynetnews:

North Korea is currently facing major domestic distress. The sanctions imposed on it and its agricultural difficulties have led to serious hunger, the UN reports. Yet instead of suspending its nuclear program and ballistic missiles and resuming talks with the US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea (which promised generous aid in food and fuel,) Pyongyang is attempting to extort them via war threats and provocations. This, in essence, is the backdrop for the grave incident where the communist country shelled a South Korean island not too far from the two Koreas western border.

The latest incident is the fifth in a series of grave provocations initiated by North Korea in the past two years, ever since talks hit an impasse. Notwithstanding its pledges, North Korea held a (not particularly successful) nuclear experiment, and also undertook a series of ballistic missile tests, despite US warnings. In the wake of these tests, the United Nations imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions on Pyongyang, yet the Stalinist regime headed by ill Kim Jong-il was not deterred.

At the same time, North Korea constantly continues, with active Chinese diplomatic assistance, to invite the US to resume the talks on Pyongyang's nuclear and missile program, in exchange for economic benefits and lifting of the sanctions. It's easy to see what the North Korean leadership aims to achieve via this belligerent brinkmanship. The main target is to create a situation whereby the sanctions are lifted and Pyongyang receives an immediate and significant supply of food and fuel, before Pyongyang ever commits to curbing its military nuclear program, and before International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are ever allowed to return to North Korea.

The other objective is domestic. Current leader Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke two years ago and is having trouble functioning. Hence, a few months ago he embarked on the process of handing over power to his son, Kim Jong-Un. However, the regime in Pyongyang is concerned that domestic and international rivals would take advantage of the sensitive period in order to destabilize the regime and extort political and military compromises. Through their provocations against South Korea, Kim Jong-il and his generals showcase their power, confidence, and hold on the country in a manner which they believe will deter their rivals.

This strategy leaves South Korea and the Obama Administration helpless. South Korea is well familiar with its own military inferiority vis-à-vis North Korea's million-man army, which is equipped with modern arms and ballistic missiles. While South Korea's arms and aircraft are more advanced than Pyongyang's, the quantitative inferiority vis-à-vis the North and the North Korea regime's willingness to sustain casualties and destruction decisively tilt the balance in the North's favor.

Moreover, despite its technological and industrial strength, South Korea does not possess substantial capability to intercept missiles and rockets. Seoul is currently in initial stages of acquiring such systems (including the "Green Pine" radar system made in Israel.)

Hence, even if it does not use the nuclear weapons it may or may not possesses, North Korea can literally raze Seoul in a matter of days and gravely undermine the flourishing South Korean industrial sector and economy. Should a war break out, the roughly 40,000 US troops deployed in South Korea ever since the 1950s are also at risk. These forces possess advanced Patriot missiles capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, yet in low numbers compared to the North's rocket and artillery arsenal.

The South Korean government is well aware of its situation, and also of the fact that the Obama Administration, which is entangled in Afghanistan and Iraq, would not rush into another war in the Korea Peninsula. Hence, Korean President Lee Myung-bak quickly declared that despite the North's blatant provocation, his country has no intention of being dragged into a conflict and would do everything it can to avoid escalation

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3988906,00.html


From the Asia Times:

The United States and South Korea now have to face what has become more than an abstract question: What is more troubling, the specter of North Korea as a growing nuclear power with a brand new uranium-enrichment facility almost ready to go into operation, or a nasty assault by "conventional" weapons on land?

The question jumped into harsh reality on Tuesday when North Korean gunners pumped dozens of rounds of artillery shells onto the tiny island of Yeonpyeong off the Korean west coast just south of the line in the Yellow Sea below which the South insists on banning North Korean vessels.

The incident, like others, may go down in the long list of "isolated episodes" since the end of the Korean War in 1953, but the timing was particularly unnerving. It happened just as the US's nuclear envoy, Stephen Bosworth, was in Beijing after stopovers in Seoul and Tokyo, all of which were to "coordinate" policy on dealing with a North Korean threat of a very different kind - the uranium-enrichment plant at Yongbyon.

Bosworth talked in the usual diplomatic platitudes, saying the news of the uranium facility was "another in a series of provocations" but "this is not a crisis". He may be revising that estimate, though, as he beseeches Chinese officials to do what they have been most reluctant to consider, and that is to apply significant pressure on North Korea.

Kim Tae-woo, senior fellow at the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses, is pessimistic about getting China to persuade North Korea to back down from its nuclear activities in view of rising Chinese strength in the entire region.

"China is getting stronger and tougher," he says. "North Korea by increasing its capability is bringing all kinds of side effects to South Korea. They want to increase their leverage."

The real point is that North Korea, by holding out the threat of two very different types of warfare, may think that's the way to get negotiations going again - on North Korea's terms.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LK24Dg02.html