When North Korea’s threats become reality
By Kim Myong Chol
"The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong
enemy."
- General Omar Bradley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,
1951.
"In carrying out the instructions of my government, I gained the unenviable
distinction of being the first United States commander in history to sign an
armistice without victory."
- General Mark Clark, 1954
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia."
- General Douglas MacArthur, 1961
"Should the US and South Korea disregard our repeated warnings
to unleash war, we must lose no time in going to the heart of the enemy to show
them what it is like to fight nuclear war on their own land."
North Korean heir-apparent Kim Jong-eun
"North Korea is developing a frightening track record of making good on its
threats."
- New York Times Editorial, June 17, 2009.
A resumption of hostilities on the tiny Korean Peninsula would mean immediate
war between two nuclear powers, North Korea and the United States. The latter
keeps a nuclear-armed garrison of some 20,000 troops with a sprawling network
of military bases across South Korea.
A second Korean War would not fail to disappoint Western experts who wish to
see Kim Jong-eun given an opportunity to prove his unprecedented military
genius. He would preside over the evaporation of the world's sole superpower in
the first thermonuclear exchange ever fought on the spaceship Earth.
Acting for supreme leader Kim Jong-il, the young general is one click away from
issuing a long-awaited order to the Korean People's Army's (KPA) shiny and
sleek, quick-response global strike force. This would see the torching of the
bulwark of the US empire, the skyscrapers of New York City and other centers of
metropolitan America.
Crack front-line units of the KPA are ready round the clock to bomb Seoul,
turning it into a towering inferno before moving in on the ground to complete
their mission.
Japan's cooperation with the US would invite retaliatory nuclear missile
attacks on their nuclear power plants, with the result that Tokyo and other
major cities of the Japanese archipelago are rendered unhabitable.
Dark clouds gathering
The Korean Peninsula today is teetering on the edge of war, with the
trigger-happy Lee Myung-bak government in Seoul vowing to launch airstrikes on
North Korea against what it terms a provocation.
A US-supported South Korean military exercise carries every risk of instantly
escalating by design, accident, and miscalculation into a full-scale shooting
war, and a nuclear war.
The Washington Post reported December 13,
North Korea warned Monday
that US-South Korean military cooperation could drive the peninsula toward
nuclear war, as South Korean troops began their latest live-fire drills.
Though North Korea regularly issues such threats, few in Seoul now consider the
war scenario as empty rhetoric, given the November 23 artillery shelling of a
South Korean island that killed two marines and two civilians.
The
New York Times on November 23 identified the cause of that day's shelling of
the South Korean artillery position on the border Island of Yeonpyeong:
The
attack on Yeonpyeong Island occurred after South Korean forces on exercises
fired test shots into waters near the North Korean coast. We hope South Korea's
president is asking who came up with that idea.
The
Independent's Adrian Hamilton observed November 25, "The very worst response to
the Korean crisis is to do what President [Barack] Obama did yesterday: that is
to announce a joint US-South Korean military exercise on the border this
weekend. It was South Korea's military exercises this month that helped bring
about the latest clash."
The Joong Ang Daily reported on December 2 that there were an alarmingly sharp
increase in the number of live-fire exercises by South Korean troops on that
island in the buildup to the November 23 exchange of fire:
The
Yeonpyeong Island troops carried out an average 17 firing exercises a year
before the arrival of Lee Myung-bak in the Blue House [presidential house],"
but the number nearly doubled to 27 in 2008 since his inauguration.
Each of the pre-LMB period firing exercises involved a total of less than 50
rounds, including several K-9 howitzer rounds, but the number of rounds fired
after LMB's installation began to exceed it, several scores of rounds on an
average.
The September 28 seaward firing drill involved a total 2,631 rounds, such as 35
K-9 howitzer rounds, 8 81mm rounds, 36 60mm, 14 anti-tank rounds, 38 shore
artillery rounds and 2,500 Vulcan rounds and 131 anti-aircraft Vulcan rounds.
South Korea was firing over 900 artillery shells per hour into waters on the
fringe of North Korea during 10 am to 2 pm on November 23. The absence of a
reaction then emboldened them to lob several dozens of shells into North Korean
territorial waters.
The Seoul Sinmun reported November 26: "The Joint Chiefs confessed in an
off-record gathering that 'it is likely that shells fired by our guns flew
beyond the operation control line into North Korean waters'."
The live-firing was part of South Korea's largest war exercise "Hoguk" (a
rehash of the Team Spirit war games) involving 500 warplanes, 90 helicopters
and 50 warships in a simulated invasion of North Korea.
The landing in North Korean waters of the South Korean artillery rounds was the
last straw, prompting an otherwise patient North Korea to react by shelling the
artillery position.
The Associated Press (AP) quoted South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwang-jin on
December 3 vowing airstrikes on North Korea.
As the Wall Street Journal reported December 8, "Admiral [Mike] Mullen [the
chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] said he had not asked South Korea to
take air strikes off the table."
AP reported on December 13:
After the attack, South Korea staged joint
military drills with the United States and also pushed ahead with more
artillery exercises, despite the North's warning that they would aggravate
tension.
The Daily Mail reported December 12, "North Korea
warned yesterday that it was ready for an all-out war." The North Korea
National Peace Committee added yesterday, "The army and our people are ready
for both an escalated war and an all-out war."
Agence France-Presse reported on December 11, "The former chief of US
intelligence [retired Admiral Dennis Blair] warned Sunday that South Korea has
lost its patience with provocations by North Korea and 'will be taking military
action'."
Key differences
A host of essential differences are to be found between the bitterly fought
1950-53 Korean War and the present showdown. The first is the emergence of
North Korea as a nuclear power with ballistic missile capability.
Emerging as the fourth most powerful nuclear weapons state after the US, Russia
and China, North Korea has several hundred nuclear warheads in its arsenal,
including plutonium and uranium-based hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, nuclear
mines and shells.
North Korea has about 8,000 ultra-modern centrifuges operating at underground
sites, churning out highly enriched uranium (HEU) like hot cake.
Even one look at them seems to have petrified Dr Siegfried Hecker, the American
nuclear scientist whose jaws dropped at a sight of a mere 2,000 above ground
during his visit to a plant in November.
The Korean War-era North Korea, a two-year old state, had no capability at all
to fire upon invading enemy warships or shoot down enemy bombers, not to
mention the capability to fight war on enemy territory such as Japan,
Australia, Hawaii and the US mainland.
Despite lacking a modern war machine, the peerless national hero of the
anti-Japanese guerrilla war, young Kim Il-sung, led the just-born North Korea
to survive the fierce three-year-long, life-and-death struggle with the
American giant and its international allied interventionist force, dealing the
US its first debacle in history.
North Korea today is a far cry from what it was in 1950s. Fortress North Korea
can withstand thermonuclear strikes and shoot down 80-90% of enemy warplanes,
missiles and cruise missiles.
Fortress North Korea can easily sink nuclear-powered American aircraft carriers
and reach metropolitan US with long-range missiles. It is a pity that the US
still clings to the wishful delusion that their white elephants can simply wade
into Korean waters.
Its electronic warfare units are capable of playing havoc with the enemy
infrastructure of command, control and communications. In the most important
development, as a member of the elite space and nuclear clubs, North Korea has
the ability to inflict merciless retaliatory strikes on the remotest strategic
target on the American mainland, nearly half the earth away.
It will only take Kim Jong-eun a couple of minutes to turn Seoul into a sea of
fire, five minutes to torch Tokyo, and 15-20 minutes to evaporate New York and
Washington in a "day-after" scenario.
Then there is the presence of nuclear power stations in the US, Japan and South
Korea. (See Nuclear war
is Kim Jong-il's game plan, Asia Times Online, June 12, 2009.) The US
has 103 operating nuclear power stations with onsite storage of a huge quantity
of spent fuel rods. Japan has 53 operating atomic power stations and a
stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium - enough to assemble more than 1,000
atomic bombs in a short period of time. South Korea has 20 operating nuclear
power stations with onsite storage of a huge quantity of spent fuel rods.
If bombed, one average operating nuclear power station is estimated to spew out
as much deadly fallout as 150-180 H-bombs. Bombing one nuclear power station
would render the Japanese archipelago and South Korea uninhabitable. Doing the
same to the US may require bombing one plant on its west coast and another on
its east coast.
Nothing is easier than bombing a power plant on a coastline. There is no need
to use a ballistic missile. Primitive means will do the job.
Third is the fact that the US, Japan and South Korea are home to booming
economies, huge sitting ducks to be caught off guard in an all-consuming
nuclear conflagration.
The Americans and the Japanese could afford to complacently look upon the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav and Bosnian Wars, the Iraq War, and
the Afghanistan War as if they were waged on another planet, no matter how many
innocent people were killed.
These theaters took place in countries that were far removed from
industrialized, nuclear powers. They had no means to take the war all the way
to the US. That is no longer the case, however. The Americans, the Japanese and
the South Koreans would find themselves in a devastating trap.
Fourth is the fact that all of North Korea's population are well trained and
well disciplined in a war-time austerity, while the US, Japan and South Korea
are not.
While the US's skyscrapers are collapsing in a raging conflagration and people
stampeding helter-skelter in all directions for shelter, the whole North Korean
population can be evacuated into hardened underground shelters in a matter of
15 minutes.
The moment of truth will come sooner than originally expected, vindicating the
validity of the military-first policy mapped out by Kim Jong-il and
demonstrating how wise the Korean people are in selecting Young General Kim
Jong-eun as heir to the supreme leader.
Kim Myong Chol is author of a number of books and papers in Korean,
Japanese and English on North Korea, including Kim Jong-il's Strategy
for Reunification. He has a PhD from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's
Academy of Social Sciences and is often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim
Jong-il and North Korea.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110