NYT: Analysts Puzzle Over Cause of Flare-Up

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/world/asia/25kim.html

 

 

By MARK McDONALD

SEOUL, South Korea — As nerves began to calm the day after a prolonged and deadly artillery exchange between North and South Korea, focus turned on Wednesday to the possible motivations for the assault and whether the South might have provoked it.

The Koreas blame each other for instigating the artillery barrages on Tuesday afternoon. The exchange, which lasted about an hour, centered on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, which lies in the western sea, eight miles off the North Korean coast.

The incident killed two South Korean soldiers and President Lee Myung-bak expressed regret Wednesday afternoon over “the passing of the two marines who met a glorious death in defense of the homeland.”

The charred bodies of two civilians also were discovered as military teams canvassed the wreckage of the island. Yeonpyeong, essentially a fishing village, is about twice the size of New York’s Central Park. About 1,600 civilians live there, along with a marine garrison of about 1,000.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said the attack on the island was unprovoked. In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Lee called the attack “unprecedented.”

“It was a premeditated provocation and an indiscriminate attack against civilians,” he said.

But North Korea, through its official news agency, said the South had fired first, sending live rounds from a battery on another island onto its side of the maritime border.

“What has been missing in all the analysis is that we’re not listening to what North Korea says,” said Michael Breen, the author of a book about the two Koreas and a biography of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader. “Because of the blustering language the North Koreans always use, you tend to dismiss it.

“But if the North was holding live-fire exercises five miles offshore from South Korea, it wouldn’t just be business as usual. These waters, they consider theirs. What’s the point, anyway, of doing these live-fire drills so close to North Korea?”

The South Korean deputy defense minister acknowledged Tuesday night that the South had fired artillery close to North Korea, but he insisted the shots were aimed away from the North. Defense officials also said the North had known about the exercises.

“But a military exercise is classically a cover for the real thing,” said Mr. Breen. “The North Koreans may have reasoned, in their paranoia, that an invasion was happening.”

Another analyst said military exercises close to the North Korean coast have always angered Pyongyang.

“It’s part of their threat perception,” said John Delury, a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. “It contributes to the atmosphere of tension and conflict, and it makes it easier for North Korean hardliners to make something happen.”

Mr. Delury and other analysts said the North knew it was raising the stakes in firing on an island with a civilian population, twice, in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon. There was no fog-of-war explanation for it, he said.

“I find it hard to believe they felt they had no choice but to attack,” Mr. Delury said. “They knew they were ratcheting things up.”

As diplomatic responses to the incident were being drafted in Washington, Seoul, Beijing and other capitals, the American and South Korean militaries announced Wednesday that an aircraft carrier strike group would lead a four-day exercise in the western sea beginning on Sunday. The strike group is led by the United States carrier George Washington.

Mr. Breen called it “foolishness.”

“The whole idea is just to give them the bird,” he said.

“China is not going to react well to this,” added Mr. Delury. “They may wait a day or two, but they’re going to be upset.”

North Korea scholars in Seoul said the arrival of the aircraft carrier, as a potent symbol of gunboat diplomacy, would likely bolster the hardliners inside the North Korean regime.

“These guys want aircraft carriers,” Mr. Delury said. “This is exactly the response they want.”

The American military, which called the upcoming drill “defensive in nature,” said it had been planned before the artillery exchange occurred. The previous exercises were postponed due to bad weather.

The American general who heads the United Nations Command in South Korea, Gen. Walter L. Sharp, also called Wednesday for military talks with senior officers of the North Korean People’s Army “in order to initiate an exchange of information and deescalate the situation.”

Many political analysts in Seoul agreed that the barrage by the North was probably approved by Kim Jong-il, reputed to be an all-knowing micro-manager who famously dispenses “on-the-spot guidance” to farmers, factory managers, generals, physicists, pilots, textile workers or anyone else he visits.

“Something like this has to be cleared at the highest level, no matter what,” said Lee Sung-yoon, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Mr. Lee rejected the idea that a maverick military commander seeking to curry favor or score political points with Mr. Kim might have authorized the attack on his own.

“There is no ‘rogue elements’ theory applicable here,” Mr. Lee said. “This is how North Korea approaches negotiations — not through the conventions of diplomatic courtesy but through raising the stakes through provocations. It’s been a potent formula, this provocation-negotiation-concession schema.”

Mr. Breen, the Kim Jong-il biographer, said the widely held notion of Mr. Kim as unbalanced was inaccurate. Eccentric, perhaps. A dictator, certainly. But politically inept, no.

“He’s not a foolish man at all,” Mr. Breen said. “He’s not crazy, not at all. He’s not nuts. That’s a very shallow analysis.

“If he was here on a conference call with us, he’d say, “Look, if there’s a war, my country will be finished within a week. I know that. I’m not trying to start a war, I just don’t like enemy states holding live-fire exercises within stone-throwing distance of my coast.”

As his artillery was pounding Yeonpyeong on Tuesday, Mr. Kim and his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, apparently toured a soy sauce factory and a medical school, according to an item from the North’s official news agency that was cited by the Yonhap news agency in Seoul. The item appeared Tuesday, although it was not clear that the father-son outing had taken place the same day.

Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be 27 or 28, recently emerged as the apparent heir to his father. (The elder Kim had taken over from his father, the founding president of North Korea, Kim Il-sung.) Kim Jong-un recently was given significant political posts in the ruling Korean Workers’ Party and was awarded the rank of four star general despite no known record of having served in the military.

Mr. Lee and other North Korea analysts said the clash on Tuesday was likely intended to bolster the political standing and military credentials of the son. The North would likely claim, he said, that “this is how the young general showed his mettle.”

Mr. Lee said he expects further incidents by the North — including perhaps another nuclear test — in the coming weeks, perhaps to coincide with Kim Jong-un’s birthday on Jan. 8. The North has previously tested two nuclear devices.

“North Korea will have a strong incentive to celebrate the heir apparent’s strategic genius on Jan. 8,” said Mr. Lee. “Whether the Boy Who Would Be King can sustain his impoverished kingdom over the long run is an entirely different question.”

Meanwhile, the KOSPI stock index in Seoul opened nervously on Wednesday, but closed down just 0.2 percent. The index, one of the best-performing markets in the Asia-Pacific region, is up more than 20 percent from a year ago.

The Nikkei index in Japan in lost 0.8 percent, although other markets in the region shook off worries about an escalation of the artillery incident and managed small gains.

The Unification Ministry, the South Korean department that deals with most of the nonmilitary inter-Korean issues, said on Wednesday that further aid shipments to North Korea had been suspended. Under a previous agreement between the two Koreas, the South had already shipped 5,000 tons of rice, 3,000 tons of cement and 3 million cups of instant noodles to the North.

In addition to Yeonpyeong, South Korea has other islands in the western sea that lie just off the North Korean coast. They fall under the Inchon metropolitan government, which ordered the residents of Baeknyeong, Daecheong and Socheong islands to evacuate, according to the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo. The islands have air raid bunkers and bomb shelters, and local government officials said about 6,000 islanders took cover in 98 shelters.