hankyoreh

and said that they were okay despite military tensions between South and North Korea. (Yonhap News)

Military tensions between North and South Korea have been rising to a fever pitch ever since the Park Geun-hye administration took office in 2013. Things could fairly be described as a hair-trigger situation, one where it wouldn’t seem strange for localized hostilities to erupt at any moment. On August 20, the two sides exchanged shell fire at the armistice line; now they are taking steps to beef up their respective combat postures. It’s a blinking contest, a battle in which neither side is willing to give an inch. Given the grave physical and psychological damage a military clash would cause for both sides, it’s clear that they need to act right away to defuse tensions and keep the situation on a stable footing.

If anything, tensions are being ratcheted up instead. An Aug. 21 report by the (North) Korean Central News Agency said Kim Jong-un had held an emergency extended meeting of the Workers’ Party National Defense Commission the night before to order full arming of front-line units (the first, second, and third corps at the armistice line) and declare a “quasi-state of war” for the front line region. The agency also said commanders had been appointed and deployed to the front line to take military action to destroy psychological warfare equipment if South Korea didn’t halt its propaganda broadcasts within 48 hours - that is, by 5 pm on Aug. 22. Kim Yang-gon, the head of the Workers’ Party United Front Department and Pyongyang’s secretary on South Korean affairs, sent a message to Blue House National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin on the afternoon of Aug. 20 demanding the broadcasts be stopped and the speakers dismantled. “We are willing to resolve the current situation and work toward opening avenues for improving relations,” Kim said in the communication. The strategy looks to be a mixture of appeasement and combativeness.

President Park Geun-hye also convened an emergency National Security Council meeting on the night of Aug. 20, where she ordered a stern response to North Korean provocations and a continued full readiness posture from the military. She canceled her outside schedule for Aug. 21 in favor of visiting the Third Field Army Command to check the readiness posture and offer encouragement. Meanwhile, military authorities raised their alert posture for additional provocations to its highest level. Kim Yang-son’s offer for dialogue was rejected by the administration as being of “questionable sincerity.”

The roots of the crisis at the armistice line right now lie in a North Korean wooden box mine that exploded in the Demilitarized Zone on Aug. 4. That led to the South’s resumption of loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in eleven years, and things escalated from there into the artillery exchange at the line. We could make the analogy to a fight between children turning into one between adults. It’s enough to show the high “crisis index” the divisions and conflicts have left the Korean peninsula facing - and how gently the situation needs to be managed.

In terms of simple feelings, there is nothing so satisfying as a stern response, demanding eye for eye and tooth for tooth. From the military’s standpoint, simply “standing there and taking it” would be tantamount to failure. But when the price of venting anger becomes too high, we have to rethink things. Even the already visible impact of the conflict risk on the financial market is enough to show that a stern response isn’t always the wisest one.

If any more provocations do happen, we certainly should respond harshly. But we need to be wary of overreacting or relying too much on military means, which are inherently prone to synergistic effects. North Korea, for its part, should recognize that it has nothing to gain from provocations and stop engaging in them. Our only real solution now is dialogue to find an answer for this vulnerable system where small fights escalate into big battles. Hopefully the two sides will start work right away on staging a meeting between governments to defuse the conflict.