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Defense Minister Song Young-moo listens to an explanation of documents relating to North Korea’s Hwasong-15 missile launch from Brig. Gen. Park Chul-kyun

Interest is growing about the reason for remarks made on Dec. 1 by South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo, who said that Seoul is positively considering a maritime blockade or maritime interdiction, which are two additional sanctions against North Korea that have been mentioned by the US. The response from the Blue House is that Song’s confusion of “maritime blockade” and “maritime interdiction” was a “gaffe” or a “private opinion.” But the confusion that Song has stirred up is getting even more attention because the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in may actually consider participating in such measures if the US were to request it.

In response to the controversy over Song’s remarks, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) texted two separate “notification messages” to reporters to clarify them. In one of them, the ministry said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Nov. 28 statement about including the “right to interdict maritime traffic transporting goods to and from the D.P.R.K.” was a “different concept from a naval blockade,” adding that Song’s response before the National Assembly was “in regard to cooperation on executing stronger inspections of vessels carrying prohibited items on the high seas as specified in UN Security Council Resolution 2375.”

Adopted by the UNSC in September in response to North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, Resolution 2375 allows for inspection of North Korean vessels on the high seas with the consent of the flag state if member states “have information that provides reasonable grounds to believe that the cargo of such vessels contains items the supply, sale, transfer or export of which is prohibited [by previous resolutions and Resolution 2375].” The ministry’s explanation is that with maritime interdiction provisions in place, discussions were held at the administration level in anticipation of US demands for interdiction.

A naval blockade involves closing a country’s waters by force to prevent it from engaging in trade and navigation with other countries. It is vastly different from a maritime interdiction operation, in which prohibited waters are designated and vessels in them subjected to inspection, tracking, and arrest to implement international sanction measures. The Blue House views a naval blockade not only as impracticable, but also as a dangerous approach that assumes a wartime situation.

“A naval blockade is something like what you had with Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the US military surrounded Cuba’s waters to prevent any weapons or goods from getting it,” a Blue House official said. “That presumes a state of war.”

“For us to impose a naval blockade on North Korea now, we’d have to totally surround the East and West [Yellow] Seas, which is essentially impossible,” the source added.

The naval blockade controversy heated up in the wake of a Nov. 28 by Tillerson, who said the international community “must take additional measures to enhance maritime security, including the right to interdict maritime traffic transporting goods to and from the D.P.R.K.” Analysts interpreted this as meaning the US was weighing a maritime interdiction approach along the lines of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) for weapons of mass destruction. The PSI is an international framework in which participating countries implement interdiction measures on vessels and aircraft believed to be connected to WMDs.

For now, there is no way of knowing whether Tillerson was speaking of a maritime interdiction in terms of beefing up the PSI or existing UNSC sanctions, or if he actually meant a full-scale naval blockade of the kind the US imposed during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s. But experts said there is no basis in international law for a full-scale naval blockade, nor would it be an effective approach against North Korea, which is connected by land to China and Russia.

Peace Network director Cheong Wook-sik said a naval blockade against North Korea “would be a straightforward violation of the Armistice Agreement.” Article 2-15 of the Armistice Agreement states the terms “shall apply to all opposing naval forces,” which “shall not engage in blockade of any kind of Korea.”

By Kim Ji-eun, Jung In-hwan, and Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporters

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