Yoon’s talk of “point-of-origin” strike against N. Korea has no basis in reality

Posted on : 2022-06-19 09:29 KST Modified on : 2022-06-19 09:29 KST
Time and time again South Korea has failed to strike North Korea at the origin of attack, so why does Yoon think his administration will be any exception to the rule?
A gun at one military bunker in South Korea points toward North Korea on Aug. 21, 2015, when tensions were high between Korea over the north’s shelling. (Hankyoreh file photo)
A gun at one military bunker in South Korea points toward North Korea on Aug. 21, 2015, when tensions were high between Korea over the north’s shelling. (Hankyoreh file photo)

“If North Korea commits a provocation along the lines of the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, we will strike the point of origin,” said South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol during a June 9 lunch with 20 service members who survived North Korean strikes and family members of those who died in incidents such as the sinking of the Cheonan corvette, the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and a North Korean land mine explosion in the DMZ.

When some of the family members said during the luncheon that North Korea ought to apologize for its shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, Yoon reportedly said that if a similar incident occurs, what’s needed is not an apology, but a point-of-origin strike as laid out in the South’s military guidelines.

The idea of striking the place where an attack originated was first conceived during the administration of Lee Myung-bak after the Cheonan incident in 2010. Former presidents Lee and Park Geun-hye made grandiose statements about point-of-origin strikes whenever military tensions rose on the Korean Peninsula, but they never actually launched such a strike. Is the Yoon administration capable of doing something that neither Lee nor Park managed to pull off?

The doctrine of a point-of-origin strike involves striking (1) the point where the provocation originated, (2) the supporting force, and (3) the commanding force. It further defines the point of origin as the personnel and equipment of the unit that attacked South Korea, the supporting force as the unit supplying ammunition or fuel, and the commanding force as the unit that commanded the military operation. In the case of the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, the commanding force would be North Korea’s IV Corps Command, based in Haeju, South Hwanghae Province.

The point-of-origin strike doctrine is grounded in the strategy of “active deterrence” that was officially adopted after the sinking of the Cheonan.

“The Republic of Korea will hold to the principle of active deterrence and not tolerate any more provocations by North Korea. In the future, we will immediately exercise our right to self-defense if our sovereign territory — either water, air, or land — are invaded by force,” Lee said in a statement to the public on May 24, 2010.

Subsequently, the Lee administration expanded the scope of retaliation against a North Korean provocation from a strike on the point of origin to the supporting force and the commanding force.

After the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010, then-Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said, “In the event of another provocation, we will retaliate against not only the point where the shells originated but also the supporting force and the commanding force.”

To give the point-of-origin strike military grounding, the Lee administration altered the operational concepts and rules of engagement around the Military Demarcation Line on land and the Northern Limit Line (NLL) off the west coast and imported a large number of weapons that would be capable of carrying out such a strike.

Kim Kwan-jin, who had been appointed defense minister by Lee, was retained in that position by Park when she took office in 2013, and the doctrine of the point-of-origin strike was carried on as well. But no such strike has ever actually been carried out.

Smoke rises from Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23, 2010, after it was shelled by North Korea. (pool photo)
Smoke rises from Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23, 2010, after it was shelled by North Korea. (pool photo)
Shelling of Yeonpyeong Island: November 2010

At 2:34 pm on Nov. 23, 2010, more than 100 shells fell on a civilian town and a marine base on the island of Yeonpyeong, off the west coast of Korea. These were presumed to have been fired by North Korean coastal guns and howitzers. Two marines were killed and 16 wounded in the shelling, which also killed two civilians and injured dozens more.

In order to launch a point-of-origin strike, the counter-battery radar deployed on Yeonpyeong Island would have had to retrace the trajectory of the North Korean shells, and the marine unit of K9 self-propelled howitzers would have had to immediately counterattack.

But in the first round of shelling, the South Korean counter-battery radar failed to operate as intended, which prevented the military from determining where North Korea was shelling from. As a result, the K9 unit on Yeonpyeong lobbed shells at the North Korean base on Mu Island — the target used in standard gunnery drills — rather than the actual origin of the shells.

According to the memoirs of the then US defense secretary, Robert Gates, Lee had planned to use jet fighters in a counterattack attack after the Yeonpyeong shelling, but he was dissuaded from doing so by US President Barack Obama.

Lee Dong-kwan, who served as the presidential spokesperson, wrote the following account in his own memoirs: “When the president ordered a counterstrike using the two F-15 fighters that had been scrambled in the airspace above Yeonpyeong Island, military officials demurred, describing that as ‘a matter for deliberation with the US military.’”

A South Korean fighter sortie on a North Korean military base in the Yellow Sea could have triggered a North Korean counterattack. If the North were to respond with fire of their own, the South Korean military would have to prepare for the possibility of an expanded conflict or full-scale war, which would necessitate raising defense readiness from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 3. Under DEFCON 3, operational control of the South Korean military is transferred to the commander of the ROK/US Combined Forces Command — or in other words, to the US.

Considering that the South Korean military doesn’t possess wartime operational control, it had no choice but to hesitate over “a matter for deliberation with the US military.”

The South Korean Air Force provided an alternate explanation of these events. “A strike could not be carried out because fighters that had scrambled while carrying air-to-air munitions were given an unreasonable order to carry out a ground attack.”

Shelling south of the Northern Limit Line: August 2011

When the North Korean base at Yongmae Island, in the Yellow Sea, fired its coastal guns into the waters south of the NLL around 1 pm on Aug. 10, 2011, the counter-battery radar on Yeonpyeong Island was on standby, with the power switch turned off. If a counter-battery radar runs around the clock, it can overheat and overload, leading to a malfunction. As a result, the radar is typically run for 5-6 hours a day and turned off for the rest of the time.

Because the radar wasn’t on when the North Korean coastal guns fired, South Korea couldn’t determine the origin of the shooting, which made a point-of-origin strike impossible.

Shelling south of the Northern Limit Line: March 2014

On March 31, 2014, North Korean troops at Jangsan Cape and Kangnyong Peninsula, in Hwanghae Province, fired over 500 shells, of which more than a hundred fell in the waters south of the NLL. K9 self-propelled howitzers on Baengnyeong Island responded by firing over 300 shells into waters near the NLL, rather than at the origin of the shells.

That prompted complaints from conservative groups that the government’s failure to carry out a point-of-origin strike was turning the doctrine into a laughingstock.

Shelling of a naval patrol vessel: May 2014

On May 22, 2014, North Korean coastal guns fired two shells at a South Korean patrol ship. The shells fell 20 kilometers south of the NLL, about 150 meters away from the patrol ship.

Once again, the South Korean military was unable to identify where the shells had originated because the counter-battery radar was off. The military returned fire by lobbing five shells into the waters near a North Korean naval vessel, rather than at the origin of the artillery.

On Aug. 10, 2015, the South Korean military resumed broadcasting on loudspeakers aimed at North Korea for the first time in 11 years. The photo, taken on June 16, 2004, shows South Korean soldiers tearing down the loudspeakers in accordance with the outcome of a summit between top-ranking generals of the two sides. (Yonhap News)
On Aug. 10, 2015, the South Korean military resumed broadcasting on loudspeakers aimed at North Korea for the first time in 11 years. The photo, taken on June 16, 2004, shows South Korean soldiers tearing down the loudspeakers in accordance with the outcome of a summit between top-ranking generals of the two sides. (Yonhap News)
Shelling of hills in Yeoncheon County: August 2015

After two South Korean noncommissioned officers were seriously injured when a land mine went off within the DMZ on Aug. 4, 2015, South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts directed at North Korea after a hiatus of 11 years.

At 3:52 pm on Aug. 20, 2015, the North Korean military fired one round of a 14.5 mm antiaircraft gun and several rounds of a 76.2 mm gun at the hills around Yeoncheon County, Gyeonggi Province. In response, the South Korean military fired 29 rounds from 155 mm K55 self-propelled howitzers at a random point in North Korea, rather than the origin of the attack.

“We made return fire instead of carrying out a point-of-origin strike because the shells fell in an area that didn’t cause any damage to friendly forces,” South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense explained at the time.

The doctrine of a point-of-origin strike faced criticism even within the military during the Park administration. One example was an article titled “Problems and Alternatives to Point-of-Origin Strikes Aimed at Suppressing Local Provocations by North Korea: Problems and Countermeasures,” which was published in 2015 in Vol. 66(2) of the South Korean Air Force Academy’s in-house journal (today called the Journal of Military Science Research). The following is an excerpt from the article.

“The doctrine of a point-of-origin strike is unlikely to be effective in terms of initiative, deterrence or prevention. Another weakness of this doctrine is that it forces the South Korean military, following a provocation, to passively follow the lead of the provocateur in the developing situation and in its responsibility to identify the target. Therefore, we conclude that the doctrine of a point-of-origin strike is unlikely to be actually effective in deterring local provocations.”

Despite their bold words about point-of-origin strikes, the Lee and Park administrations hesitated or avoided carrying out such strikes in actual crisis situations. One reason was that the US, which holds wartime operational control, blocked these strikes for fear of escalation. Another reason was the inadequacy of the South Korean military’s counter-battery detection and response capabilities.

In a word, the South Korean government lacked both the authority and the ability to follow through on its bravado.

Kim Tae-hyo, the current first deputy director of the National Security Office who served in various positions connected with foreign strategy in the Blue House from 2008 to 2012, is no doubt familiar with all that. Nevertheless, Yoon is still emphasizing a point-of-origin strike as a powerful response to a North Korean provocation, just as he has been doing since his presidential campaign.

By Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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