hankyoreh

By Choi Hyun-june and Kim Oi-hyun, staff reporters

North Korea’s artillery firing drills in the West (Yellow) Sea on Mar. 31 were very likely a response to the recent joint military exercises by South Korea and the US. The fact that they came on the same day as the largest joint landing exercise in 21 years, and were announced to the press, indicates that Pyongyang may indeed be ratcheting up its response. At the same time, the decision to alert South Korea to its plans appeared to be an attempt to keep tensions at a predictable level while maximizing the impression from the show of force.

The drills came on the same day that the Ssang Yong (Double Dragon) exercise, part of ongoing joint military exercises by South Korea and the US, was being opened up to the press. Staged off Pohang in North Gyeongsang Province, it was the largest landing exercise since 1993, with around 12,500 South Korean and US marines taking part. The scenario, which involves the allied forces moving back north after being pushed back by the North Korean military, reportedly included an occupation of Pyongyang.

Having been on the wrong side of the Incheon landing during the Korean War, North Korea is especially sensitive to landing exercises that involve the US. Also factoring into the strong objections it has raised to the exercises each year is its awareness of the weakness of its conventional weaponry compared to the allied forces.

“In the broader sense, North Korea’s artillery drills were a response to the South Korea-US military exercises in general,” said Peace Network director Cheong Wook-sik. “In a narrower sense, they were responding to the South Korea-US landing exercise.”

During last month’s agreement on the staging of reunions of divided family members, North Korea appeared to back down once on the issue of the exercises. Some analysts said that ruled out the possibility of another concession this time.

“North Korea already made one concession back in the February agreement with South Korea on the family reunions, when it agreed to hold the reunions even though they overlapped with the exercises,” said Kim Dong-yeop, a research professor at the Kyungnam University Institute of Far Eastern Studies.

“They may have felt that if they didn’t do anything this time, it would be less a ‘concession’ than an implicit approval of the exercises, and they might lose ground in later talks with Seoul,” Kim explained.

The two sides have also recently been facing off over a North Korean fishing boat that drifted over the Northern Limit Line (NLL). In the process of South Korea capturing the boat and sending it back, North Korea accused the South of “abusive behavior,” prompting the South to describe the North as “the one that caused the problem in the first place.” A piece the same day in the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Workers’ Party of (North) Korea, with the title “They will pay the price for their unpardonable thuggishness,” featured a chorus of agitated representatives of North Korean society denouncing the South.

For these reasons, North Korea had multiple goals in mind when it staged the artillery drills and announced them beforehand. First, by alerting South Korea to the drills, it sought to keep tensions at a predictable level. Second, it also appears to have sought a propaganda effect by sending as loud as message a possible to the South Korean public about the reasons for the drills and the nature of the South Korea-US exercises.

The military tensions look likely to continue at least through the end of the Foal Eagle exercises on Apr. 18. Judging from the rigid stance coming from Seoul, even the unification policy presented in President Park Geun-hye’s recent Dresden statement is unlikely to be pushed for the time being. The administration wants to avoid giving the impression of capitulating to North Korea’s military actions, while the Blue House is insisting that it has “no plans at the moment for proposing a senior-level meeting” with the North.

At their root, the recent exchanges have mainly been about both sides facing off ahead of the turnaround that many are predicting for late April, when the exercises end. Once the schedule for North Korea’s internal political events and South Korea’s joint military exercises with the US are over, US President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit South Korea in late April, and the two sides will be forced to find some way of thawing the chill. Still, the rising influence of hardliners on both sides as tensions mount could result in a situation that is beyond fixing.

Another major variable lurking on the other side of the artillery drills is a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement on Mar. 30 warning of a “new kind of nuclear test.” The statement announced plans to “stage various types of training using a more diversified nuclear deterrent at a time when the US is mobilizing various nuclear strike means and holding constant practice for a nuclear war, with an eye on invading Pyongyang.” The warning pointed not only to medium and long-range missile exercises, but also to an eventual fourth nuclear test.

Because a nuclear test would be seen more as a matter of North Korea’s relations with the US than its ties with South Korea, it may end up a factor in future developments.

“The really serious problem is not these artillery drills, which were announced, but North Korean medium and long-range missile exercises that happen without warning,” said Kim Chang-soo, director of research for the Korea National Strategy Institute.

“We’ll just have to watch and see how events unfold,” Kim added.

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