By The Diplomat
The Diplomat speaks with Korea analyst L. Gordon Flake about this week’s artillery exchange between North and South Korea.
The shelling by North Korea yesterday of the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong is being described by many as one of the most serious incidents since the end of the Korean War. How much of an escalation would you say yesterday’s exchange of fire marks?
It’s a very serious escalation in what has been a series of provocations. The reason why people are more concerned about this than previous incidents such as ship-to-ship firing or firing out into the open ocean is because artillery shells were directed at an actual military base, resulting in South Korean service members being killed and, perhaps most troubling, civilians being killed. The images that one sees now of burning houses and an island with plumes of smoke rising skyward are alarming to say the least.
In a broader context, of course North Korea disputes the Northern Limit Line, and this dispute could be viewed as an inter-Korean clash. But this is a line that has been in existence for 60 years and South Korea has undertaken military exercises on a very regular basis. So there was clearly a decision on the part of North of Korea to escalate the situation in an extremely troubling way.
I’d also point out a very important contrast between this and what happened with the Cheonan in March. When the Cheonan was sunk, it was done at night and in stormy weather—there was a lot of ambiguity about what had happened and who had done it. As a result, I think the government in South Korea showed a remarkable degree of forbearance in conducting a methodical and international investigation before moving forward, and even then moving forward in a very careful way.
This time, I don’t think President Lee Myung-bak and his administration have that same luxury in that there’s no question about where the artillery shells came from, there’s no question in terms of the impact on the lives of those living on the island and the fact that you now have refugees from the immediate damage. And so there’s going to be tremendous demand for a rather immediate physical response. The challenge, of course, is that they are faced with a North Korea that has threatened an immediate escalation, and so it’s difficult to know how to respond to the damage done to your country and the lives lost and yet not be precipitous.
Is there any indication at all as to why North Korea chose this moment to escalate? Could the succession issue have played any part?
It’s always a dangerous thing to try and put yourself in North Korea’s shoes to try and explain their behaviour. I’m always aware of the fact that there’s an ongoing dialogue on an inter-Korean basis that we’re not always privy to. So on one level, this is an inter-Korean issue on a long-standing dispute and the North Koreans will, and already have, argued that this was an exercise that was firing into North Korean waters.
Photo Credit: Kok Leng Yeo
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meckjoo
I found the diplomat today – really enjoy the ezine, but am a bit shocked by some of the comments I see on here.
I enjoy academic discourse, but propaganda from either side should be kept to a minimum folks!
Huang
Each day gone by,the revelations of the respective motives or wishes of the US,S.Korea,and Japan are becoming clearer. South Korea’s on again off again naval drills with the US were to seek international attentions and at the same time to divert attentions from critical domestic issues. Japan’s motive is to demonstrate to both China and Russia it has a big boss standing behind to help it on the island disputes. The US’s wish is to take advantage of the tense and disruptive regional tensions to re-claim its perceived-deteriating influences(which the US no longer affort to keep and maintain with its current economic conditions). S.Korea and Japan were and are spending huge sums of money on these exercises in a uni-directional fashion which do not improve or benifit their respective domestic economies. All dreams and fantasies will end with sobering reality shocks and the shocks in this case will be the continued peace and stability of the region successfully defended and maintained by China’s unswayable efforts and determinations. The current S.Korean leader and his Japanese counterpart have under-estimated China’s ability to keep the peace and promote stability of the North East Asia region.
N Koreans are only defending their sovereignty
All these western pundits seem all too self-immersed with their own western-centric interpretation of the Korean conundrum that alas, their narratives are way way off the actual mark. It is time that, perhaps for world peace sake, some enlightened individual or group of highly learned people with an open mind, must righteously rise to the occasion to present an accurately true picture from the East Asian perspective in general & Chinese/N Korean in particular on this subject. For this purpose, I would like to re-quote a letter posted on Asia Times Online by Mr hardy Campell as follows:
The WonderPundits are all atwitter about how China may not be in “control” of North Korea. Frothing-mouth Fox News foreign policy “experts” (who would have trouble finding their own derrieres with both hands and a map) are wondering just how much China can “manage” North Korea’s warlike actions. That, of course, comes from a nation accustomed to having its own foreign stooge-puppet governments kowtowing to our every corporo-imperialist whim.
The idea that our perceived adversaries would be unable to manipulate at will their own “allies” is incomprehensible to a nation accustomed to routinely infringing and abusing the sovereignty of other countries.
What Americans typically ignore is history and its continuing effect on Sino-Korean relations. Whereas Americans call the war fought between 1950 and 1953 on the Korean Peninsula the Korean War, for what seems obvious reasons, the same conflict is still formally identified in China as “The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea”. That characterization signified a twofold mission; assisting a like-minded ideological neighbor and demonstrating to the Anglo-Saxon imperialist powers that a New World day had dawned, that this New China wasn’t going to be bullied or intimidated like its corrupt predecessors.
The tremendous sacrifices that the nascent People’s Republic made in order to expel that old imperialist MacArthur from North Korea accomplished numerous objectives that the Chinese recall with fondness to this day.
Firstly, the act of fraternal assistance helped wipe clean the memories of the old Middle Kingdom domination of its smaller neighbors and showed the world that the new China would respect the newfound national independence of its former satrapies.
Secondly, it provided a unifying bogeyman that the country, devastated by decades of foreign and civil war, needed to rally against (surely something American neo-cons can appreciate.) Thirdly, it offered Mao Zedong an opportunity to show Stalin and the world communist movement that devotion to Marxist-Leninist world revolution could reside just as easily in China as with its Slavic benefactor, an action that would ultimately splinter the relationship between the two.
Fourth, the establishment of North Korea would act as a buffer between China and a Japan firmly in the grip of the new threat to world socialism, the US. Finally, by going toe-to-toe with this new white enemy, so recently the victor in a global two-front war and possessing atomic weapons as well as the greatest technological arsenal in history, China showed the colored peoples oppressed by existing European colonizers that the non-white races could successfully resist the once-supreme Caucasian.
But more importantly, as a corollary to this success, a confident “Can Do” mentality was created that made all things seem possible to Chairman Mao and his revolutionary followers. This national myth spurred the overconfidence of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, followed by a taut confrontation with its former Korean War ally, the USSR. But a subsequent reconciliation with the US opened the door to the creation of a vibrant and soon-to-be-supreme 21st century society that has the economic cojones of its old Korean War foe and Cold War ally firmly in its hands. China’s patience with its rambunctious, tottering comrades across the Yalu also serves to keep an overextended America anxious about The Next Inevitable War.
So China’s deference to North Korea’s whimsies is historic, nostalgic and pragmatic, all at the same time. However, they might have suggested to Pyongyang that they use the excuse of shelling WMD sites as a palliative to the imperialists that even they can surely understand.
Hardy Campbell
United States (Nov 29, ‘10)
ASEAN
It is amusing to read your version of history as if taken directly from a North Korean/Chinese propaganda page. It is hardly called ‘defensive’ when North Korea was the first to open up the Korean War and invaded South Korea with the backing of the Soviets and Chinese Communists. Without a United Nation effort, led by U.S. forces, South Korea would have been lost… Half a century later, North Korea still wants to invade again. Without a committed U.S. presence, it would have happened long ago.