Volume 8 | Issue 30 | Number 4 | Article ID 3459 | Jul 26, 2010 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Korean Brinkmanship, American Provocation, and the Road to War: the manufacturing of a crisis 朝鮮の瀬戸際政策−−危機の製 造 Tim Beal Korean Brinkmanship, American that the North Korean government was Provocation, and the Road to War: ‘imploding’ and would soon be ripe for plucking, though that would have to be shared, the manufacturing of a crisis1 in some unexplained way, with China: Tim Beal An aggressive nuclear programme The exchange of artillery fire between South coupled with military attacks on and North Korea on 23 November, 2010 had South Korea, including the sinking predictable results – a great increase of tension of a South Korean vessel by a on the peninsula, a show of force by the United submarine last March, are also a States, and a torrent of uninformed media way for new leader Kim Jong-eun articles and pontificating from the security to cement his credentials. In his industry. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as Jimmy twenties, and with little Carter’s National Security Advisor armed the experience, his ascension is being Mujahideen in order to draw the Soviet Union spurred along by his powerful into Afghanistan, thereby starting that long and uncle and aunt, Jang Song-taek continuing war (and paving the way to 9/11 for and Kim Kyonghui, each with their that matter), opined that own networks of power relationships. If these actions are deliberate it is an indication that the North This means that for the first time Korean regime has reached a point in its history, North Korea now has of insanity. Its calculations and its a multipolar leadership, in which actions are difficult to fathom in power is not concentrated in the rational terms. Alternatively it is a hands of one person. A regime that sign that the regime is out of is illegitimate and divided best control. Different elements in stays in power by keeping its Pyongyang, including parts of the people on a permanent war military, are capable of taking footing, which in turn encourages actions on their own perhaps, disparate elements of the power without central co-ordination.2 structure to pull in one direction. The heightened aggression shown Robert Kaplan，with a touch of wishful thinking, by North Korea therefore may be a decided that the clash, and the earlier display sign that the regime is in deep of an experimental Light Water Reactor to US trouble. A sudden implosion could nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker3 revealed unleash the mother of all 1 8 | 30 | 4 APJ | JF humanitarian problems, with The writer was correct that the DPRK wants massive refugee flows toward the talks with the US, and the invitation to Hecker Chinese border and a semi- was part of the process of attempting to draw starving population of 23m the Obama administration into negotiations. becoming the ward of the But claiming that the artillery clash was part of international community – in effect that strategy just did not make sense..If the the ward of the US, Chinese and Evening Standard can work out that such an South Korean armies. incident would predictably push Washington away from negotiations, then Pyongyang would likely come to that obvious conclusion as well. The Daily Telegraph’s security guru Praveen This particular inherently contradictory Swami decided this was all about getting aid analysis of the North's intentions is frequently from the West: repeated in the English-language media. What is most striking in the above reports is a South Korea is one of the engines failure to attempt to analyse the context in of Asian prosperity, on which the which the event is embedded. This context has world's hopes of an early economic two aspects, the contemporary geopolitical recovery rest on peace in the environment, and the historical framework. region. By attacking Yeonpyeong Once you take an event out of its context, 4 (Yonphyong ) island, a target of no events and the actors that perform them can strategic value, North Korea's have their meaning and significance distorted, dysfunctional regime is telling the often to the point of inversion. Prey become world how much pain it could predators, victims become villains, and war inflict if it isn't bribed to behave becomes peace. itself. It hopes that its sabre rattling will force talks where the In this case, the provoker is portrayed as the West will agree to an aid package provoked and the origins of the crisis are in return for a guarantee that obscured. Pyongyang will not produce further 5 The fire fight at Yeonpyeong Island seems to nuclear weapons. have been a manufactured crisis. It appears that, for the first time, South Korea, alone or in In London, the Evening Standard editorialised tandem with the United States, carried out a that military exercise part of which took place in territory claimed by the North.7 There have been innumerable ROK and US-ROK military North Korea wants a resumption of exercises over the decades, some of them very six-way talks between the regional large, involving up to 200,000 troops.8 These powers, including the US and have taken place either in international waters, China, about its nuclear or in South Korean territory. The North has programme and its leaders may charged the South, and the US, numerous believe that a demonstration of times with infringing its territory by plane or by strength, nuclear and military, can ship, and the area between the West Sea achieve it. The moves have, boundaries is contested, as discussed below. however, played predictably badly However, the live fire exercise of the marine’s with the US.6 howitzers on Yeonpyeong Island on 23 2 8 | 30 | 4 APJ | JF November, coinciding with the massive South two, as it would appear did the ROK military: Korean Hoguk exercise, seems to have been unprecedented. It appears that the North considered it a step too far and warned the The incident came during a routine South a number of times that they would drill by Southern forces in waters 12 retaliate. The warnings were ignored and the near the island, the military said. North shelled the marine base. The howitzers were introduced to Yeonpyeong The south Korean puppet group and at least one of the other islands in the perpetrated such reckless military disputed area in 2000, after the naval clash in provocation as firing dozens of 1999 which came to be called the ‘First Battle shells inside the territorial of Yeonpyeong’. There was a ‘test-firing’ but waters of the DPRK side around whether this involved live shells is unclear. It Yonphyong [Yeonpyeong] Islet in also seems to have taken place in isolation, not the West Sea of Korea from 13:00 in combination with major war exercises: on Nov. 23 despite the repeated warnings of theDPRK while Recently alone, they introduced a staging the war maneuvers for new type of 155 mm self-propelled a war of aggression on it howitzers and a large quantity of codenamed Hoguk, escalating shells into Paekryong the tension on the Korean [Baengnyeong] and Yongphyong 9 Peninsula. [Yeonpyeong] islets. On February 23 and 24 including mid-February, The Yeonpyeong incident, therefore, had two they staged a "test-firing" under components. One was the actual live fire into the simulated conditions of a battle contested waters. This, as discussed below, was to "destroy" warships of the 13 a statement of a territorial claim which the north. North declared that it could not tolerate. In 2004 the Navy Command of the Korean The other was the fact that this shelling took People’s Army (KPA) complained about firing place during the staging of a major military exercises in the area, and about the artillery exercise (Hoguk). This included large-scale installed on the island: amphibious landings: ‘Marines will participate in regiment-level landing drills’.10 The South brushed off complaints about Hoguk saying it In another development, the south was an ‘annual routine drill which has been Korean army has staged madcap conducted by the South Korean military since firing exercises in waters west of 1996’, as if that made it any less Taechong [Daecheong] and 11 threatening. The South also claimed that the Paekryong [Baengnyeong] Islands marine live fire exercise at Yeonpyeong was not and in waters off the Yonphyong part of Hoguk. That was formally correct but Islets with a flotilla of speed boats really a matter of semantics. The marines firing and guard craft involved. howitzers from Yeonpyeong were under the same command as those practising beach The purpose of the firing exercises assaults. The Guardian’s Tania Branigan staged by the south Korean army automatically made the connection between the in the West Sea is to be proficient 3 8 | 30 | 4 APJ | JF in firing at warships of the north November. If they had not, then this exercise with various types naval artillery on its own would be provocative. If they had, pieces and 155 mm self-propelled then it would appear that it was the howitzers deployed on the combination of this local exercise and the 14 Yonphyong Islets. large-scale Hoguk which triggered the DPRK warning. In addition it may be that the scale of this firing was unprecedented, though they It is not clear from the KPA statement what role would have found that difficult to know in the howitzers played. They could scarcely have advance. According the Nam Kim, quoting a been using live shells against their own boats, so it may have been some sort of simulation.