North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has once again emphasized war and confrontation.
On the 10th, the Korean Central News Agency reported that Chairman Kim, while locally guiding important military factories on the 8th and 9th, identified “South Korea as our main enemies,” and said, “We will not unilaterally decide a major incident by overwhelming force on the Korean Peninsula, but we have no intention of avoiding war either.”
In particular, Chairman Kim threatened, “If South Korea dares to contemplate the use of force against our country or threatens our sovereignty and safety if such an opportunity comes, we will destroy South Korea by mobilizing all means and capabilities at our disposal without hesitation.”
Earlier, at the end of last year’s Workers’ Party plenary meeting, he ordered to “continue to drive preparations for a major incident to conquer the entire territory of South Korea,” and the military threat has increased further.
Chairman Kim said, “What we should value the most in our relationship with hostile countries that are intensifying their confrontational stance and increasing their military power is first and foremost strengthening our self-defensive national defense power and nuclear war deterrence,” the agency reported.
Chairman Kim also highly evaluated that major military factories are actively accepting new technologies in the production of important weapon systems, and expressed satisfaction with the excellent execution of the plan to equip new armaments to the first-line combined forces and important missile units.
Recently, North Korea has been continuously escalating the frequency and level of provocations. Among experts, there is a forecast that North Korea’s provocation will continue until a ‘specific period’.
The New Year started with provocation… Military authorities officially declare the abolition of the maritime buffer zone
It is no exaggeration to say that this New Year started with North Korea’s provocation(?).
On the first day of the New Year, it was revealed that Chairman Kim had convened a meeting of North Korean military commanders on December 31 last year and instructed them to “normalize the use of force at any time.” The Korean Central News Agency reported that Chairman Kim met with the commanders of the People’s Army and key commanders at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Party on the day, highly evaluated and encouraged the struggle of the 2023 military and emphasized, “Our military must destroy any form of provocation by the enemy without mercy, and if they choose a military confrontation against the Republic and cause a disturbance, they must strike a devastating blow without a moment’s hesitation by mobilizing all means and potential to thoroughly annihilate them.”
On the 2nd, Kim Yo-jong, Deputy Director of the North Korean Workers’ Party, issued a New Year’s message to the President of South Korea, saying, “We greatly welcome the fact that President Yoon Suk-yeol will continue to make distinctive contributions to the dramatic rise of our country’s military strength in the New Year,” and criticized, “He paradoxically says he will complete the Korea-U.S. extended deterrence system in the first half of this year, giving us more justification and legitimacy to further drive the acquisition of more overwhelming nuclear power.”
Deputy Director Kim also criticized President Yoon by comparing him with former President Moon Jae-in. She rated former President Moon as a ‘unique and cunning person’, saying, “It is a great loss that we could not do what we had to do to strengthen our power because we were caught up in Moon Jae-in’s will for peace, and wasted a lot of time.” On the other hand, she sarcastically said about President Yoon, “He is a special contributor who has solidly contributed to us increasing our self-defensive and justified military power,” and “He is allowing us to recover more than ten or twenty times what we lost during Moon Jae-in’s time.”
On the 4th, she threatened that this year would be the year with the highest risk of collision, criticizing South Korea’s military training in harsh terms. The commentary titled ‘Confrontational fanatics will only experience the most painful moments’ was also published in the Rodong Sinmun, which North Korean residents see. It mentioned the recent training situation of the national army, such as the winter training of the South Korean special forces, the army’s artillery firing and maneuver training, and the navy’s artillery firing and sea maneuver training, and claimed, “The heads of the puppet military are competitively visiting the front-line units and pouring out warlike gibberish such as ‘don’t look back and act boldly’, intensifying the atmosphere of war,” and poured out foul language such as “the more the ugly mad dog pack rages, the only thing they do is bring forward the time to the slaughterhouse.”
On the 5th, a photo of Chairman Kim inspecting the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch pad factory with his daughter Kim Ju-ae was released, and from this day to the 7th, hundreds of shells were fired into the northern limit line (NLL) of the West Sea for three consecutive days.
In response, our military declared the abolition of the maritime buffer zone, saying that North Korea has violated the 9·19 military agreement over 3,600 times. The military authorities have also decided to resume regular naval firing and training in the sea and land buffer zones, which had been suspended due to the 9·19 agreement, by naval vessels and ground forces.
Firing missiles ahead of the presidential election… North Korea’s provocation continues every election
The reason North Korea is heating its recent provocations is analyzed to be due to its relationship with the current government.
If the Moon Jae-in government emphasized dialogue and cooperation about North-South conflicts, the Yoon Suk-yeol government can be said to have maintained a hardline stance that added sanctions and pressure on provocative acts. In the first cabinet meeting of the year, President Yoon ordered, “We need to firmly defend security against North Korea’s provocations that started from the beginning of the year, and expanding job diplomacy is also important,” emphasizing this stance once again.
The timing of North Korea’s continued provocation is also noteworthy. It’s because our general election is about three months away. Some argue that the goal is to cause confusion and conflict ahead of the general election. In fact, it is not difficult to find cases where North Korea has provoked ahead of our major elections in the past.
On the morning of April 14, 2020, North Korea fired several short-range cruise missiles presumed to be into the East Sea. This day was just one day before the birthday of Kim Il Sung, the biggest holiday in North Korea, and our 21st general election. Around ten days before the 20th general election in 2016, North Korea fired a new type of missile into the East Sea and then showcased its missile capabilities by succeeding in a ground ejection test of an ICBM engine.
In March 2022, an emergency permanent committee of the NSC was convened as North Korea fired a short-range missile into the East Sea just four days before the presidential election. During the 2017 presidential election, a ballistic missile was launched early in the morning ten days before the vote, but it exploded in the air and failed.
Even a week before the presidential election in 2012, it fired an ICBM-class space launch vehicle, leading to a unanimous decision by the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on North Korea.
It’s not the first time North Korea has provoked militarily ahead of our election. Seong-Woo Nam, the director of the Unification Fusion Research Institute at Korea University, pointed out in YTN News Live, “From North Korea’s perspective, the key goal is to create a sense of insecurity among South Koreans by forming a binary framework of war or peace,” and “Continuing to escalate tensions ahead of the general election to make the people choose between war or peace, thereby making it difficult for the government’s ruling party, is a strategy they are using.”
The diplomatic situation also affects… “The level will rise as the general election approaches”
The deepening diplomatic situation also influenced North Korea’s anti-South stance. It is said that North Korea is stepping up more daring provocations as the confrontation between the U.S., Japan, North Korea, China, and Russia intensifies.
The Asan Policy Institute predicted in its ‘2024 Asan International Political Forecast’ released last December that major countries would accelerate their movement to ally with countries with the same position, while showing a stance of not intensifying conflicts outwardly, based on the U.S.-China summit held in San Francisco in November last year.
At this time, North Korea will try to gain the maximum benefit from the competition between the U.S. and China, and there is a forecast that it can resume nuclear tests and traditional provocations against the South using the difference in the U.S. and China’s positions on sanctions against North Korea.
As Chairman Kim recently defined South Korea as a ‘hostile country’ and declared a change in the South-North line, such worries are deepening.
Kim Jin-ha, a senior research fellow at the North Korea Research Lab, also predicted at a seminar on ‘2024 Korean Peninsula Political Forecast’ held by the Unification Research Institute in December last year, “The election calendar of major related countries scheduled for 2024 is further promoting North Korea’s motivation to carry out military provocations,” and “It may carry out large-scale traditional provocations or simultaneous large-scale missile baptisms or anonymous terror, asymmetric attacks, etc. that can dramatically disseminate visible ripple effects to influence the election.”
Some also argue against the possibility of North Korea provoking to interfering in the election. Since North Korea’s provocation usually has the effect of consolidating the conservative camp, the Democratic Party criticized ‘North Wind’ every time the government ruling party raised the North Korea issue ahead of the election. Similar criticism arose when the National Intelligence Service announced an analysis last year that “North Korea’s provocation is expected in the early part of the year, considering North Korea’s past behavior and the level of recent threats against the South.” It was pointed out that the government’s ruling party is creating a fearful atmosphere to highlight the security issue ahead of the April general election.
However, as there are concerns that North Korea will escalate military provocations and threats until the U.S. presidential election in November, the argument that we need to strengthen our self-reliance and response capabilities is gaining strength.
By. Yu Jin Jang
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