Kim Jong-un's "Tora! Tora! Tora!" moment?*

The Chosun Ilbo would have us believe that Kim Jong-un, the young general who supposedly is poised to take over for Dad when he kicks the bucket, is the one who ordered the attacks on South Korea over the past year:

A North Korean document supports the conclusion that North Korea attacked the Navy corvette Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Island last year to whip up domestic support for the succession of leader Kim Jong-il’s son, Jong-un.

The document, which the Chosun Ilbo obtained from a source in China on Tuesday, claims that Kim junior was deeply involved in both attacks. Titled “Lecture Materials,” the document was apparently drawn up for military propaganda officers early this year.

According to its wording, Kim Jong-un told military leaders that the inter-Korean situation “will become very tense in February and March.” He made the comments around the end of January last year, two months before the attack on the Cheonan. The document claims South Korea and the U.S. “concocted a plot about the sinking of the Cheonan, but it failed.”

The source, who claims to do frequent business with trading companies under the North Korean Workers Party, said that propaganda officers have been indoctrinating North Korean soldiers to show absolute loyalty to Kim Jong-un based on those materials. “They even have to take a test after their indoctrination classes,” he said.

As I noted at ROK Drop, I'm a bit curious about the date. The “2010년 1월” stands out as odd when one sees that in North Korean news sources the “Western” date is typically hand in hand with the 주체 date (주체 99년 or some such). I wonder if anybody who has familiarity with actual North Korean documents could provide insight about whether the above is a reason to find this document suspect.

Of course, dear reader, you may already be aware that I am deeply suspicious of the mountain of evidence, eagerly printed up in the Chosun Ilbo and repeated uncritically in the Japanese and Western press, that comes from what could be described as an Evidence Mill™ run by people who make money and/or enhance their stature from supplying this stuff. While I think most defectors/refugees are genuine people who can give us valuable insight into current attitudes in the regime, it seems to me that a handful of folks might be looking for personal gain à la that Iraqi guy who supplied all of the information used back in 2002 and 2003 to justify going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Of course, from Kim Jong-il not being at death's door, to Ling and Lee having willingly entered North Korea, to Kim Jong-un's coronation not being imminent, my views on North Korea have others viewing me at first as crankily contrarian and out of touch and then later as eerily prescient.

But that doesn't mean I could be wrong on this. Always my caveat.

* And yeah, I know that "Tora! Tora! Tora!" is Japanese. My theory is that a Korean pilot in the Imperial Japanese Navy on that fateful day in December 1941 had a bit of prescience himself and had gotten on the radio to warn everybody to turn around. 

Trouble abrewin'?

Considering what I wrote in this post about the growing possibility of North Korea launching an attack, this bit of speculative news from the Chosun Ilbo does not bode well for peace on the peninsula in the coming weeks:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il secretly visited a building where agencies engaged in military operations against South Korea are clustered and the General Reconnaissance Bureau last month, a source said Sunday.

The so-called Building No. 3 houses the United Front Department and the Workers Party's international affairs department. The General Reconnaissance Bureau, an agency in charge of armed provocations against the South, is believed to have supervised the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan last year.

"Kim Jong-il inspected the areas and encouraged agents" on his visits, a North Korean source said. "It seems highly likely that the regime will provoke again in case its charm offensive falls on deaf ears."

Seriously, I hope I'm wrong about a springtime offensive, but there really are some ominous signs.

Is North Korea's ominous warning serious this time?

There was a time when Pyongyang's threats to rain fire down on the South Korean capital, their claims that such-and-such by Seoul or Washington was an "act of war" that would be responded to in kind, or their other various forms of menacing behavior was just so much bluster: it was a de rigueur for North Korea's mouthpieces to regularly threaten the neighbors to the south.

That was, of course, before the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan last spring, killing dozens of ROK seamen, and then the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do Island last fall, which killed ROK military personnel and two civilians.

Now that the envelope has been pushed, one wonders if we should take threats like these a little more seriously:

North Korea warned yesterday that it will launch full-fledged attacks against people sending propaganda leaflets over the border, and it won’t give any advance warnings.

The threat to anti-North Korea campaigns by South Korean activists came amid rising hopes that the two Koreas will join China, Russia, the United States and Japan to revive the stalled six-party talks on the North’s nuclear weapons program.

“Under this situation, our army officially informs the south side that it will expand the scope of direct fire, already declared, into full-scale destruction fire at any area, any time,” said the North Korean military in a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

In March, the North said through Korean Central Television that it was losing patience with groups sending propaganda leaflets via balloons across the border and would open fire on certain South Korean sites used to launch the balloons.

Despite the warnings, some civic groups continued to send the balloons. On April 15, the birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, groups dispatched around 200,000 leaflets containing pro-democracy, anti-Kim family messages.

They are talking about anti-Kim Jong-il leaflets containing news of the Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East, along with dollar bills and DVDs, being floated over North Korean territory as a way to erode confidence in the regime. Pyongyang has made no secret that it is angry about the leaflets, which it considers psyops and therefore an "act of war." In fact, they have made threats in February and in March that they may attack these positions.

While I'm not saying that these leaflets shouldn't be sent out, I do think it is prudent to expect that North Korean might make good on its threat, with at least one or two shells lobbed in that direction (too many might invite a serious response from the Lee Myungbak administration, which is reeling from anger over its milquetoast response to the shelling last fall).

North Korea's have comfortably lowered the threshold at which they would act, and that alone should have us on guard. Moreover, the way North Korea is talking about this may indicate they are making a case (for their own people at least) why such an attack is not only justified but necessary. Here's North Korea's Central News Agency (KCNA) report on the same news above (朝鮮語):

The south side is persisting in the dirty action of scattering anti-DPRK leaflets, despite the north side's repeated warnings, while committing such reckless military provocations as firing bullets at it.

It scattered more than 200,000 leaflets at Rimjin Pavilion in Phaju City on April 15 and 1.2 million around Samgot-ri, Jung-myon, Ryonchon County in the central sector of the front on April 14, stealthily acting like a cat burglar for fear of merciless counteraction by the army of the DPRK.

It also perpetrated unpardonable military provocation such as firing 12.7 mm large-calibre machine gun in direction of the north side at random from 516 gendarme post at 19:38 on April 15.

Those facts prove that the present puppet authorities are getting evermore pronounced in the bellicose stand to escalate the north-south confrontation and finally bring the situation to the brink of war, the head of the north side pointed out.

Then he solemnly notified the following principled stand of the Korean People's Army:
As already and evidently clarified, leaflet scattering is a form of psychological warfare and it is just a clear-cut war provocation to a warring side.

Accordingly, it is our invariable stand that direct fire at the area where leaflets are let fly will be a legitimate punishment by the army of the DPRK, a warring side, to the breakers of the Armistice Agreement.

Moreover, the south side resorts to scattering of leaflets, moving places in a cunning way for fear of counteraction by our army. Under this situation, our army officially informs the south side that it will expand the scope of direct fire, already declared, into full-scale destruction fire at any area anytime.

Indeed, the KCNA story is a far more ominous read, for it combines the following elements: (a) a declaration that they consider leaflet spreading psyops and therefore an act of war, (b) an official warning of retaliation for said act of war, and most gravely, (c) a concomitant shooting incident that bolsters the case. That last one, left out of the English-language reports in South Korea and the Western media, may seal the deal by providing pretext.

The Pyongyang regime is starting to feel under siege, with much of the population outside the capital feeling very disgruntled following the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009 and the deprivation that followed. Simply put, the leaflet launchings make it harder for them to keep the people in line (which is one of the reasons for doing the leaflet launching in the first place!), perhaps to the point that the regime is under threat itself, and they have to do something.

It's no wonder, then, that some residents of P'aju (written as Phaju in the KCNA article) in the northern part of South Korea, are annoyed that the activists are launching the balloons from their neighborhoods. North Korea has recently demonstrated that they have no qualms about shelling civilian targets, and they could be next.

Now, this is not to say that the leaflets should not be sent. I'm sounding the alarm for preparation more than anything else. Perhaps also the leaflet-launching groups could pick some more isolated areas and perhaps even a maritime location (though I have no idea how feasible this is).

I'm just saying: This could get very, very ugly in the near term.

Plan... ahead...

UPDATE:
This doesn't bode well. Apparently Kim Jong-il has paid a recent visit to the government agency that is responsible for the attack on the Ch'ŏnan.

A speech to unify them all

ROK President Lee Myungbak gave a rousing speech to the nation on Monday. It outlined past aggressions by North Korea that went unanswered, discussed why the Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] attack on civilians marked a dangerous turn, and vowed to fully retaliate if the North repeats this kind of provocation.

He made clear that South Korea will steadfastly defend the so-called Sŏhae-odo [서해5도], the "five islands of the West Sea," which skirt North Korea's southwestern coast. While acknowledging that many South Koreans had doubts about the facts surrounding the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan in March, he hoped the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do would remove doubts about North Korean aggression in the Yellow Sea.

He made clear he wanted to unify the country in their resolve to defend the Republic of Korea.

Courtesy of Yonhap, here is a sizable excerpt from the address:

Fellow citizens,
North Korea's provocation this time was entirely different and unprecedented in nature. Since the end of the Korean War, the North has perpetrated numerous provocations, but it has never launched a direct attack onto our territory before. Making matters worse, it indiscriminately shelled the island where some 1,400 residents are peacefully living.

A military attack against civilians is strictly prohibited even in time of war; it is a crime against humanity.

Only a few meters away from where shells landed, there is a school where classes were going on. I am outraged by the ruthlessness of the North Korean regime, which is even indifferent to the lives of little children.

Countries around the world are joining us in denouncing North Korea.

We have thus far tolerated provocations by the North time and again. On January 21, 1968, North Korean commandos infiltrated into Seoul with the intent of killing the President. A bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma, set off by North Korean agents, killed many high-ranking South Korean Government officials who were accompanying the President. The North has already tried and failed twice to kill the South Korean head of state. North Korean agents blew up a civilian airplane in 1987, taking the lives of 115 passengers.

South Korea nonetheless endured these continual provocations because we entertained a slight hope that the North would change course someday and an unwavering commitment to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Over the past 20 years, therefore, South Korea has striven to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and collaboration while at the same time providing unstinted humanitarian assistance.

North Korea, on the other hand, responded with a series of provocative acts, including the development of a nuclear program, the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan by an explosion and the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo.

At long last, we came to a realization that it no longer makes sense for us to anticipate that the North would abandon its nuclear program or its policy of brinkmanship on its own. The South Korean people now unequivocally understand that prolonged endurance and tolerance will spawn nothing but more serious provocations.

Those who have so far supported the North Korean regime might now see its true colors.

It was an excellent speech that said everything it needed to say. But, as The Marmot notes, he said many of these things this past spring in regards to North Korea's sinking of the Ch'ŏnan. Worse, he might even be inviting North Korea to test this resolve. And then, if South Korea again responds by doing nothing, this could be a speech that will live in infamy.

KCNA releases Korean People's Army report on Yŏnpyŏng-do attack: "There is in the West Sea of Korea only the maritime military demarcation line set by the DPRK"

I think North Korea may have declared a reopening of inter-Korean hostilities but we are not yet grasping that. Note the very last line of the following report.

North Korea has decided that it is going to stop talking about the waters it claims south of the NLL (which it has never controlled except for a brief period when it occupied South Korea) and start turning it into a hot war, perhaps to bolster support for the military at a time when faith in the government is eroding (note that this has nothing to do with The Kim Who Wasn't There).

They are declaring that any activity in the area between the blue line (the Northern Limit Line followed since 1953) and the red line (the Maritime Military Demarcation Line they announced in 1999) in the map at right is an intrusion into DPRK territory that will be met with "merciless military counter-actions against it."All of that, I wish to point out, is ROK-controlled and filled with South Korean fishermen.

The Ch'ŏnan and Yŏnpyŏng-do, I fear, were only rounds 1 and 2.

The KCNA, for your ideological edification:

KPA Supreme Command Issues Communique

Pyongyang, November 23 (KCNA) -- The Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army Tuesday released the following communique:

The south Korean puppet group perpetrated such reckless military provocation as firing dozens of shells inside the territorial waters of the DPRK side around Yonphyong Islet in the West Sea of Korea from 13:00 on Nov. 23 despite the repeated warnings of the DPRK while staging the war maneuvers for a war of aggression on it codenamed Hoguk, escalating the tension on the Korean Peninsula.

The above-said military provocation is part of its sinister attempt to defend the brigandish "northern limit line," while frequently infiltrating its naval warships into the territorial waters of the DPRK side under the pretext of "intercepting fishing boats."

The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK standing guard over the inviolable territorial waters of the country took such decisive military step as reacting to the military provocation of the puppet group with a prompt powerful physical strike.

It is a traditional mode of counter-action of the army of the DPRK to counter the firing of the provocateurs with merciless strikes.

Should the south Korean puppet group dare intrude into the territorial waters of the DPRK even 0.001 mm, the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK will unhesitatingly continue taking merciless military counter-actions against it.

It should bear in mind the solemn warning of the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK that they do not make an empty talk.

There is in the West Sea of Korea only the maritime military demarcation line set by the DPRK.

Great. After years and years of buffoonish bluster, now they stop making an empty talk.

What needs to be done about North Korea's repeated attacks

The Marmot has an updated post on President Lee Myungbak's anger and his options. An excerpt:

The failure to respond in a meaningful way to things that deserve a response seems to just embolden Pyongyang, however, and one day, they’re going to miscalculate and do something that can’t be ignored. If the North thinks it can get away with an artillery barrage on a civilian community, I shudder to image what they’ll try next.

Kushibo concurs.

Kushibo was a supporter of Kim Daejung's (but not Roh Moohyun's) Sunshine Policy (and I do believe we will see its positive externalities down the road, especially in the form of a political, social, and economic integration of North Koreans that is far less difficult than it otherwise would have been), but I've always believed the carrot cannot be placed too far from the stick.

If yesterday's Yŏnpyŏng-do attack had not occurred after what was ultimately a milquetoast response to the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan and a promise to really really get mad if something like that happened again, I could understand an argument for a wait-and-see approach.

But North Korea has driven us into a corner: They killed four dozen ROK military personnel and we did nothing, and now they've upped the ante with an attack on sovereign and undisputed ROK territory in which not only were ROK military personnel killed again, but civilians were also attacked. This cannot stand. If it goes unanswered, it is clear that it will almost certainly happen again.

Bearing in mind that a military response may be what North Korea's leadership is trying to elicit from us, and economic damage to South Korea may be a fringe benefit of their machinations, the South Korean response must be clear, meaningful, strategic, and proportionate to both attacks.

What Kushibo recommends is that sometime within the next week next day or so, the South Korean military (without the direct involvement of the US military, unless the ROK military is lacking in some necessary component) must do the following:

1. take out the military capabilities from which the artillery strikes on Yŏnpyŏng-do Island took place
2. take out the military capabilities from which the attack on the Ch'ŏnan took place
3. take out all the military capabilities on North Korea's southwest coast from which it can conduct such attacks on South Korean civilians or military in the outlying islands of Ongjin-gun County and the surrounding waters on the South Korean side of the Northern Limit Line, especially those south-of-NLL waters that North Korea does not dispute

At the bare minimum, #1 and #2 should be done. And of course, this should be done with minimal collateral damage, even to the bases themselves but especially to civilians in the area. The focus is on removing capabilities, and limiting loss of life even on the North Korean side should be a priority. We are not monsters.

Meanwhile, in case you need some red meat to build up the courage for the Kushibo Plan, here's a video of a local myŏn (township) on Yŏnpyŏng-do being attacked (courtesy of The Marmot's Hole):

Holy sh¡t! North Korea shells South Korean island! Is this war?

This has just left me... Whiskey tango fu¢k!

From Yonhap:

North Korea on Tuesday fired dozens of rounds of artillery toward South Korean waters and an island near the tense west sea border, the South's military said, leaving at least four South Korean soldiers wounded.

The North's artillery shells started falling in the South's waters off the island of Yeonpyeong from around 2:34 p.m., some of them landing directly on the island, said Col. Lee Bung-woo, spokesman for the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The South's military fired back some 80 rounds, he said.

The military is on its highest peacetime alert, he said. The Air Force has deployed fighter jets to the island.

One marine was critically wounded and three others sustained minor injuries, according to Lee. It was not immediately known whether there were civilian casualties. TV footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the island. Island residents said people are being told to evacuate. Officials said the North's shelling was intermittently continuing and that the South was also responding with return fire.

The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said it was looking into the possibility that the North's firing was in protest to an ongoing South Korean military drill on the western coast. The "Hoguk Exercise," one of South Korea's three major annual defense exercises, began Monday with some 70,000 troops participating.

The North had sent a message to Seoul denouncing the exercise earlier in the day, Cheong Wa Dae said.

The president convened an emergency meeting of security ministers and instructed the government to ensure that the situation is contained.

The news may deal a blow (temporarily at least) to the economy. From the WSJ Marketwatch:

The news sent the Korean won falling against the U.S. dollar in forward trade, with the greenback rising to 1,155 won compared to Tuesday's spot close of 1,137 won, according to Dow Jones Newswires. [HT to Simpsons-l friend Marc]

I really don't know what to say. I hope and pray no civilians were killed, but even if casualties are limited, this can't be considered anything but an act of war. Yŏnpyŏng-do [listed as Yeongpyeong Island in the map below] is not disputed territory, nor are the waters immediately around it (even if the NLL is itself declared illegitimate by the North).

We all talked about what South Korea should do if North Korea again pulled something like the Ch'ŏnan sinking, but this is it, especially if people died.

Part of me says, at least just go all out and completely take out the positions that are firing on ROK territory. But for now, I'm guessing it's prudent to go no further; it's entirely possible that a strong military attack on DPRK positions is exactly what the North is trying to engineer. Still, gotta do something or else this will keep happening again and again.

UPDATE:
Robert at The Marmot's Hole is staying on top of this. AP (via WaPo) also has the story. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a ROK Marine has died. More links at the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CNN, and Reuters.

The BBC has some more information:

A resident on the island told the agency that dozens of houses were damaged, while television pictures reportedly showed plumes of smoke rising above the island.

"Houses and mountains are on fire and people are evacuating. You can't see very well because of plumes of smoke," a witness on the island told YTN television station.

"People are frightened to death and shelling continues as we speak," the witness said.

The 1200 residents of Yŏnpyŏng-do, as well as those on Paengnyŏngdo and the other South Korean islands that skirt North Korea's southwestern coast, have always known they were in a danger zone (as is anyone who lives so close to the DMZ), but that's no justification for attacking civilians.

UPDATE 2:
Here's the CNN report with Andrew Salmon:

Loathe means never having to say you're sorry

Ah, ROK government, you violence-excusing co-enabler, you.

In an effort to get Pyongyang back to the Six-Party talks, Seoul has apparently decided to drop its demand that North Korea apologize for sinking the Ch'ŏnan earlier this year, an act of war which killed about four dozen South Koreans.

Pyongyang really, really, really, really insists they didn't sink the Ch'ŏnan

And to prove it, they're offering a sample of one of their torpedoes to show it isn't like the one that sunk the South Korean vessel, killing four dozen people.

From Reuters:

North Korea has denied it was responsible for the attack, and state news agency KCNA published on Tuesday what it said was "the first installment of a statement disclosing the truth behind the Cheonan case."

It said the North was willing to provide a steel alloy sample of one of its torpedoes to Washington and Seoul, adding that "aluminum alloy fragments prove themselves that the torpedo was not from the north."

It would be an intriguing development if it turned out that a type of material revealed in the South Korean government investigation wasn't even used in North Korean-made torpedoes. That would mean nothing, though, as a major attack like that could easily (and preferably) have been done with a foreign-made torpedo. This "announcement," though, is intended to sow more seeds of doubt and resentment by conspiracy theorists in the South who doubt just about anything that comes from the Lee government.

I was unable to find this news item in the KCNA reports, though it may appear in the November 2 or November 3 editions; November 1 is their latest.

I did find out, however, that the Pyongyang Mechanical Pencil Factory has developed a new type of mechanical pencil, a product of North Korea's push toward the much-touted CNC technology.

ROK-US anti-submarine exercises cancelled due to Tropical Storm Malou

With Typhoon Kompasu having done quite a lot of damage to the capital Seoul and much of the rest of the peninsula, the military commands for USFK and the ROK forces decided to postpone the anti-submarine exercises. After finding that a DPRK submersible may be responsible for the sinking of the Ch'onan, such "games" (is that the right word?) are important, both in terms of training and sending a message.

From CNN:

The exercises were scheduled to begin Sunday and run through Thursday, the forces said in a statement. Tropical Storm Malou is forecast to arrive in the region Monday.

Military officials said the exercise could have gone ahead despite the weather, but safety concerns prompted the postponement.

"Although the alliance is capable of operating in all weather conditions, this decision was made in the interest of safety for the participants," the U.S. military said in its statement. "Both high winds and heavy seas would have directly impacted the exercise area and the training objectives."

Whew. I for one am glad they reassured us that "the alliance is capable of operating in all weather conditions." If we couldn't defend the country in times of, say, a downpour or a blizzard or icy road conditions, that would really, really suck.

And I'll be honest, in my bleary-eyed state this morning, I had misread that they were cancelling submarine exercises, and I was all set to snarkily wonder if we had a fleet of submarines that couldn't operate in the wet. I'd hope that about North Korea's navy, but not ours.

But like I said, that was a misread, and it's only our ships and planes that aren't waterproof.

Typhoon Kompasu struck Seoul with heavy winds that
uprooted trees and wiped people's faces off their heads.

Let the (war) games begin!

I'm not happy that Washington backed off holding part of its joint military exercises with Seoul in the Yellow Sea, to the west of South Korea. A large portion of that body of water is under ROK jurisdiction, and this backing off seems a bit too much like a concession to Beijing. Indeed, it almost seems like we're conceding hegemony over the Yellow Sea to China at a time when we should be stepping up defenses there.

But Pyongyang is not happy that the exercises are still going on in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), on the other side of the peninsula (and away from China's watchful eye). Instead of focusing on our side's apparent kowtowing to China, maybe I should try to see the glass as half full, as in we are still conducting a very large exercise with considerable technology that has to have the DPRK (and the PRC) at least a tad nervous. From the NYT:

On Sunday, in a show of their combined military power, a fleet of U.S. and South Korean naval ships and submarines sailed into waters off the east coast of South Korea, led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington, one of the biggest ships in the U.S. Navy. Japan, a historical rival of the two Koreas but an ally of South Korea and the United States in their confrontation with North Korea, dispatched military observers in the four-day exercise.

The drills mobilized 20 ships, 8,000 troops from both allies and an unusually large number of warplanes: more than 200 aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor fighter, which joins an exercise in South Korea for the first time.

And then, of course, we have the tightening of financial screws on North Korea, so it's not as if we're doing nothing. Still, that idea that China can diplomatically pressure us not to conduct military exercises in the very body of water where our side lost four dozen people by a clear military provocation is niggling at the back of my mind. Dang Chinese are a bunch of nigglers!

I think we should plan (and announce ahead of time) new exercises to be held off the west coast. Barring that idea, a nice joint military exercise involving the US, the ROK, and Japan will be a nice next step. Pyongyang needs to feel consequences for what it did, and Beijing needs to feel consequences for letting it go unpunished.

Angry Norks

You'll be forgiven if you think the poster above may be an advert for the latest North Korean game to come out on the iPhone, a combination of "Battleship" and "Angry Birds" (Do not download this app! It is a time killer! You will be sucked into another dimension where the word procrastination itself is too meager to describe how adversely your life and responsibilities will be affected! I curse my young nephew for introducing it to me!)

But it's not. It's apparently an admission by the North that not only did they sink the Ch'ŏnan, but they're damn proud of it, too. Purportedly by way of a propaganda poster.

You may have already read about it at One Free Korea, but the New York Times is now on it as well:

A propaganda poster recently smuggled out of North Korea depicts the North Korean military smashing an enemy warship in half, a scene evocative of the sinking of a South Korean warship earlier this year.

Although the poster did not identify the ship in the poster as the Cheonan, the South Korean corvette sunk in March, it raised suspicions that North Korea might have begun bragging about the sinking for domestic propaganda purposes, said Radio Free Asia, which released a photograph of the poster this week.

With a caption that says “If they attack, we will smash them in a single blow,” the poster shows the red fist of a North Korean sailor splitting an enemy ship. The Cheonan was split in two and sunk in waters near the disputed western sea border between the two Koreas. Forty-six sailors were killed.

Actually, this is the North Korean version of "Angry Birds":

Well, someone's pleased.

Apparently, North Korea is tickled pink about the UN Security Council condemnation.

From the New York Times:

The North Korean envoy to the United Nations, Sin Son-ho, called a statement condemning the sinking of a South Korean warship, which the Security Council passed unanimously Friday, “our great diplomatic victory.”

Getting your one single benefactor, who happens to be a permanent member of the UNSC, to go to bat for you... them's some mighty skilled diplomacy.

Oh, how I'm loathing China right now.

Holy watered-down statements, Banman!

Beijing and Washington have agreed on the wording of a condemnation of the late March sinking of South Korea's Chonan battleship. Great news, right?

Well, hold on, because if it involves China and its hegemonic relationship with North Korea, that necessitates a detour through Bizarro World, and what we have coming out the other end is this crap:

The U.S. and China have agreed to condemn the March 26 attack on a South Korean warship, without accusing North Korea, in a statement given today to the United Nations Security Council.

“The Security Council condemns the attack which led to the sinking of the Cheonan,” the statement, provided by the U.S. Mission to the UN, says. It “takes note’’ of North Korea’s denial of complicity.

Has sad it is that so little changes as time goes on. But if China is still peddling the fiction that the US and South Korea started the Korean War, why should we expect anything different on this score.

I'm really in the mood to stop buying Chinese products altogether.

UN Security Council considering various draft proposals over Chonan sinking

And of course, China appears to be holding things up and watering things down.

From AFP:

South Korea and UN Security Council members are studying several proposals on how to censure North Korea, a report said on Tuesday.

China has come up with its own draft for the UN statement over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, Yonhap news agency said.

It quoted an unnamed government official as saying prospects for an early compromise were not good.

"There are various proposals... They are sometimes combined and sometimes separated," the official was quoted as saying.

What could be the holdup? As reported yesterday, Beijing doesn't want to actually implicate Pyongyang in their censure of Pyongyang.

UN Security Council a dangerous field for South Korea

Seoul is having trouble getting any respect at the UNSC, where it is pushing for a firm resolution on North Korea's reported sinking of the Chonan.

From AFP:

South Korea Monday urged the UN Security Council to send a firm message to North Korea over the sinking of a warship, but declined comment on media reports that China was blocking such a move.

The North meanwhile repeated vows to strengthen its nuclear weaponry in a new way to counter what it called US threats over the case.

"The international community should send a firm and clear message to North Korea," Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Kim Young-Sun told a briefing.

Kim refused comment on reports that China objects to identifying its ally the North as the culprit, but admitted it was difficult to say when the council would reach a conclusion.

The usual suspects — Beijing and Moscow — are behind the move:

Unlike many other nations, permanent Security Council members China and Russia have not publicly accused Pyongyang of being behind the sinking.

Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Monday that China was apparently blocking any reference in the council that would point directly to North Korea as the culprit.

It is even trying to water down the term "torpedo attack", which it believes is too strong, by replacing it with the word "incident", Chosun said.

Seoul's Yonhap news agency said late last week the discussions had been stalled largely due to the reluctance of China and Russia to pinpoint North Korea as the aggressor.

Can we finally recognize that we are firmly back in Cold War mode, replete with hot Russian spies and perhaps a return to the Great Game of yesteryear? Moscow and Beijing are still aligned with Pyongyang in an effort to control territory (indirectly) or at least poke the eye of a rival. That makes it Cold War Lite, though might I suggest the term "Chilly War."

A US nuclear strike on North Korea?

That's what Nixon was considering back in 1969.

From AFP:

In 1969, North Korea shot down a US spy aircraft over the Sea of Japan (East Sea), killing the 31 personnel on board.

Despite US outrage, the new Nixon administration chose not to retaliate other than to order a continuation of flights and go ahead with naval exercises.

The documents, released after requests under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that the administration nonetheless charted out a series of options that included conventional and nuclear attacks.

In one contingency plan codenamed "Freedom Drop," the United States would use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy military command centers, airfields and naval bases in North Korea.

Civilian casualties "would range from approximately 100 to several thousand," said a classified memorandum by then-defense secretary Melvin Laird prepared for Henry Kissinger, who was Nixon's national security adviser.

There is no indication that the administration seriously considered a nuclear strike. The document stated that the United States could use one nuclear option if North Korea launched an air attack on the South.

Frankly, I don't know very much about the 1969 downing of that plane, but it has echoes of the sinking of the Chonan (or is that the other way around?). Here and there in the K-blogosphere I have read claims that the US would have reacted far more harshly than ROK President Lee Myungbak's lack of attack, but when we see the hypothetical as a real situation, that doesn't seem to be the case. At least not four decades ago.

Of course, the US was fighting a major war a few thousand miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula, which may have affected things. Oh, wait.

Why on Earth would Kim Jong-il or an underling torpedo the Chonan?

Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, ...

Whether or not Kim Jong Il personally ordered the torpedo attack that sank a South Korean warship, the ensuing atmosphere of crisis has given the ailing dictator an opportunity to distract a population that might otherwise be complaining that they're eating weeds instead of rice.

The furor over the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, in which 46 sailors were killed, has given Kim an opening to stage mass rallies and conduct air defense drills in a "wag the dog" strategy.

"This will distract people from their troubles," said Cho Myong-chol, a Pyongyang-born economist and son of a former North Korean minister. Cho, who now lives in Seoul, doesn't believe that Kim was intimately involved in the attack.

Of course, none of this is new. A lot of us have been saying for some time that the tension over the sinking would be an excellent way to distract a public that is increasingly angry over their loss of savings and livelihood due to the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009.

[left: "Bravo!" says Kim Jong-il to whichever obsequant pulled the trigger. For your sacrifice, Kim Jong-il has earned another seventy-two virgins.]

Of course, a full-blown confrontation in the Yellow Sea was probably the response they expected or even wanted, but even all this "we're going to take this to the United Nations" stuff is enough for the Pyongyang regime to put everyone on high alert. Mission accomplished.

NYT on "the Chonan effect"

It appears that North Korea's murderous actions in the Yellow Sea and South Korean President Lee's cool-headed but stern reaction are earning support for the latter in the upcoming elections.

From the New York Times:

The sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, apparently by a North Korean torpedo, has provoked an international crisis that has embroiled big powers like the United States and China. But here in South Korea, it has had another effect: buoying the country’s once embattled conservative, pro-American president, Lee Myung-bak.

Soon after taking office two years ago, Mr. Lee appeared at risk of losing public support, as he faced mass demonstrations on the streets of Seoul against the import of United States beef. Now, political experts are talking of the “Cheonan effect,” as polls show more than half of voters approve of the president and his tougher line toward the North.

Nowhere is the current upwelling of popular support more apparent than in local elections to be held across South Korea on Wednesday. President Lee’s Grand National Party, whose candidates once faced tight races in some districts, now appears poised to sweep the most important races, including hotly contested mayoral seats in Seoul and the nearby port of Incheon.

Some will no doubt see this as a sure sign that the sinking of the Chonan was a false flag operation (this is hinted at in a BBC piece). That is, that Seoul itself sank its own vessel in order to whip up support for the ruling party and/or against North Korea. They're standing cause and effect on its head, of course: President Lee's adept response is the reason for the rise in popularity; a hoped-for rise in popularity is not the cause of the attack.

Let's not forget that President Bush enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity right after 9/11 (heck, the whole country did). Oh, wait, come to think of it, that would just put the Southers™ in the same ideological boat as the Truthers.

Let's try a different one. A beleaguered President Clinton enjoyed a rise in popularity when he was impeached — many felt unfairly or unjustifiably — for the Monica Lewinsky affair, and his party experienced an unusual gain in overall seats during the 1998 midterm elections.

President Lee did not want this nor ask for it, and while it's appropriate in a democracy to ask tough questions, it's sick to insist in the face of so much evidence to the contrary that someone in the ROK government deliberately killed these dozens of sailors for some hope for political gain in local elections.

I am not saying it's not possible, only that the idea becomes absurd the more it is analyzed. Setting all the physical evidence aside for a moment, the timing of the sinking (in March) isn't quite proximal enough for June elections, especially since the president's slow and meticulous response carried the risk of alienating and angering the population.

If one really wants to look for a possible ROK-engineered false flag operation in order to affect an election, check out the 1987 downing of the Korean Air flight 858 just days before South Korea's first democratically run direct presidential elections, supposedly by a spy named Kim Hyŏnhŭi ("Mayumi"). That story has major holes, but it, too, is probably true.

They're baaaack! (Or, the political experiment that would not die!)

It's a mainstay of horror films and television series: some staple within the fabric of the movie franchise or TV show that assures that — no matter what — the show will go on. Somehow, someway.

No matter how many times Freddy Krueger is buried, incinerated, electrocuted, top-killed, etc., he is always back on Elm Street in the next film. No matter how buildings Alice blows up or zombies she kills, the T-virus is always on the move. A new cell of terrorists always assured Jack Bauer would have gainful employment (and overtime pay) for at least another day, and a new crop of self-absorbed fame-seekers always guarantees another season of "Survivor."

And so it is with the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex just north of the DMZ, that political experiment borne of the Sunshine Policy. It just won't die, not even when frenemies Seoul and Pyongyang temporarily join forces to destroy it: the South by slowly starving it, and the North — fresh off another kill — by an avalanche of vitriolic propaganda and bad vibes.

Even as its obituary was being written about here at Monster Island and in other august halls of journalism, it is back.

So let's just call it the Jason Industrial Complex™.

Quoting the New York Times:

North Korea expressed its wish to keep an inter-Korean industrial complex in operation, South Korean officials said on Monday, while the South indicated that it could reconsider its decision to revive psychological warfare against the North.

The two movements combined showed that the two Koreas were carefully weighing the option of easing their confrontation, analysts said.

Tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula have deteriorated to their worst in years since a South Korean warship sank on March 26 in a blast blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack.

“Neither side can afford to keep building up tensions,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul. “Both sides have been raising tensions the way you blow into your balloon, and now they need an excuse for each other to stop blowing so that the balloon won’t burst.”

Wait... What?! We killed the Jason Industrial Complex™ in the last film. In the wake of the report that the North was responsible for the sinking of the Chonan and the nearly four dozen deaths involved, President Lee cut off all trade — except for a reduced presence at Kaesong — but then North Korea swooped in with the coup de grâce and said, essentially, "If you're not going to kill it, we will!" and they were ready to send everyone home. Indeed, there were worries that the South Korean workers who had missed their bus back to Torasan might be held hostage.

But when it comes to North Korea, maybe there are no coups de grâce. For now, it looks like the Jason Industrial Complex™ will be back for a new sequel in the papers. Slice it, burn it, bury it, decapitate it, nuke it, feed it a steady diet of saturated fat, and it still comes back to life.

Now don't get me wrong, I think (as did South Korean leaders at the time) that Kaesŏng (that's what it was called before it morphed into Jaesong) was a noble effort to effect change in North Korea that was worth trying (after all, four decades of confrontation hadn't gotten us anywhere). It was meant as a little bit of a Trojan horse to infuse ideas of capitalism into the DPRK.

But Pyongyang had other Trojans in mind, and they prophylactically sealed off Kaesŏng-Jaesong as much as they could.

But eventually, like a once virtuous corporation in a what-could-possibly-go-wrong sorta horror film, Seoul had become invested in this unholy hybrid they had created in the lab. They would lose Sejongs and face if they aborted now, so they let it live. And soon it was sucking the blood supply away from good diplomatic policy, maiming it in the process. It gained a life of its own, becoming a radioactively hot potato, and about two or three sequels ago, Seoul could have killed it when it had the chance, but they were afraid of the fallout. And so it grew and grew, as did our dependence on its growth. And just when we thought that the two sides both finally had the will to terminate it once and for all, it's back. Back with a vengeance (I'm guessing). Will the two protagonists survive to the next reel?

[kushibo pauses, takes a deep breath]

Um... anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah: Kaesŏng a noble effort. (I've never bought the argument that Kaesŏng was propping up North Korea, since China has always been there with its wallet open to prevent a collapse.) The problem with Sunshine Policy, as I've stated before, is that it was all carrot and no stick. Even now, the Jason Industrial Complex™ is apparently being used by the conservative Lee Myungbak administration as a bargaining chip.

Now one could argue that Kaesong/Jason still has a purpose: not only as the aforementioned concession or enticement in future negotiations, but also as a conduit through which South Korean government and business can still keep their foot in the door in order to forestall a collapsed North Korea in the future from becoming China's Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Region.

So Lee is basically giving us the classic, "This [evil character who keeps coming back] is worth more to us alive than dead." Or, if you prefer, "We'd better hold onto these [super lethal weapons that could easily wipe out a lot of people by accident] just in case."

I wouldn't expect anything less. Welcome to Monster Island (actually a peninsula).