North Korea threatens more attacks... At what point do we consider ourselves at war?

The Marmot's Hole has a post focusing on how North Korea's attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do Island [Yeonpyeong] appears to have been premeditated (i.e., not the nervous response to South Korean military exercises that Pyongyang has made it out to be), evidenced by the type of weaponry they rained down on the island:

So, it appears the North Korean hit Yeonpyeong-do with slightly more than their coastal guns. They hit it with 120mm rockets fired from multiple rocket launchers. And according to lawmaker/military expert Song Young-sun (recently interviewed by the LAT’s John Glionna), the North also employed recently developed thermobaric warheads. The 122mm rockets have eight times the destructive power of North Korea’s coastal guns, and the thermobaric warheads are a special munition that penetrates concrete and kills with high heat and pressure.

Lawmakers showed off the remains of one of 120mm rockets, which landed in the backyard of a post office.

One lawmaker noted that 120mm rocket launchers are not normally deployed to the area from which Tuesday’s attack was launched, which means they were probably moved there from units further in the rear. This leads credence to the belief the attack was carefully planned in advance. The use of the rockets and thermobaric charges also show that North Korea was aiming for lots of damage and lots of dead bodies.

Missiles... fired at post offices... just what kind of imagery are you waiting for?

Well, if that's not enough to get you to sit up and reconsider turning the other cheek, how about this? North Korea seems to be shedding any plausible deniability that it was the aggressor and is now warning of further attacks:

The drama within Lee's Cabinet [involving the resignation of the Defense Minister] ended a tense day that saw North Korea warn of a possible reprise of its attack and Beijing voice concern over joint U.S.-South Korean naval exercises set to begin Sunday. If further provoked, North Korea "will deal without hesitation the second and third strong physical retaliatory blow," read a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

As I noted at The Western Confucian, North Korean rhetoric considers a wide range of legitimate state activities (from patrolling its own borders on down to adopting the KORUS FTA) as "provocation." By merely existing, South Korea is provoking the North. Going about its day is even more provocative.

As I have noted repeatedly, the big game-changer with the Yŏnpyŏng-do attack is that it underscores how taking the high road and avoiding military retaliation in cases like the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan does not prevent future attack. If what the LAT is reporting is true, Pyongyang is threatening future attacks (plural!) on the flimsiest of excuses. [And I will be poring over KCNA reports to find this particular news release. UPDATE: Here it is.]

What does this mean for Seoul? At the very least, it means something akin to The Kushibo Plan needs to be implemented or ready to be implemented (option #1 at minimum). As the days pass, the justification for anything other than option #1 slips away, and after more than a week or so, even option #1 must prudently be taken off the table. But South Korea must have in reserve the plan and the will to act on an appropriate version of options #1 and #2 (and possibly #3) if North Korea launches a further attack. Merely lobbing half the number of shells with which you were attacked is too weak a response to be a deterrent for such acts in the future.

In the meantime, while waiting and preparing for the next attack and praying it doesn't actually happen, Seoul (and its allies) need to adopt a stern and meaningful non-military response, one that provides punishment to China for not keeping its pet on a leash and starts directing Korean investment toward countries other than China (e.g., India, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc.).

Meanwhile, President Lee has gotten confirmation from Japanese Prime Minister that Tokyo stands behind Seoul:

Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Seoul counterpart, Lee Myung Bak, agreed Wednesday their countries and the United States must work closely to confront any provocations by North Korea, which the previous day shelled a South Korean island in the Yellow Sea, causing four confirmed deaths.

Kan informed Lee by phone that Tokyo will call on Beijing, Pyongyang's economic and political benefactor, to pressure the reclusive state to halt similar belligerence in the future, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama told reporters.

No one wants war. Just about everyone worries that North Korea will take any reaction by South Korea as an excuse to attack civilian targets that are bigger, more significant, or closer to the capital. But at some point we have to recognize that Pyongyang is going to keep pushing the envelope until we put a stop to it.

China: "Now everybody just calm down! Again."

Funny how Beijing always seem to be saying this after their client state kills somebody:

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated calls for stability on the Korean peninsula, without signaling any intention to fault ally North Korea for firing a deadly artillery salvo at a South Korean island on Nov. 23.

“China has all along devoted itself to maintaining the peninsula’s peace and stability, and opposed military provocation in any form,” the official Xinhua News Agency cited Wen as saying during a meeting yesterday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. All concerned parties should exercise maximum restraint, Wen said.

"We maintain peace and stability and oppose any military provocation," he says. This would be funny if it weren't so dogdam serious.

Yeah, you go stand next to them, Governor.

It was obviously a slip, but Sarah Palin, who could easily gain her party's nomination in 2012, said when asked what we should do about the situation on the Korean peninsula that "we've gotta stand with our North Korean allies."



Now if I'm going to give President Obama a pass for thinking he visited fifty-seven states* then I'll cut Palin some slack on this one. After all, actor John Cusack made the same mistake, while in South Korea even... so I'll give Sarah Palin a pass since she can only see the Koreas from her house**.

But the pass is just for this one. Rack up too many slips like this and I start to wonder if you really know about the stuff you're supposed to know about.

My real beef is with the bogus image of President Obama she's putting forth with this quote in the same interview:

... We're not having a lot of faith that the White House is coming out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is gonna do, so this speaks to a bigger picture that certainly scares me.

That is nothing but mindless pandering to an old idea that the Democrats look weak to our enemies (while the Republicans inspire fear, I guess). Clearly Sarah Palin is unfamiliar with One Free Korea's Joshua Stanton and his Plan B, a get-tough set of sanctions and actions with real teeth to them that even he admits Obama is clearly implementing, unlike his Republican predecessor or President Clinton.

Sarah Palin simply does not know what she's talking about. She is a good candidate, demographics-wise, and she is being coached and fed policy memos to turn her into less of a paper tiger. Surely the Republicans have someone better to offer than that.

*Which he doesn't. It's clear from the video that a groggy Senator Obama was thinking "fifty" in his head — our total number of states — when he started counting backwards to arrive at the answer "forty-seven," which came out "fifty-seven." I cannot excuse him, however, for mispronouncing espouse.

**Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. She said it was possible to see Russia from an island in Alaska (which is true), but the "I can see Russia from my house" was a line from Tina Fey's impression of her. And while we're at it, Al Gore never said he invented the Internet.

Andrei Lankov on the Yŏnpyŏng-do Island attack and North Korea's "blackmail diplomacy"

The ever-insightful Andrei Lankov, one of my favorite pundits on North Korea, has a piece in the International Herald-Tribune, by way of the NYT. As I mentioned in my post on the Victor Cha interview, the good professor paints an accurate picture of what's really going on, but in the end admits there is no real solution (more on that later).

He starts by reiterating a notion often discussed in both anglophone and coreophone Korean Studies circles but heard far less often among the hoi polloi:

The world is likely to say that the North Koreans are again acting “irrationally.” But this is not the case — they are a very rational regime, actually the world’s most Machiavellian.

Indeed, they are reacting rationally according to the world as they see it. And the goal for us may be to upend that world view by no longer playing our predictable part.

Dr Lankov goes on to discuss China's below-the-radar role in all this:

There has never been a chance that it would surrender its nuclear program, which alone makes it possible to extract sufficient aid from the outside world. Finally, after two nuclear tests and a number of broken agreements, Washington has realized that no amount of engagement is going to produce a nuclear-free North Korea.

So nowadays the major hope is sanctions. Many in Washington still entertain the idea that a tough sanctions regime would make North Korea surrender its nukes — or, perhaps, bring about regime collapse.

It might take a few years before it becomes clear that sanctions will not work either. The major — but by no means only — reason is that sanctions are quietly sabotaged by China. China believes that domestic instability in North Korea constitutes a greater threat to its interest than the North Korean nuclear program, so it does not want to see Pyongyang cornered.

Come to think of it, Dr Lankov is sounding like I did, when I threw up my hands in 2009 and announced that "nothing can be done about North Korea."

The trick, then, is for China to see consequences (economic, political) to allowing its rabid dog to run around without a leash. I shall cover that in a soon-to-be-released Kushibo's Other Plan™, a non-military response to the Yŏnpyŏng-do attack.

Unlike Dr Cha, Dr Lankov believes that getting attention may be playing a bigger role in the attack:

However, the stubborn refusal of the United States and South Korea to provide aid and concessions makes Pyongyang leaders uneasy — not because they are facing an immediate threat of collapse, but because sanctions make them increasingly dependent on China, their only sponsor.

And this goes against Pyongyang’s basic diplomatic principle: Since the times of the Sino-Soviet quarrel of the 1960s, it has always relied on two or three sponsors, preferably antagonistic and hence easier to manipulate.

So the North Korean leaders decided that this was the time to remind the world of their existence. They chose soft spots of their adversaries (and potential sponsors).

That may very well be the case. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that North Korea showed scientist Siegfried Hecker a potemkin uranium facility full of Ikea-esque parts, the fact that they presented it is an indication of what they're up to.

The question, then, is what to do? Should South Korea break the cycle by not giving in? Would that risk more "retaliation," even an escalation? Dr Lankov, refreshingly, admits he doesn't know what should be done:

So what can be done? The easiest reply is to hold steadfast, and do not bow to the pressure.

This may sound great, but this policy is actually quite dangerous. A few more years of doing nothing will mean not only more provocations, but also a considerable increase in North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, missile technology and, perhaps, proliferation. In other words, waiting is not a solution.

In the short term, the answer would seem to be negotiations aimed at freezing the North Korean nuclear program — for a price, of course.

It should be done with a clear understanding that negotiations, even if a deal is reached, will merely buy time and make the problems less acute.

So long as the Kim family stays in power — and it could be around for a long time — North Korea will remain a problem with no diplomatic solution. It survives by making trouble, since it has to make trouble just to stay afloat.

Conundrum. Time to pull our cojones out of the vice.

Yŏnpyŏng-do attack: The Big List #1

Glued to my computer screen, I realize I've written nearly a dozen posts related to the North Korean attack on the South Korean islands of Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong], undisputed ROK territory not far from North Korea's southwestern coast. Rather than making readers scroll through what must be several meters worth of text, I thought it would be good to list and link them in one place.

• My first post on the Yŏnpyŏng-do attack, while it was still going on

• The Kushibo Plan™: The appropriate military response to what is clearly a problem that won't go away on its own

• Victor Cha talks about the why's and what's about the Yŏnpyŏng-do attack (includes Newshour video)

• Andrei Lankov discusses the North Korea problem

• The North Koreans may have given an indication they were up to something in an editorial saying North Korea's military must strike a blow against imperialism in order to bolster the Songun (military first) policy.

• Jimmy Carter says North Korea is acting out to get Washington to sit down with them

• The White House condemns North Korea and stands behind its ally; meanwhile, some folks talking with some Western reporters are a bit blasé about what happened. (Kushibo suggests this is a combination of Threat Fatigue™ and a defensive denial of the severity of how severely North Korea has ratcheted things up)

• Have North Korean apologists found the deniability they will rally around in order to pin the attack on South Korea?

• Is China inept and ineffectual when it comes to keeping its dog on a leash?

• Civilian deaths belatedly reported (includes CNN video). The same thing in Korean

• A diagram of the attacks courtesy of the Donga Ilbo

• South Korea is concerned about the economic fallout of the attack

• Miscellaneous late-breaking links related to the Yŏnpyŏngdo attack

The above posts contain links to many other articles and sites. The bloggers and commenters at Marmot's Hole and ROK Drop have both been great for providing information and insight. Finally, Coming Anarchy has a post I did not link to that mulls over an older idea of a preemptive strike on North Korea (not that that's what I'm endorsing). 

Victor Cha on PBS's Newshour on the North Korean attacks

Stateside, the North Korean attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do Island [aka Yeonpyeong] has been the lead-in story since it happened. Yesterday's broadcast of NBC Nightly News, for example, spent nearly half of the entire broadcast on the subject. It's natural, then, that PBS's Newshour would call in some big guns to discuss what this all means and what might happen next.

The headliner was Victor Cha, who was on the National Security Council staff under Bush43. He was joined by Sung-Yoon Lee, an adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University. Here are some highlights, coming in right after Victor Cha dismissed the idea (put forward by Jimmy Carter) that this is all about Pyongyang trying to get Washington to come and talk to them:

JIM LEHRER: So, then, if it is not aimed at getting people back at a table, what is it -- what is North Korea up to?

VICTOR CHA: I think that we have to sort of think about what's going on internally in the North.

And as your lead piece said, there is a leadership transition that is in progress. We don't know if it is at the end of the leadership transition or at the beginning. We do know it's an accelerated process, because the North Korean leader is quite ill.

And, in North Korea, when you have a new leader -- it's only their third leader -- you have to build a myth and an ideology around this leader based on the strength of the state. And, in that sense, I think a lot of these provocations, and in particular the last one, could be seen not as tit for tat for South Korean exercises or a negotiating ploy.

It's part of establishing the new mythology around this young potential leader for the country.

JIM LEHRER: Professor Lee, how do you see that as a possible motive here?

SUNG-YOON LEE: North Korea does have a great incentive to build up the heir apparent, the 26-year-old, Jong-un, who has no credentials. He was appointed four-star general, yes, recently, but he has no achievements under his belt.

So, North Korea faces a great challenge of power succession, an inherently difficult task, especially for a regime beset by severe economic stresses. So, North Korea does have a need to build him up, yes. And on the eve, in the days and weeks and months leading up to Kim Jong-un's birthday, which is January 8 -- in North Korea, the birthdays of the founding dictator, April 15, and the current leader, February 16, are the biggest national holidays.

So, in the weeks leading up to early January, North Korea will have even a greater incentive to raise the stakes. Conventionally, one would think that resorting to provocative acts, attacking South Korea and so forth, wouldn't be indicative of North Korea's will to return to negotiations.

In the case of North Korea, perversely, this has been an effective way of really painting Washington and Seoul into a corner and driving them to engage North Korea once again.

Anyone who knows what I've been harping about will not be surprised that I don't completely agree with what Drs Cha and Lee and saying. I've made clear that the transition to Kim Jong-un is something Kim Jong-il wants and he has put his son on the road to achieving, but acceptance of that transition is by no means a done deal and, moreover, it has not accelerated to the degree the Western media has made it out to be. Contrary to reports that Kim Jong-un is being deified and held up to the people of North Korea as their next leader, his appearance in official North Korean media is very subdued low-profile. As I've become fond of saying lately, he's the Kim Who Wasn't There.

But that doesn't mean Drs Cha and Lee are wrong. To some degree the Yŏnpyŏng-do attack, I agree, is probably more about scaring cash, goods, and services out of Seoul's pockets. But it is more likely the attack is about shoring up support. Not support for Kim Jong-un, but hardening support for the military side of the regime. It's about preserving their power and prestige — or even strengthening it — by showing their might and how much they're needed. North Korea has all but spelled this out in very recent editorials saying that North Korea must strike a blow to the imperialists in the name of Songun policy.

They have the power to wag the dog. They have the power to rally the people in the face of an enemy threat (which they engineered). They have means at their disposal that the political apparatus does not, and the party apparatchiki had best not forget that during any transitions that might occur in North Korea's future. In the scheme of things, therefore, Kim Jong-un's role is incidental. This is not about him.

While Drs Cha and Lee bring some good insight, they ultimately offer no good solution. The end of the discussion is that Seoul is in such a bad position that we really can't do anything. North Korea has made it clear that doing nothing invites aggression the same as doing something, and we fear that really doing something will invite even more aggression. 

Writing in the International Herald-Tribune, Professor Andrei Lankov does much the same thing: He paints an accurate picture of what's really going on, but admits there is no real solution (more on that here). 

In the wake of the Ch'ŏnan sinking, I also counseled a non-military response. But North Korea's attack on undisputed ROK territory and the shelling of civilians makes clear that may no longer be prudent. We need an aggressive response, a military one, or perhaps a non-military one that also takes aim at China and its role with the monster they've created (more on that later, too). 

CNN on civilian deaths in Yŏnpyŏng-do attack

In this post, we had news of two civilians having died when North Korea shelled Yŏnpyŏng-do Island [aka Yeonpyeong-do], but the reports were all in Korean.

I finally found something in English, from CNN:

Two new bodies were found Wednesday on the coast of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, apparent victims of North Korea's shelling of the island a day earlier, officials said.

The bodies of two men in their 60s were not recognized by residents of the sparsely populated island, leading officials to believe that they were construction workers from off the island, said Song Young-gil, mayor of Incheon.

Hundreds of residents from the island have been evacuated to Incheon, which is the closest city on South Korea's mainland.

On Wednesday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency also reported that five buildings were directly hit and 22 were damaged during the North's attack on the island.

In addition to the two dead men who were found Wednesday, South Korea on Tuesday said that the attack killed two South Korean marines and injured 15 South Korean soldiers and three civilians.

Here's the news clip that came along with the story:

Yŏnpyŏng-do links

• The revolution will not be televised but the battle will be tweeted. 

• In a follow-up to this story, an "outraged" President Obama says the US's support for South Korea is "unshakable." The BBC talks about Obama's conundrum in dealing with NK. Reuters asks, "What's next?"

• Did "the Kim who wasn't there" order the attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do [aka Yeonpyeong-do]?

• Danger schmanger: The US and South Korea will move forward with exercises in the Yellow Sea.

• And Seoul has suspended flood aid to North Korea. Kinda hurts the wrong people, but really, what else can we do?

• The number of newborns has risen for the seventh straight month. Not really Yŏnpyŏng-do-related, but a nice story to end with.

Donga Ilbo Diagram of Yŏnpyŏngdo battle

With a HT to One Free Korea commenter xyzzy, here's a very useful visual of the North Korean attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do Island [aka Yeonpyeong-do].

Click to enlarge so you can see the time stamps and everything. xyzzy's observations are also interesting:

There are a few interesting points that I noticed:

1. The firing started with 76mm from Mudo(?) at the limit of its 12km range. The South was firing 155mm K-9’s, which are modern mobile howitzers with 40km range, and probably much better accuracy and firing rate.

2. After 36 minutes a battery of 130mm and 76mm took over, from Gaemori.

3. The North stopped firing within one minute of jets arriving.

Why the North started with much smaller pieces is beyond me.

Indeed, it seems North Korea does tend to back down when it's actually faced with a someone willing to respond in kind.

Jimmy Carter on North Korea acting out

The "acting out" is my phrasing, not his, but he tries to make the case that with the recent revelation of the uranium program and now its shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do Island, North Korea is trying to push Washington to negotiate with Pyongyang directly. And, he says, we should take them up on it:

North Korea insists on direct talks with the United States. Leaders in Pyongyang consider South Korea's armed forces to be controlled from Washington and maintain that South Korea was not party to the 1953 cease-fire. Since the Clinton administration, our country has negotiated through the six-party approach, largely avoiding substantive bilateral discussions, which would have excluded South Korea.

This past July I was invited to return to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American, Aijalon Gomes, with the proviso that my visit would last long enough for substantive talks with top North Korean officials. They spelled out in detail their desire to develop a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a permanent cease-fire, based on the 1994 agreements and the terms adopted by the six powers in September 2005. With no authority to mediate any disputes, I relayed this message to the State Department and White House. Chinese leaders indicated support of this bilateral discussion.

North Korean officials have given the same message to other recent American visitors and have permitted access by nuclear experts to an advanced facility for purifying uranium. The same officials had made it clear to me that this array of centrifuges would be "on the table" for discussions with the United States, although uranium purification - a very slow process - was not covered in the 1994 agreements.

Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the "temporary" cease-fire of 1953. We should consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime.

That was a might pretty speech. 'Cept that the problem is this: Do you trust the North to abide by any agreement they make? I don't. We've tried that before and they've proven time and time again that they see deceit as a useful tool. Mr Carter, I fear, is a tad naïve.

And speaking of the Yŏnpyŏng-do attack, Wangkon at The Marmot's Hole has a pretty good roundup of the economic fallout of the incident. Thanks for saving me the virtual legwork. The Marmot himself has some other good links, including the US's desire for a diplomatic response instead of a military one.

Two ROK civilians killed in North Korean attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do

It's in Korean, but it's here:

북한군의 해안포 포격으로 민간인 두명이 숨진 것으로 알려졌다.

연평도 현장 응급 복구 작업을 벌이고 있는군 관 합동조사단은 오늘 오후 3시반쯤 연평도내 한 공사장에서 시신 2구를 수습했다고 밝혔다.

공사장에서 발견된 시신들은 연평도 현지 주민은 아니고 공사장 인부들인 것으로 전해지고 있다.

합동조사단은 이들이 북한군의 해안포 사격으로 숨진 것으로 보고 자세한 사망 원인을 조사하고 있다.

I'm still looking for this news in English.

This brings the total deaths up to four. It was bad enough when two military personnel were killed, but civilian deaths exacerbate things even further. [HT to milton]

Meanwhile, "M" from Japan told me that, from what she's been reading online, a lot of people worry that Japan might be the next target in North Korea's escalation. Now that North Korea has attacked South Korean civilians and killed a couple of them, I don't think an attack on a Japanese target is so implausible, especially considering the belligerence the KCNA still reserves for Japan. And let's not forget that North Korea did, after, fly a missile over Japanese airspace.

Is China ultimately inept when it comes to controlling North Korea?

Is China on the verge of abdicating its role as suzerain of North Korea? In the wake of the North Korean attack on South Korea's Yŏnpyŏng-do Island, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting addressing Beijing's ability to keep Pyongyang on a tighter leash, or not:

China’s response to news of the North Korean firing of dozens of rounds of artillery at a South Korean island has been cautious so far, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying Tuesday that Beijing had “noticed the reports” and was “concerned about the issue.”

With smoke still rising over Yeonpyeong island, no one expects China or any other country to stray beyond the bounds of diplomatic prudence. But how China responds — or, even more fundamentally, how long it takes China to respond — will be a central focus of global attention once the smoke finally clears.

The last time North Korean aggression led to South Korean bloodshed — the sinking of a South Korean patrol ship, the Cheonan, in March, which an international investigation blamed on Pyongyang — China remained tongue-tied, failing to publicly express condolences for almost a month. That silence flustered, and ultimately frustrated, regional neighbors who look to China to keep North Korea from running too far off the rails.

North Korea’s military misadventures put China in a difficult position. Besides being Pyongyang’s only ally of consequence, Beijing has a vested interest in supporting the North Korean regime, the collapse of which could send millions of North Korean refugees flooding into China.

At the same time, China has increasingly pushed to be seen as the region’s dominant peace keeper and power broker — a role that requires it to calm nerves made jittery by North Korea’s occasional outbursts.

Lest you feel sorry that China is forced to have this belligerent little brother to take care of, let's not forget that North Korea is, essentially, Dr Chinastein's own little monster. They have been propping up the Pyongyang regime for years and they repeatedly turn a blind eye to its murderous excesses, in the interest of keeping North Korea as a buffer state. And yeah, while they position themselves to challenge the United States as regional hegemon, it's increasingly clear that they can't even keep their closest ally from committing repeated sociopathic outbursts.

Geopolitical FAIL.

Screw how China reacts. While it would be nice if Beijing would man up and slap down Pyongyang for this latest egregious behavior, I'm not holding my breath. It's time to stop kowtowing to China, always fearful of how the rabid panda will react, and just start working around them. If they block a resolution or whatever in the UNSC, just go after North Korean targets anyway.

China needs to know there are consequences for not keeping their client state in line. I applaud efforts by China to push the reforms of Northeast China into North Korea, but if they don't have the ability to prevent Pyongyang from killing ROK civilians and military personnel, they're sorta useless.

Will plausible deniability mean no reaction to North Korean attack?

The New York Times is also carrying an article on Seoul's response, including President Lee's call for military strikes if there is any further provocation. The NYT also notes what could be called North Korea's deniability factor (which usually revolves around denying they did anything or saying that they did something because they were provoked):

The North blamed the South for starting the exchange; the South acknowledged firing test shots in the area but denied that any had fallen in the North’s territory. It was in the same area that a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, was sunk in March, killing 46 sailors. Seoul blamed a North Korean torpedo attack; the North has denied any role.

The problem with the idea that North Korea was simply responding in kind to a test shot landing in North Korean territorial waters is that means they responded by bombarding civilian positions, not the ships taking part in the exercise who allegedly would have fired the errant test shots. It simply doesn't hold water.

Meanwhile, some in the South may find comfort in thinking North Korea wasn't behind this, because then they would feel better in not taking some of the tougher choices described in many news outlets, including the Christian Science Monitor.

I've already proposed the Kushibo Plan, but if Lee takes too long to respond, I'll have to devise a non-military massive retaliation.