JEJU-DO—Just weeks after the New York Philharmonic tried to bring a little harmony to Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il has once again begun making noise about attacking South Korea.
In statements from Pyongyang released this week, the rotund little North Korean despot has insulted new South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, threatened “catastrophic consequences” if Lee continues to push for stronger ties with Washington, and, in a flourish of rhetoric that makes him worthy of comparison with Iranian president (and sometime blogger!) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pledged to turn the South to “ashes” with military strikes.
He’s backed up his words by expelling 11 South Korean officials from an industrial park in Kaesong north of the DMZ, and by launching a volley of short-range missiles in the West Sea, where dozens of soldiers from both sides died in naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002. He’s promised to suspend all relations with the South if Lee doesn’t back down in his resolve, and even gotten his state-controlled KCNA news agency (which, oddly, I can’t seem to access from here) to declare that the peninsula is on the “brink of war.”
So is it saber-rattling, or should I be losing sleep at night listening for the whine of nuclear bombers over Jeju? Most observers seem to think it’s the former, that Kim is just doing what he can to gauge how far Lee will go to make good on the hard-line rhetoric he loosed during the presidential campaign. Yet many agree this is the worst that relations between the two countries have been in almost a decade, and few would argue that Korea’s scarred midriff is as likely a spot as any for the gastrointestinal rumblings of political posturing to erupt into the full-scale indigestion of warfare.
I didn’t actually find out about the threats until today, which goes to show both how easy it is to fall into a news abyss when surrounded by a foreign language, and how fast the headline turnover is on the BBC, Google and New York Times homepages, where I tend to go for my daily morning news fix. My regular routine is to check these sites to ensure that no one is currently trying to blow up the world, then move on to email, blogs or work. Clearly, at the moment, the mainstream news media doesn’t expect the bickering between the Koreas to result in any carnage worthy of the big fonts.
Kim Jong-il is the easy one to blame here, given that’s he is at least partially bat-shit insane (and I apply that to anyone who wants to make a significant segment of the world population believe that he is a god; and yes, I’m looking at you, L. Ron). The tougher question is, what does Lee really hope to achieve by puffing up his chest and making tough-guy faces at Pyongyang? Recent six-party talks on denuclearization have been fragile, but trying to strong-arm a regime that historically is as likely to step down and concede defeat as it is to throw a Fourth of July parade seems dangerously in-line with the Bush administration’s cowboy stance towards foreign policy.
Lee has promised to reinvigorate South Korea’s economy, and while markets here have yet to register the war of words as a real economic factor, it wouldn’t take much—a few bullets fired, a fight over a poplar tree—to scare away foreign investors. If Lee’s looking to secure support for fellow conservatives ahead of the April 9 general elections, he should be wary of alienating new constituents with tactics that veer too drastically and too quickly away from the Sunshine Policy pursued by the South’s last two administrations. Then again, polls suggest South Korean voters seem intent on giving Lee’s Grand National Party a massive victory, so maybe he’s seeing an opportunity to flex his muscles and come out with the nation in a political headlock.
Meanwhile, the debate among friends here revolves around whether, if Kim were to attack the South, Jeju would be the last target, or the first. Being separate from the mainland, it would allow Kim to make his point while keeping the threat somewhat removed from the capital, where almost all politically influential Southerners live. On the other hand, it’s pretty far from Pyongyang, and there are still a whack of U.S. planes here waiting to blow off steam that’s been building up for the last 50 years.
The whole mess boils down to a rough start for Lee Myung-bak (which he already had, given accusations of corruption during the campaign), and a poor chance for South Korea’s politics to transcend either the name-calling with the North that has been a staple for fifty-plus years, or the tendency to foment dissatisfaction among the voting public because of stupidity, rashness or self-interest; note that the exchange was initially sparked by a statement by the chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff indicating that Seoul would take pre-emptive military action if the North’s nuclear ambitions started to pose a serious threat.
Then again, it’s likely that Kim’s bellicosity has less to do with Lee Myung-bak and the South Korean general elections than with a different electoral race. November is fast approaching, and from the media coverage, you’d think the official presidential campaign in the U.S. had already been going on for three months. Amidst all the nattering about U.S. imperialism, envoys from Washington and Pyongyang are set to meet next week to continue talks on North Korea’s disarmament. Maybe this is all just Kim Jong-Il way of saying to Ms. Clinton and Mrs. Obama and McCain, Hey, remember me? Don’t forget: I’m still a pain in your ass.
At any rate, it’s fine blog fodder—although not as funny as stuff like this:
In light of which, I propose a new strategy for Seoul: broadcasting that video onto giant screens erected near the DMZ, and claiming that the God of Thunder is officially backing the South. You have to believe that dude could repel missiles with his cymbal crashes. Maybe even just his hair.
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