N Korea
blast: The only certainty is doubt By David Scofield
Two massive explosions in five months, one at a
train station and one in the mountains, have rocked
North Korea and caused rampant speculation about what's
really going on in the Hermit Kingdom. The details of
this latest blast in the military region near the
Chinese border are not known, but North Korean officials
told a visiting British diplomat that it had to blow up
a mountain in order to build a hydro-electric project.
Hmm.
The explosion last Thursday occurred in a
remote, closely guarded military zone, reputed to be the
location of missiles, even illicit nuclear projects. It
took place in the North Korean county of Kim Hyeong-jik,
named after Korean leader Kim Jong-il's grandfather. It
sent up a huge non-nuclear cloud at midnight on the
anniversary of the founding of the North Korean state 56
years ago.
The extreme control North Korea's
leaders have over information dissemination within and,
by extension, beyond the country guarantees more
questions than answers in the wake of such detonations.
Details surrounding the rail explosion in Ryongchon mere
hours after Kim Jong-il's train passed through on his
return trip from China in April are still elusive.
Official reports then, as now, seem implausible, but
without further evidence, the world's attention moves
on, the truth buried like the untold numbers of victims
involved.
Of course, stories and rumors continue
to swirl. The train "accident" in April was an
assassination attempt, many believe, pointing to Kim's
crackdown on the use of mobile phones as evidence.
Others, including many North Korean refugees, believe it
was actually part of plan by Kim to create the illusion
of an assassination attempt and use the event as
justification to purge certain senior party members. And
what of the Syrian technicians who were reported to be
among the dead? Was this proof that that disaster was
the result of a missile shipment gone awry? The first
victim of war, even a "cold" one, is the truth.
The truth is no more malleable than in North
Korea; facts being what the leadership, in the absence
of vocal observers, decide them to be. Of course, not
everyone is in the dark. The United States, China and
Russia all have the remote sensing technology necessary
to monitor the area for clues to what exactly ignited in
the far north. Explosives leave chemical signatures that
are carried aloft; blasts of different types leave
behind characteristic scorches and craters.
Indeed, this mysterious event, like the
Ryongchon disaster three months ago, sheds more light on
the relationship between South Korea and the United
States than it does of North Korea. When news of the
detonation first began to break in South Korea on the
weekend, anonymous sources within the South's defense
establishment soon began commenting on the lack of
information moving their way from their US counterparts.
The United States is South Korea's most valuable
intelligence-gathering asset, providing, as it does,
intelligence concerning North Korean military assets and
maneuvers. But it seems the data are becoming more
heavily vetted, a likely consequence of South Korea's
growing ties with the North. The US is probably
increasingly unsure how much of what it knows is making
its way to North Korea, which would treasure US
intelligence and would like to know just what Washington
has gleaned and what it hasn't. Unexplained events like
these explosions also highlight the fundamental changes
that have taken place in the relationship between the US
and South Korea.
In the final analysis, it's
clear that again North Korea has managed to leave the
world with more questions than answers. At the time of
the explosion, British Foreign Office minister Bill
Remmel was in Pyongyang to engage North Korea on
human-rights issues. Immediately after word of the
explosion, the British delegation "demanded", according
to the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), some explanation
- and it got one. North Korean Foreign Minister Paek
Nam-sun issued a statement indicating the explosion was
part of the planned demolition of a mountain, destroyed,
we are told, in preparation for a new hydro-electric
project. In other words, the North Koreans decided to
pack a mountain full of explosives (estimates put the
explosive power at 1,000 tons) and waited until almost
midnight on the eve of the country's foundation
anniversary to level the mountain - yet none of this was
broadcast, and so the domestic propaganda value of such
an explosive display lost.
The implausibility of
hydro-electric projects aside - South Korean analysts
indicate the explosion took place in an area unsuitable
for water-powered electricity generation - the statement
does indicate one point: the North Koreans are expecting
commercial satellites to produce pictures of a mountain
removed, a large crater similar to what intelligence
analysts have already hinted is evident from satellite
photos.
It's also interesting that the mountain
in question is set in the middle of one of North Korea's
most heavily guarded and restricted counties. The whole
area is a "military camp", Chinese observers have
commented. In fact, according to the Nuclear Threat
Initiative, the region is thought to house North Korea's
medium-range missiles in a complex of tunnels deep
underground. The county is also the location of sites
suspected to house North Korea's highly enriched uranium
(HEU) project, the catalyst behind the latest nuclear
crisis. North Korea admits it has a nuclear program, but
denies that it involves enriched uranium.
An
example of just how far the speculation goes: Some
wonder whether it was possible that the
three-to-four-kilometer-wide non-nuclear mushroom cloud,
the first clue of the explosion last Thursday, was
actually the result of a precision attack by either
China or the US on these suspect sites, a prelude to the
upcoming but still not scheduled six-party talks. The
negotiations are aimed at persuading North Korea to
dismantle its nuclear program in return for security
guarantees, alternative energy supplies and massive
economic assistance.
With no radioactive fallout
reported by any of North Korea's neighbors, nor from
regional technologies designed to monitor such events,
all indications are a conventional explosion of
unconventional magnitude - similar to the Massive
Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB) the United States tested in
the spring of 2003.
Designed to replace the
Vietnam-era, 12,000-pound (5,440-kilogram) "Daisy
Cutter" bomb, the US Air Force's new 22,000-pound
(10,000kg), Global Positioning System (GPS)-guided MOAB,
applied in multiples, could create a conventional
explosion similar to that which has been described to
have happened in North Korea. Tests of a single MOAB
(those who witnessed it referred to it as the Mother of
All Bombs) in 2003 showed that the weapon created a
mushroom cloud that extended about three kilometers in
the air, yet left a relatively small seismic signature.
Of course, that MOAB tested in Florida was designed, as
the name suggests, to burst above ground, but the crater
- the missing North Korean mountain - suggests a ground
or below detonation: subterranean force projection? The
USAF includes "deeply buried targets" within the
10-tonne weapon's target range; it is a penetrating
weapon capable of delivering the explosive power of
18,000 pounds (more than 8,000kg) of Tritonol to targets
deep beneath the surface.
Such an attack from
beyond, especially if it involved China, would likely
not elicit an immediate, direct response from North
Korea. To acknowledge an attack would mean acknowledging
the target, and would also create pressure to retaliate,
a hasty response that could spell the end of the Kim
regime.
Of course, this could also be a
demonstration of North Korea's conventional firepower,
though the efficacy of such a demonstration, tremendous
explosive energy in an undeliverable format, seems a bit
hollow. Or perhaps human error, an accident, an
ammunition depot or arms factory ignited because of
faulty equipment and carelessness, or as the result of
some external catalyst.
In the end, this event,
like the last, will likely be swept aside in days and
weeks to come as a lack of new evidence relegates the
story to the wayside. We may never know the what, why,
how or even who behind the blast.
David
Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute
of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently
conducting post-graduate research at the School of East
Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
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