Korean crisis takes a turn
for the
worse By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The upsurge of war in the Middle
East - from Israel to Lebanon to Iraq - makes the
test-firing of seven missiles by North Korea look
like a fireworks display for rhetorical effect.
As headlines of the missile shots fade in
a miasma of talk about six-party talks on North
Korea's nuclear weapons, however, signs point
toward a worsening crisis. North Korea has kicked
Southern workers out of a hotel building project
at the Mount Kumkang
resort region and has pulled
officials out of the dialogue office at the
Gaesong economic zone - two major points of
contact between the two Koreas.
While
North Korea shows no signs of shutting down
tourist trips to Mount Kumkang or closing South
Korean factories at Gaesong, the North is moving
to drop Hyundai Asan as the prime contractor for
both the Kumkang and Gaesong projects.
The
sense is that Hyundai Asan, worried about all the
money it's losing in North Korea, is not coming
through with the requisite gifts and favors for
North Korean managers - and ultimately for the
Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong-il.
South
Korea for now is sticking by Hyundai Asan, the
main mover behind the opening of the North to
Southern trade and investment since the late
founder of the Hyundai empire, Chung Ju-yung,
opened up tours to Kumkang nearly eight years ago.
Nonetheless, South Korean Unification Minister Lee
Jeong-seok would clearly love to return to the
status quo ante - that is, before the
missile shots.
Lee was quick to point out
limitations of the United Nations Security Council
resolution condemning the missile shots and
forbidding members from trading in military
technology or components with North Korea.
Although the resolution bans "shipments of
equipment and financial support related to
missiles and weapons of mass destruction", he
argued, it was not "demanding or asking for
sanctions on general economic exchanges".
Playing down the significance of the
missile tests, Lee said the "current issue", as he
delicately phrased it, did not justify action by
the government to block such economic projects as
operations by South Korean factories in the
Gaesong zone just inside North Korea next to the
truce village of Panmunjom.
He clearly
longs to make amends for the breakdown of talks
with a high-level Northern delegation in Busan at
which he told the North Koreans that the South
would not be able to act on their demand for half
a million tons of rice and several hundred
thousand tons of fertilizer as well as shoes and
other items.
The suspension of food aid is
no doubt the reason for North Korea's punishing
the South for its lack of generosity with a
calculated show of rage. It's far from clear,
though, how far North Korea is willing to go on
with the show before agreeing to return to
six-party talks - all the North really has to do
to get the South to come through with all that
rice.
Some observers fear North Korea may
be warming up for some more missile shots - an
attention-getter that might even share front-page
headlines with the Middle East for a few days.
The silence of Kim, who has made no public
appearances since the six-shot salvo of July 4,
adds to the mystery of North Korea's intentions.
Is the North's leader planning another
show of defiance against the world, notably the
Chinese, after refusing to see a Chinese
delegation that journeyed to Pyongyang at the
beginning of July to try to reason with him? Or
could he be contemplating a greater confrontation
that would force China to take sides with him as
conservative pressure builds in Japan for stern
measures that might even include a preemptive
strike on North Korea's missile sites?
The
South Korean Ministry of National Defense no
longer counts North Korea as "the enemy" in its
annual white paper, but the implications for the
South are obvious. South Korea's defense planners
are quietly setting up a counter-missile defense
system while the government publicly tries to keep
the process of reconciliation with North Korea
from falling completely off the
rails.
South Korean military analysts say
the Ministry of National Defense authorized
establishment of a counter-missile network almost
immediately after North Korea test-fired its
seventh missile a day after having fired the
others, including the dreaded Taepodong 2. The
command would be headquartered in the central
region and would "boost South Korea's
anti-artillery capabilities sharply".
One
reason for the perceived need for such a command
is that North Korea now fields one entire
artillery corps and 30 brigades, far overpowering
the South in terms of artillery as well as its
vaunted Scud and Rodong missiles. The failure of
the Taepodong 2 to last more than 42 seconds in
flight was seen as irrelevant considering it's for
long-range attack while Scud and Rodong missiles,
while notoriously inaccurate, could land just
about anywhere in the South.
The newly
established command, called the Army Tactical
Missile System, will have overall responsibility
for South Korea's artillery, including
surface-to-surface missiles and multiple rocket
launchers. Its headquarters, for what the South
Korean military cites as tactical and strategic
reasons, will be in the central region, out of
artillery range of North Korea's big guns above
the Demilitarized Zone just 65 kilometers from
Seoul.
Military sources say South Korea
decided to set up the command after close
consultation with US defense officials. South
Korea is asking the United States to guarantee
missile strength at least equivalent to that of
Japan, which the United States is arming with SM3s
on Aegis-class destroyers as well as Patriot
missile bases on land to counter the increased
North Korean threat.
Increasing reliance
on the US for basic defense against an increasing
North Korean missile threat, as seen in its
successful launch of the mid-range Rodong and
short-range Scud missiles, belies South Korea's
efforts at lessening dependence on the US
alliance.
The South Korean defense
establishment's need for missile defense hardly
disguises the steady deterioration of the US-South
Korean alliance. In response to Seoul's insistence
on taking command of South Korean troops in
combat, the US envisages its own independent
military command entirely separate from that of
South Korean forces.
The commander of US
forces in South Korea, General B B Bell, talking
to a security forum of the South Korean National
Assembly, said the United States and South Korea
were on the way to doing away with the Combined
Forces Command in the next six years. Lawmakers
quoted Bell as saying the US and South Korea were
well on the way to setting up two separate command
structures. Jettisoning the Combined Forces
Command (CFC) would carry much more than symbolic
significance.
Hong Seong-pyo, chief of the
military affairs research team at Korea National
Defense University, said South Korean operational
control would mean "maintenance of the CFC will be
impossible and the status of the US Forces Korea
will likely be changed". South Korean commanders
believed the CFC would be ineffective if the US
and South Korea had separate commands, while US
officers asked how the two military structures
could function effectively in war without a single
overall commander.
Planning for the two
commands gained momentum amid a general impasse
with the US on a wide range of issues. Among them:
talks on a free-trade agreement that broke up
after the US team leader, Wendy Cutler, called a
South Korean scheme that would limit drug imports
even more severely than now as "a step backward".
Bell, in an interview with the US military
newspaper Stars and Stripes, said he hoped to have
a "roadmap" for establishing separate US and South
Korean commands by October, but he was far from
certain about meeting that deadline. The critical
question, he said, was how US air and naval forces
could coordinate with South Korean ground troops
in bringing all their enormous firepower to bear.
He acknowledged "we're not even close" to the
answer.
One problem that may be
intractable is that the US had to shut down the
range for air-to-ground firing as a result of
severe leftist protests several years ago, and
South Korea has not found a new range.
"We
are not going to allow American aircrews to go
into a war or to propose that they can deter a war
unless they're trained and ready," Bell told the
South Korean security forum.
He believes
North Korea has amply demonstrated its threat to
the South. Discounting the failure of the
long-range Taepodong, he said the other missile
tests had shown "their readiness to be able to
shoot those missiles relatively accurately, at
night, in quick succession, effectively".
While South Korean defense officials
refrain from scare talk, both the US and South
Korean defense commands appear to have gotten the
message.
"If there was an argument for a
more capable missile defense, they made it very
effectively for us," Bell said. "Until there's a
peace treaty on this peninsula, I think we should
be able to defend ourselves against them."
Journalist Donald Kirk has been
covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces
in Northeast Asia - for more than 30
years.
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