SEOUL - The specter of a powerful American naval force steaming into the Yellow
Sea escalates the drama of conflict off the Korean Peninsula to a new level of
intensity.
The decision to include the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George
Washington in a strike force of five vessels defies not only North
Korean threats but also the objections of China into what the Chinese have come
to regard as their own sphere of influence.
The USS George Washington, with a combat-ready air wing on board,
arrives Sunday, joining the South Koreans in an exercise that's sure to keep
the waters boiling for five days of war games in the aftermath of North Korea's
artillery barrage on a small South
Korean island on Tuesday.
The show of force will be dramatic, but North Korea is not expected to respond
with gunfire as long as the Americans are operating off South Korea's west
coast. They would not, in any case, be able to do much harm to the Americans,
whose forces will remain well below the Northern Limit Line below which the US
and South Koreans say North Korean ships are banned.
North Korea has breathed fresh outrage, promising to launch attacks against
hostile forces intruding so much as one millimeter into their own waters. It
was on that pretext that North Korea on Tuesday fired 170 shells into an island
populated mainly by fishermen and farmers living near bases where South Korean
marines were operating.
Hours after the barrage, North Korea was boasting of its success in defeating
the South, and the sense now is that the North has made its point. North Korean
forces may strike again anywhere, on sea and along the 160-mile land border
between the two Koreas, taking South Korea and the US by surprise.
Given that strategy, the appearance of USS George Washington in the
Yellow Sea is clearly another act in the drama but not a sign of mounting
hostilities. The US command covered the announcement in a veneer of verbiage
intended to show that the operation was not only "defensive in nature" but
"well planned before yesterday's unprovoked attack".
The purpose, said the command, was "to improve our military interoperability" -
meaning coordination with South Koreans - while demonstrating "the strength of
the Republic of Korea-US alliance and our commitment to regional stability
through deterrence."
The real problem, however, is that the US and South Korea seem incapable of
persuading China to bring enough pressure on North Korea to persuade the North
to pull back from a strategy of intermittent violence and intimidation.
The United States has been pleading with China to bring North Korea into line
as a prerequisite for any consideration of returning to negotiations.
President Barack Obama buttressed American diplomatic gestures during a
half-hour telephone conversation with South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak.
Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, passing on the word from Lee's staff at
the Blue House, said that Obama had told Lee that China needed to take a firm
stand against the North. A Blue House spokesman said the two leaders "agreed
that the indiscriminate attack against the territory of the Republic of Korea
and its civilians was a premeditated provocation".
Neither Obama nor Lee, however, seems willing to go beyond joint exercises.
They apparently did not discuss the critical question of at what stage the
United States would send troops to South Korea's defense with orders to fire
back if North Korean forces fired on South Koreans. Nor have any elements of
the 28,500 Americans in uniform here been ordered to join the South Koreans in
the Yellow Sea on anything other than training exercises.
All that, however, hardly diminishes the medium and long-range problems posed
by a regime in the midst of a leadership transition that one can only guess at.
The current speculation in Seoul is that again Kim Jong-il's son and heir
presumptive, Kim Jong-eun, has spurred on the aggressive policy to show his own
toughness and win support among hard-line generals. The kid, in his late 20s,
would not be giving orders to grizzled generals who got their first taste of
combat in the Korean War, but he could well see his advocacy of unremitting
toughness as a means to show the generals he's ready to take over power
whenever his ailing father leaves the scene.
In a curious footnote to a day of feverish alarm, father and son were reported
yesterday to have been visiting a soybean factory. They also, however, have
been visiting military units in recent months, getting the image of the son
before people who had never heard of him until he appeared at a Workers' Party
Conference and then a parade on October 20 that marked the party's 65th
anniversary.
South Korea's Defense Minister Kim Tae-young supported that theory in light of
North Korea's revelation of a new uranium enrichment plant nearing completion
at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon. The North's aging five-megawatt
reactor has already has already fabricated enough material with plutonium at
its core for up to a dozen warheads, according to intelligence estimates.
Kim said he believed North Korea had staged Tuesday's barrage "to give Kim
Jong-eun the status of a strong leader" while US experts, back in Washington,
reported on their visit to the uranium-enrichment facility on November 12.
As emotions engendered by the attack settled down, South Korea's financial
gurus got down to business as usual. The Bank of Korea said it would inject
funds into the market to combat "excessive herd behavior" - that is, an
instinct to sell off stock in a hurry in response to the attack. The Finance
Ministry put out a statement promising "timely action" in cooperation with the
central bank.
The financial chieftains held what was described as an "emergency meeting."
Their statements suggested fears over the economic fallout may be greater than
those of a wider conflict that many believe is not going to happen while US and
South Korean forces are playing war games off the west coast.
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