'Mr
K' shows Korea's Cold War
lingers By Yong Kwon
The likelihood of mutual destruction does
not preclude violent clashes between two armed
forces; particularly if the opposing sides believe
that the other presents an existential threat. In
fact when the threshold and cost for total war
remains at an existential level, conventional
warfare is the natural default for smaller gains.
This was the case during the Cold War when
the superpowers of the bipolar world maintained an
enormous conventional force with military statutes
dictating their movements in the case of a hot
conflict; and it certainly still remains the case
on the Korean Peninsula today. [1]
With
North Korean artillery and missiles placed well
within range of Seoul and South Korea firmly
protected within the American
nuclear umbrella, military
parity is held on the peninsula; nonetheless, the
conflict over the Northern Limitation Line spurs a
need for both sides to advance conventional arms
to defend non-existential interests.
The
double blow to the South Korean military in 2010
with the sinking of the Cheonan naval
corvette and the shelling of the Yeonpyeong Island
revealed vulnerabilities in the country's capacity
to defend its outlying interests. Therefore,
Seoul's vast efforts to publicize its advanced
military prowess through military deployment and
sale of arms could only be expected. The attacks
present strong impetuses for the South Korean
navy's deployment of its new AEGIS cruisers to the
Indian Ocean and its strong drive to export the
T-50 training aircraft abroad.
The drive
to uphold a conventional force capable of
displacing a numerically advantageous Korean
People's Army has always been there. The end of
the Cold War did not relieve the pressure on the
Korean Peninsula, but instead presented new areas
and incentives for the South to further overwhelm
North Korea.
The bolstering of
conventional capabilities appears to have
transcended even party lines in the chaotic
politics of South Korea. A telling anecdote was
recently revealed about Seoul's drive to illegally
import intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)
from the former Soviet space for research
purposes. [2]
According to a South Korean
businessman who chose to remain anonymous, the
South Korean Agency for National Security Planning
(ANSP; today this agency is referred to as the
National Intelligence Service) recruited him to
utilize his business connections in the Russian
Federation to bring back decommissioned missiles
that were supposed to be scrapped.
Mr "K"
had been spending time in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
since 1996, scrapping decommissioned Soviet
vessels and importing the metal for the Pohang
Iron and Steel Company. When the Russian
authorities authorized his company to scrap Soviet
ballistic missiles formerly stationed in Ukraine,
South Korean intelligence agents approached him
with the highly secretive assignment.
Since building the first ICBMs in 1956,
the Soviet Union had been a leader in missile
development and the Russian Federation inherited
the lethal stockpile in complete political and
economic disarray. Weapons like the R-36 and
UR-100N with an operational range well over 10,000
kilometers and RT-2PM Topol with a three stage
solid fuel propellant capable of carrying a 550
kiloton warhead were weapons that the world looked
at with envy; and domestic conditions in Russia
provided an opportunity too valuable for the South
Korean defense agencies to forgo.
With
ANSP agents assisting him from Vladivostok, Mr "K"
set about putting into motion plans to smuggle the
Cold War's most advanced weapons to South Korea.
In order to evade suspicions of Russian military
staff and FSB (Federal Security Service) agents,
Mr "K" explained that metals used in missiles were
highly valued by Korean shipping companies and he
paid around $700,000 to commanders of Russian
missile bases to ''not ask questions'' about his
business ventures. (That was a sweet deal for the
commanders as at that time, with Russia in
financial crisis and its economy in collapse, the
cost of purchasing a three-bedroom apartment in
the Russian Far East was about $6,000).
Moving only by night to evade satellite
detection from both the Russian and US
governments, Mr "K" and his associates hid two
propellants and enough components to build a whole
ICBM among 5,000 tons of scrap metal that he
regularly exported to South Korea. In November of
1998, the first shipment of ballistic missile
components arrived in Inchon harbor and was
secretly moved to ANSP research facilities.
Mr "K" did two more runs on behalf of
ANSP, in December of 2000 and November of 2001,
succeeding in bringing back more intricate pieces
of the ICBM including three more propulsion
engines and parts of the nozzle. He had even
received a medal from the then head of the ANSP,
Lee Jongchan, "for contributing to national
security".
Problems occurred, however, in
2007 when the Russian Federation denied Mr K's
re-entry to the Russian Far East on the
(well-grounded) suspicion that he was engaged in
espionage. With vast amount of his fortune and
business in the Russian Far East, he immediately
appealed to the South Korean Foreign Ministry;
however, perhaps out of concern for blowing a
suspicion into a full inquiry in Russia, the South
Korean government refused to intervene on his
behalf. Finally, after years of frustration and
unfruitful appeals, Mr "K" decided to bring into
to the open the nature of his job at the turn of
the millennium.
It is interesting to note
that all this occurred in the heyday of the Kim
Dae-jung administration, when peace and
reconciliation were much-vaunted objectives in
inter-Korean dialogue. In essence, the whole
smuggling affairs brings to light the very nature
of the struggle between North and South Korea, as
an intractable conflict between two states that
simply cannot trust the other.
The
strangest part about the inter-Korean arms race is
how the two states result in directly contributing
to one another's weapons acquirement. In the
process of selling and jointly producing the S-300
intercept ballistic missile with South Korea's
Samsung Group, some of the missile components were
leaked to North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to
independently develop the KN-06 surface-to-air
missile, capable of targeting any aircraft around
Seoul from across the border. [3]
Amid the
mounting stakes of war between the Koreas, last
year's attacks along the Northern Limitation Line
was a fresh reminder that military parity still
provided room for skirmishes and for small scale
hot wars to continue in the Korean Cold War. South
Korea had been no less prepared than the North
Koreans in preparing for combat, but more
restrained from displaying their capabilities
through provocations.
Regardless of
breakthroughs in diplomacy, it is unforeseeable
that either states will abandon their pursuit of
advanced weapons technology and intrigue in the
near future. The essence of the conflict is the
raison d'้tat of both states, thus one should
expect the legacies of the Korean War to outlive
the Cold War far into the future.
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