Korea knows the West lacks killer touch
By Sunny Lee
BEIJING - South Korea media say the West could've ended the fight sooner in
Libya and saved much bloodshed if it had just taken out leader Muammar Gaddafi,
with the implication that politically-correct concerns over assassinating
dictators could have similar impacts in a conflict with North Korea.
Baek Seung-joo, a television commentator on defense issues in South Korea, on
October 27 penned a column in South Korea's newspaper JoongAng Ilbo about the
lessons Seoul could learn from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's demise.
"Even after the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] and opposition
civilian troops took over Libya's field military forces, infrastructure, and
population, they were still not in a conclusive
state of winning the battle for quite a while," he noted.
He also lamented the number of military casualties on both sides, lamenting
that both the delay and the deaths were "because they [NATO] couldn't get rid
of Gaddafi at the early stage of the battle".
Gaddafi was the "strategic center" on which the NATO and National Transitional
Council (NTC) forces should have been focused, said Baek, a senior analyst with
South Korea's state-affiliated Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. He cited
US airpower strategist John Warden's theory, which states that war ends
effectively when the "strategic center" of either side of the two warring
states is eliminated or becomes paralyzed.
Baek praised the combat merits of unmanned US aircraft, concluding that future
war winning strategies will be characterized by a rapid conclusion of the
conflict through focusing on paralyzing the "strategic center" of the enemy,
plus more utilization of unmanned air assets.
While Baek did not mention North Korea or Kim Jong-il, the implication was
obvious. Should war erupt, Seoul could prioritize a calculated strike to take
out the Dear Leader as the North's "strategic center".
By pursuing such a strategy, the South would be taking a page from the North's
playbook.
In 1968, Pyongyang dispatched a 31-member special force squad to Seoul to "cut
[president] Park Chung-hee's throat", a literal wording by one of the North
Korean squad members who was captured alive. In 1983, a team of three military
commandos was sent to Burma, now called Myanmar, to assassinate then president
Chun Doo-hwan. A hidden bomb targeting Chun exploded, killing 17 high-ranking
South Korean officials and four Burmese nationals at the mausoleum of
independence hero Aung San. Chun had fatefully departed from his residence
three minutes late than originally scheduled.
Seoul wanted to retaliate in kind to both provocations, but each time the US
talked it down. In the aftermath of the 1968 incident, Park ordered the air
force to carry out a surgical strike on a key North Korean military asset. But
the US reportedly found out and halted the plan, South Korean military
officials have since revealed.
After the 1983 assassination attempt in Myanmar, Chun vowed "stern measures",
with loyal subordinates from his alma mater, the Korea Military Academy
devising a clandestine plan dubbed "Operation Weed". The plot involved sending
a team of 30 special force soldiers into the North to blow-up the residence of
Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea and the father of current leader Kim
Jong-il. Once again the US became involved; fearing full-scale conflict on the
Korean Peninsula, Washington persuaded Chun against the operation.
The US has retained war-time operational control over South Korean forces since
the Korean War (1950-1953). The South cannot go to war with North Korea without
US approval, that is, until April 2012, when operational control is scheduled
to be transferred to Seoul.
An assassination of Kim to bring about swift victory is a recurrent theme on
South Korea's conservative-leaning websites and blogs. "There is only one
solution. We should send assassins to kill Kim Jong-il and [heir-apparent] Kim
Jong-eun," said one commentator on conservative critic Ji Man-won's blog.
"Israel's Mossad assassinates enemies. Why can't we? Just like the killing of
Somali pirates is justified, the killing of Kim Jong-il is also equally
justified," said another.
Kim's worst fear is indeed "military coup and assassination attempts",
according to South Korean conglomerate Hyundai Asan's chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun
in a February 13, 2009 US diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks.
South Korean media is speculating that the seemingly savage nature of Gaddafi's
demise has troubled Kim even more. The Libyan leader was dragged from a hiding
place in a water pipe, taken prisoner by NTC fighters and seemingly stripped,
tortured and shot dead.
The newspaper Chosun Ilbo noted that Gaddafi was the same age as Kim and that
"the two have a lot of things in common". However, analysts are skeptical about
the feasibility of actually taking down the Dear Leader without devastating
consequences.
Sohn Kwang-joo, former editor-in-chief of the Daily NK, a Seoul-based
publication focusing on North Korea, said the comparing Libya with North Korea
was a flawed intellectual exercise. "Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il are both dictators
and both have had similar traits in running their respective countries. But in
terms of how strong and impenetrable the system is, Gaddafi is not a match for
Kim Jong-il," said Sohn.
"In terms of the sophistication of ideological indoctrination and maintaining
the oppressive political system, I would say if Gaddafi is a high school kid,
Kim Jong-il is way up on the PhD level," Sohn said.
Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor of Korean politics and foreign policy at Korea
University in Seoul, agreed: "In terms of openness to the outside world, North
Korea is much more isolated than Libya. In North Korea, there's fear among the
public for the regime. The fear also conditions them to behave loyal to the
system. Comparing Libya with North Korea doesn't square well with the different
depths of reality the two nations have," said Yoo. "For the time being, North
Korea's system is unlikely to face a meltdown like Libya."
North Korea's state-controlled media has yet to mention the Libyan turmoil and
the death of Gaddafi, but on October 31 the Workers' Party's official Rodong
Sinmun newspaper ran an editorial that said: "Even a great race led by a hero
faces decline.
There are also a number of cases in which a political party with several
millions of members or even an undefeated military collapsed. [However] we will
continue our struggle and innovate as the offspring of Comrade Kim Il-sung. We
will hand down our glory to generations to come." South Korean analysts
speculate the piece was an oblique reference to Libya.
Analysts say the Kim family has worked for decades on consolidating a system
that makes a coup difficult.
Jin Jingyi, an analyst on North Korea at Peking University in Beijing, says
there are no guarantees the country would collapse with Kim's assassination.
"That's a very dangerous idea," Jin said. "North Korea is very different from
Libya. Outside people find it hard to believe, but in North Korea the system is
such that people believe they and their leader share the same destiny. You
might think that something similar that happened to Libya's Gaddafi or
Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu can also happen in North Korea. That's a sheer
impossibility."
Pan Wei, director of the Center for Chinese and Global Affairs at Peking
University, said another difference between Libya and North Korea was their
geopolitical situation. "Libya is a small, weak nation under the nose of
European countries. North Korea is not. More importantly, the Korean Peninsula
is located at a strategic position where the interests of big powers converge.
The tension on the Korean Peninsula is also a by-product of the very tension
among the big powers in the region. For example, Russia and China will not
allow what happened in Libya to happen in North Korea, given that North Korea
is located near their borders."
Unlike Libya, analysts say an attack on North Korea will only become likely if
it becomes a more credible military threat. "If North Korea launches a
long-range missile that can reach the western coast of the United States or
upgrades its nuclear capability, which is perceived by the US as posing a
threat to the US, then the US might consider a military option," said Sohn.
However, Evans Revere, the US State Department's former principal deputy
assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, rejects even
this notion, particularly pre-emptive bombing of the North's nuclear sites.
"How can this be possibly an option?" Revere told this writer. "Nobody I know
is arguing that. The bombing of North Korea's nuclear site would risk, for
example, North Korea's revenge, which would sacrifice one third of the South
Korean population," he said.
"An attack on North Korea, an inter-Korean military conflict, or an active
policy of regime change on North Korea - these are not options," Revere said.
Sunny Lee (sleethenational@gmail.com) is a Seoul-born columnist
and journalist; he has degrees from the US and China.
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