WASHINGTON - North Korea stands to be a
major winner if Israeli hotheads lose patience and
drive Israel into attacking Iranian nuclear
facilities.
With Iran said in some
quarters to be only months away from emerging as
the world's 10th nuclear weapons power, North
Korea reportedly is producing more middle-range
missiles for export for Iran's defense in the
event of a Middle East war that would make the
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan look like brush
fires.
North Korea also is producing more
missiles for export to Syria, whose embattled
regime has the support of Iran and would be a
major Iranian ally in the event of a shooting
conflict between Israel and Iran.
It's
against that background that James Clapper, the United
States Director of
National Intelligence, warned that North Korea,
ostensibly under new "supreme leader" Kim
Jong-eun, would carry on business as usual when it
came to exporting missiles, for years one of the
North's biggest-selling export products. Clapper,
at a congressional hearing, specifically cited
Iran and Syria as two markets for North Korean
missiles and supporting material.
North
Korean missile exports are believed to have shrunk
over the past year as revolt in Arab countries
that were once major clients has reduced the
number of potential markets.
Another
problem for the North is how to ship the missiles,
or their components, against the threat of
blockage of such shipments by nations banded
together in the Proliferation Security Initiative
under which countries can block shipments.
North Korean vessels have been turned back
in a couple of highly publicized incidents, but
many more are believed to have finished the long
journey. North Korea is also believed to have
shipped missiles and other sophisticated weapons
via its only real ally, China.
Analysts
for years have suspected China of opening up its
air space to North Korean planes with military
cargoes on board - a claim that China has denied.
The prospect of broadening sales of
missiles to long-time clients Iran and Syria,
however, is just one way in which North Korea
would benefit from war in the Middle East. With US
forces inevitably drawn into conflict there, the
North could be sure the US would not want to take
any chances on risking a second Korean war and
might want to transfer a major portion of the
28,500 US troops still left in the South to the
Middle East.
At the same time, Kim
Jong-eun has been visiting military units, giving
a sense that he identifies with the troops while
also trying to show he's really in charge and
wants to learn much more than his father was able
to teach him in the last two years before Kim
Jong-il's death was announced on December 19.
The appearance of the pudgy Jong-eun,
straining at the seams of a dark blue suit
designed to make him look all the more like his
grandfather, the late Kim Il-sung, definitely
shows his commitment to songun, the
"military first" policy propounded by Kim Jong-il
in his strongest role - that of chairman of the
National Defense Commission.
Kim
Jong-eun's aging handlers, believed to be led by
Jang Song-thaek, the husband of his father's
sister, seem anxious to demonstrate the continuity
of songun but also to remain open for
dialogue - on their terms. The sense is growing
that North Korea might be open somehow to resuming
six-party talks on its nuclear program, last held
more than three years ago, or even to an exchange
with South Korea.
Dialogue, though, won't
come easy in view of the North's efforts at
intimidation in the run-up to two important
anniversaries - the 70th of the birth this month
of Kim Jong-il and the 100th in April of the birth
of Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. North Korea
emitted mixed signals in an extraordinary "open
questionnaire" that it put out this week posing
questions for South Korean leaders.
In the
name of "the policy department of the National
Defense Commission", which Kim Jong-il as chairman
once made the center of his power, began with the
rhetorical question of whether the "traitors" led
by South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak were
"ready to deeply repent of its heinous crimes
concerning the great loss to the Korean nation and
make apologies for them" - an allusion to South
Korea's refusal to mourn the death of Kim Jong-il
while banning delegations from going to Pyongyang
to offer condolences.
The only exceptions
were a delegation led by the widow of Kim
Dae-jung, the president who initiated the
"Sunshine" policy of reconciliation, and the widow
of Chung Mong-hun, the chairman of Hyundai Asan,
the company that Chung Ju-yung, founder of the
Hyundai empire, formed to do business with North
Korea.
The second question harked back to
the inter-Korean summits between Kim Dae-jung and
his successor, Roh Moo-hyun, both of whom went to
Pyongyang for meetings with Kim Jong-il that ended
in flowery statements full of promises that would
never be fulfilled. Did the South Korean
"authorities" intend to live up to the "joint
declaration" of June 15, 2000, in which Kim
Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il vowed to enter a new era
of peace and reconciliation?
Question
three asked, "Can the Lee group promise the world
it can no longer hurt the DPRK [Democratic
People's Republic of Korea] over Cheonan
warship case and Yeonpyeong Island shelling
incident.?"
That was a particularly loaded
reference to the sinking of the South Korean
corvette the Cheonan in March 2010 in which
46 sailors died - an episode that South Korea
blames on a torpedo fired by a North Korean midget
submarine - and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island
in the Yellow Sea in November 2010 that killed
four South Koreans.
The North has denied
anything to do with the shelling of the
Cheonan and said the South provoked the
attack on the island by firing cannons close to
the North Korean shore several kilometers away.
Question four was whether "the south
Korean authorities could make a policy decision to
stop big joint military exercises targeted against
the DPRK?" This is a reference to annual war
games, many conducted on computers, involving
thousands of US and South Korean troops - the
lower case "s" is no mistake.
Behind the
bluff and bluster of such tendentious questions
presumably lies the hand of Jang Song-thaek. He
remains vice chairman of the National Defense
Commission on which Kim Jong-eun does not have a
seat. Jong-eun, still in his late 20s, is acting
chairman of the military commission of the
Workers' Party - not regarded as the key post -
even though he is referred to as "supreme leader"
and "supreme commander".
If the questions
seemed deliberately contrived to defy and upset
the South Koreans, they also suggested that
somehow dialogue on one level or another might be
possible. They also indicated that dialogue would
probably go nowhere while Kim Jong-eun went on
ingratiating himself with the military - and the
US worried about spreading its forces too thin in
the event of a war that Washington doesn't want
with Iran.
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