North Korea: US fears comical Kim may be all-too-deadly serious
North Korea's blood-curdling threats may seem farcical. But, as Harriet Alexander and Raf Sanchez write, the world is keeping a wary eye on Kim Jong-un.
Some of the images from Kim Jong-un's secretive regime could have been from a Hollywood spoof. In one photograph, the podgy dictator dressed in his buttoned-up suit studied a map, ostentatiously labelled "US Mainland Strike Plan".
Another showed a fleet of hovercrafts rehearsing for a marine landing – pictures which, it was later revealed, had been photoshopped to exaggerate the military strength of North Korea.
Yet when Kim Jong-un's government declared early on Saturday that the "time has come to stage a do-or-die final battle", and declared relations with South Korea to be "at the state of war", the warnings were not being taken lightly in the world's major capitals.
"We've seen reports of a new and unconstructive statement from North Korea. We take these threats seriously and remain in close contact with our South Korean allies," said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.
China appealed for calm, sensing the ratcheting up of tensions, while Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, put it succinctly. "We can simply see the situation getting out of control," he said.
In 2009 North Korea appeared to be preparing to test-fire missiles that would be capable of hitting the US (EPA)
It is tempting to dismiss the sabre-rattling from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, as yet more of the same.
South Korea – the nemesis of the North, which describes the country as a puppet of the US – elected a new prime minister last month, providing the North with an irresistible opportunity to flex its muscles, as it has done each time a new government has come to office.
"Since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace," wrote Victor Cha and David Kang in Foreign Policy magazine.
Others note that, despite anguish at the "state of war" declaration, the two sides have formally remained at war since 1953.
But the peninsula is one of the most heavily-armed military flashpoints in the world, and the North has frequently shown its willingness to push confrontations to the brink.
An estimated 1.2 million people died in the 1950-53 Korean War, but since the armistice that ended it was not a formal peace treaty, the Korean peninsula has technically remained a war zone to this day.
In that time, South Korea has blossomed from a poor, agrarian nation of peasants into the world's 15th largest economy while North Korea is struggling to find a way out of a Cold War chasm that has left it with a per-capita income on par with sub-Saharan Africa.
Furthermore, military experts are sceptical that North Korea is actually capable of launching the attacks they threaten with such venom.
The regime's most successful missile test to date was in 2006, when the Taepodong-2 crashed into the sea after travelling only 250 miles. The United States is more than 3,500 miles away. Narushige Michishita, from Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, isn't convinced North Korea is capable of attacking Guam, Hawaii or the US mainland. But its medium-range Rodong missiles, with a range of about 800 miles, are "operational and credible" and could reach US bases in Japan, he says.
"We know they want intercontinental ballistic missiles, but don't know whether they have them," said James Hardy, Asia Pacific editor for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly.
"They have managed to reverse-engineer Soviet scud missiles, and certainly could attack South Korea and Japan with those. But scuds are very inaccurate and it is old technology. Everything military in the North is veiled in secrecy, so it's impossible to be know exactly what is happening."
Partly because of the uncertainty, there remains a very real concern. Three years ago North Korea launched a surprise attack on the South, sinking the Cheonan warship near the disputed border and killing 46 sailors. Eight months later the North fired dozens of shells at one of its border islands, killing two marines in the worst land attack since the end of the Korean War. Even more worrying are the nuclear tests - the most recent of which, on Feb 12, was double the size of previous tests and led to a new round of UN sanctions.
Barry Pavel, a former senior director for defence policy at the White House's National Security Council, said: "This is a dangerous situation. It's a classic dynamic of deterrence and escalation and I'm sure it's exactly what the Obama administration did not want."
Kim Jong-un, the 30-year-old "Supreme Leader", is still an unknown quantity, having been in power for just over a year following the death of his father Kim Jong-il in December 2011. The country of 24 million people is in itself shrouded in mystery, closed to the world and with an estimated 200,000 held in prison camps. Defectors occasionally escape to the outside world, but their accounts are impossible to confirm and thought to be frequently unreliable.
Another key question is who is actually running the country: is it Kim, or are the country's powerful generals actually pulling the strings?
With the world's fourth largest standing armed forces - some 1.19 million people in active service - North Korea's generals wield immense power. Since taking over, Kim Jong-un has made efforts to model himself on his warmongering grandfather, Kim Il-sung, who founded the professional army and sent agents to try to assassinate the president of South Korea.
Kim Jong-Un smokes a cigarette at the General Satellite Control and Command Center (Reuters)
In his photos he adopts the stances and positioning of his grandfather, while his haircut is also unmistakably similar to that of his hardline ancestor.
Given that we know so little, it is the very secrecy that leads to so much concern in the rest of the world. China is the only country which has any real contact with the rulers of the pariah state – leaving Washington and Seoul to read between the lines and interpret the signs.
Yesterday North Korea threatened to shut down the Kaesong industrial complex – factories just inside its border with the South, with workers from both sides, which is the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
"If the puppet group seeks to tarnish the image of the DPRK (North Korea) even a bit... we will shut down the zone without mercy," said a spokesman for the North's office.
Brian Myers, a North Korea analyst at Dongseo University in South Korea, told The New York Times: "The North says 'If the US or South Korea dare infringe on our territory we will reduce their territory to ashes,' and Seoul responds by saying it will retaliate by bombing Kim Il-sung statues. And so it goes."
The declaration of war published hours earlier used startlingly bellicose language, raging against "the US brigandish ambition for aggression" and vowing that "it will not be limited to a local war, but develop into an all-out war, a nuclear war".
It continued: "They should clearly know that in the era of Marshal Kim Jong-un, the greatest-ever commander, all things are different from what they used to be in the past."
Analysts believe that the North could launch 500,000 rounds of ammunition on the South within the first hour of an attack. Seoul is less than 200 miles from Pyongyang.
Yet around the Itaweon military base in Seoul – the headquarters for the 28,500 American soldiers stationed in South Korea, and therefore "Ground Zero" for any attack – the atmosphere this weekend was apparently calm. "There's nothing much going on here," one American officer said, as he ate lunch in a shopping mall. "We're not even on alert."
Yet on Thursday the US flew two nuclear-capable B2 stealth bombers on an unusual training mission alongside South Korean forces, during which they simulated dropping munitions on an island near the border. In a pointed reminder to Pyongyang of the genuine reach of America's military, the aircraft flew for 37 straight hours on a round-trip flight from Missouri.
On Thursday, two American B2 stealth bombers flew over the Korean peninsula (AP)
Earlier this month, the US announced it was bolstering its stock of missile interceptors along the Pacific coast with an extra 14 missiles to be deployed in Alaska - the nearest US state to North Korea - in response to the growing threat after Chuck Hagel, the US defence secretary, said the North had shown "advances in its capabilities". Mr Hagel said the US was determined to stay "ahead of the threat".
Some questioned the wisdom of the US flying its stealth bombers to the South. James Hardy, the Jane's expert, said: "The problem is that the US may appear equally belligerent. And the question remains: why is it doing that? Have the Americans lost patience with North Korea? Or are they, as I think, making a statement to South Korea to show they are backing them, and that Seoul should not overreact?"
The most extreme scenario if open conflict erupted would be the actual launching of an attack on the US. That is also the most unlikely - even if North Korea really has the reach. "I don't see that happening, simply because of the response," said Adam Cathcart, an Asia expert at Queen's University Belfast.
Other possibilities include the targeting of South Korea, or further missile or nuclear tests. There also remains the possibility that North Korea is in fact ramping up the tensions purely to force the South and the US back to the negotiating table – a strategy which looks unlikely to succeed.
Even if the North Koreans lack the technology for a missile strike against the US, they could decide to lash out in the form of a cyberattack or even a terrorist action carried out by their special forces," said Mr Pavel, Director of the Brent Scowcroft Centre on International Security.
"It's times like this when you need to have a little imagination and be prepared for things that seem implausible just because they haven't happened before."
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