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Quotes of the Day:
“KEYS TO WARFARE The world is full of people looking for a secret formula for success and power. They do not want to think on their own; they just want a recipe to follow. They are attracted to the idea of strategy for that very reason. In their minds strategy is a series of steps to be followed toward a goal. They want these steps spelled out for them by an expert or a guru. Believing in the power of imitation, they want to know exactly what some great person has done before. Their maneuvers in life are as mechanical as their thinking. To separate yourself from such a crowd, you need to get rid of a common misconception: the essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does. Instead of grasping at Option A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B, or C depending on the circumstances. That is strategic depth of thinking, as opposed to formulaic thinking.”
- Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies Of War
"I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other."
- Mary Shelley
"Man is free at the instant he wants to be."
- Voltaire
1. N. Korean drone penetrated no-fly zone around S. Korea's presidential office: official
2. Japan’s Defense Plans Benefit South Korea
3. This Could Be the Year North Korea Gets Tactical Nukes
4. North Korea is developing a HIMARS for nuclear missiles
5. Year in Review: Poland and Ukraine defy Putin to emerge as 'new powers in defense in Europe' (And relations with US Asian allies)
6. 10. Could North Korea collapse?
7. North Korean drone entered no-fly zone near Seoul’s presidential office
8. South Korea to develop 'stealthy drones' and 'drone killer system'
9. S. Korea's Navy stages New Year's live-fire drills amid N.K. threats
10. South Korea stands up offensive drone unit after North’s incursion
11. [Editorial] Shame on the military for drone infiltration
12. South Korea may opt for psychological warfare in response to NK threats
13. US will continue to enhance defense readiness against N. Korean threats: Kirby
14. US concerned about NK's disregard of military agreement with Seoul: State Dept.
15. Negotiations alone cannot denuclearize N. Korea: Harry Harris
16. 2023: South Korea's awakening
1. N. Korean drone penetrated no-fly zone around S. Korea's presidential office: official
One thing is for certain, the South cannot be defended by a piece of paper. The Comprehensive Military Agreement was supposed to prevent this type of activity. \ but it is obviously not worth the paper that it is written on.
I would like to see a study by the ROK MND to determine if full adherence to the CMA reduced the ability of the ROK military to detect these drone incursions.
That said, even though I was opposed to the CMA in 2018 because it offered no reduction in the threat from the north and did not to enhance ROK security and in fact weakened it because it reduced readiness of frontline focus with no live fire exercises in the vicinity of the DMZ and imposed a 20 and 40 KM no fly zone in the west and east, I do not think the ROK should withdraw from it.
Excerpt:
Drone incursions have laid bare the South's insufficient readiness to detect, track and shoot down such small drones. The North's drones, in particular, flew on aberrant trajectories, changing flight speed and altitudes in unexpected ways, according to the defense ministry.
N. Korean drone penetrated no-fly zone around S. Korea's presidential office: official | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by 송상호 · January 5, 2023
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Yonhap) -- A North Korean drone was found to have briefly entered a 3.7-kilometer radius no-fly zone around the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul last month, a military official belatedly confirmed Thursday, reversing the defense authorities' announcement that there was no such grave airspace security failure.
The drone was among the five unmanned aerial vehicles that the North sent across the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas on Dec. 26. The South Korean military failed to shoot them down, raising questions over its air defense posture.
"It briefly flew into the northern edge of the zone, but it did not come close to key security facilities," the official told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity, referring to the security area called "P-73."
Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup reported the drone's entry into a part of the zone to Yoon during Wednesday's briefing on counter-drone measures, such as plans to secure radar-evading drones and "drone-killer" systems.
Earlier, the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected media reports raising speculation that the drone penetrated the zone. Its spokesperson, Col. Lee Sung-jun, even expressed "strong regrets," dismissing the reports as "untrue and groundless."
Drone incursions have laid bare the South's insufficient readiness to detect, track and shoot down such small drones. The North's drones, in particular, flew on aberrant trajectories, changing flight speed and altitudes in unexpected ways, according to the defense ministry.
sshluck@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by 송상호 · January 5, 2023
2. Japan’s Defense Plans Benefit South Korea
Excerpts:
Another way to understand Japan’s defense ambitions is to peg it to where China’s and North Korea’s military capabilities will be in five years. In short, Tokyo’s defense increases are intended to prevent Tokyo from falling further behind Xi Jinping’s buildup of the Communist Party of China’s People’s Liberation Army and Kim Jong-un’s asymmetric missile forces. The intent is to deter even the threat of force that would deny Japan its essential sovereignty and strategic autonomy.
Viewed through the prism of Northeast Asian security and the lenses of the Indo-Pacific region and complex global challenges, Japan’s new defense plans reinforce South Korea’s national interests. South Korean interests can be best advanced by greater investment in its security and closer cooperation with Japan and the United States.
Jan 4, 2023
Dong-A Ilbo
Japan’s Defense Plans Benefit South Korea
Patrick M. Cronin
Japan’s new national defense strategy is designed to deter conflict and punish aggression, not attack neighbors.
While plans released last month by Tokyo promise significant upgrades in Japan’s Self-Defense Force, their primary strategic intent is to nullify North Korea’s mounting nuclear and missile capabilities and preserve peace, especially in the East and South China Seas and the Taiwan Strait.
Kim Jong Un ended an unprecedented year of testing more than 100 missiles by sending drones toward Seoul and vowing a significant expansion of missile, space, and nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile, China has resorted to reckless military maneuvers to intimidate Taiwan and alter the status quo through the threat of force. Beijing’s increasing assertiveness is especially worrisome in light of its partner Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s modernization blueprint may be transformational, but it is linked to a rapidly changing regional security environment.
Organizational changes and new investments are designed to reduce Japan’s vulnerabilities to potential adversaries armed with destructive technologies in new domains. Japan is establishing a permanent Joint Command, reorganizing the Air Self-Defense Force into an aerospace force incorporating outer space, and creating information warfare units throughout the Self-Defense Force. Japan will spend billions of dollars adding counterstrike missiles, unmanned systems, and expanded cyber defenses.
Far from threatening to bomb the Korean peninsula without Seoul’s approval, Japan’s attempt to add credible offense to an overly defense-weighted set of military capabilities will enhance deterrence for South Korea and Japan. For instance, the acquisition of Tomahawk cruise missiles and indigenous counterstrike capabilities will put would-be attackers on notice that aggressors will be penalized. But the plans require Tokyo and Seoul to advance security cooperation to minimize the risk of misunderstanding and maximize the potential for deterrence.
President Yoon Suk-yeol’s determination to restore relations with its neighboring democracy has laid the groundwork for preserving regional stability. The decision to share early-warning data to help defend against a possible North Korean missile launch represents a necessary building block toward closer cooperation between South Korea and Japan and among Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington.
Those with malign intent may seek to portray any Japanese offensive capability as signs of rising Japanese militarism and American decline. They should instead see democratic powers determined to demonstrate the sufficient political will to keep the peace and help shape a regional and global order in flux.
For decades the United States provided the sword of surpassing offensive firepower while Japan focused on the shield of defending its territory and supporting US forward-based forces. A gradual shift in regional military forces and the distribution of power globally requires adjustments. Paradoxically, to keep America’s extended deterrence commitment to treaty allies like Japan and South Korea, prosperous allies must contribute more to their defense and regional security.
This explains Japan’s pledge to increase defense spending toward the NATO standard of 2 percent of GDP. Japan is politically divided about how to pay for some $314 billion in defense spending over the next five years. But even if fully enacted, the result would mean Japan’s annual defense budget would rise from roughly $50 billion to about $80 billion. Although that is a serious commitment, Japan’s defense spending would still amount to less than 10 percent of the current US defense budget and a fraction of China’s military and security spending. South Korea will continue to outspend Japan as a percentage of its economic output.
Further, the Yoon administration has embarked on a South Korean transformational strategy, as outlined in his recently released Indo-Pacific strategy. A stronger Japan will reinforce South Korea’s bid to stake its claim as a global pivotal state. Seoul should assert more influence over rising geopolitical competition rather than fixating on a North Korean regime unlikely to engage in serious diplomatic talks in the foreseeable future. Similarly, Seoul’s political will to shoulder more significant burdens for regional security will benefit Tokyo and Washington, and other like-minded actors committed to a rules-based order.
Another way to understand Japan’s defense ambitions is to peg it to where China’s and North Korea’s military capabilities will be in five years. In short, Tokyo’s defense increases are intended to prevent Tokyo from falling further behind Xi Jinping’s buildup of the Communist Party of China’s People’s Liberation Army and Kim Jong-un’s asymmetric missile forces. The intent is to deter even the threat of force that would deny Japan its essential sovereignty and strategic autonomy.
Viewed through the prism of Northeast Asian security and the lenses of the Indo-Pacific region and complex global challenges, Japan’s new defense plans reinforce South Korea’s national interests. South Korean interests can be best advanced by greater investment in its security and closer cooperation with Japan and the United States.
Read the original Korean article in the Dong-A Ilbo.
3. This Could Be the Year North Korea Gets Tactical Nukes
Comments from a number of us Korea watchers.
This Could Be the Year North Korea Gets Tactical Nukes
NEXT BIG THING
After watching Vladimir Putin’s threats to use tactical nuclear missile strikes in Ukraine, Kim Jong Un has switched focus and could have his own ready to test within days.
Donald Kirk
Published Jan. 04, 2023 4:46AM ET
The Daily Beast · January 4, 2023
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is edging dangerously close to his “Next Big Thing”: a tactical nuclear warhead for wiping out a target like a military base or biological/chemical weapons capable of inflicting instant death on millions—or both.
South Korea’s defense ministry, reflecting rising fears, has just created a directorate dedicated to countering all North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical—the precursor of a separate strategic command. “Should North Korea make an attempt at using nuclear arms,” the ministry warned, “ it would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime.”
The U.S. also launched a unit of the newly formed Space Force, a separate branch of the armed forces, at South Korea’s Osan Air Base last month to track North Korean nukes and missiles.
Kim signaled his ambitions by declaring the “resolute will” of his regime “to respond nuke for nuke” as he welcomed production of super-large rocket systems for firing tactical nukes into targets in South Korea, including the largest U.S. military base, Camp Humphreys, near Osan, 60 miles south of the North-South Korean line. All South Korea is “within the range” of a missile “carrying a tactical nuclear warhead… as a core, offensive weapon of our armed forces,” said Kim.
The Supreme Leader may test a tactical nuclear warhead any time, there’s no telling when. The latest speculation ranges from his 39th birthday, on Jan. 8, to Feb. 8, the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army in 1948, to Feb. 16, anniversary of the birth of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, who was 70 when he died in 2011. Kim ordered the North’s sixth, most recent, nuclear test in 2017.
Victor Cha, who served on the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush, believes the North Koreans “are after tactical nuclear weapons that can be used on the battlefield. They “don't want to have to escalate to the big bomb in a conflict,” he told The Daily Beast, considering “they have no way” to match the U.S. and South Korea “in terms of conventional capabilities.”
Moreover, said Cha, who is now a Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor at Georgetown, “tac nukes also aid their effort to decouple U.S. security from South Korea’s.” The U.S. would not have to respond to the threat of using tac nukes against South Korea as it would if Kim tried “holding the U.S. at bay by targeting a U.S. city with an ICBM”—“kind of the way Putin has done so with nuke threats and NATO.”
The frequent emphasis on tactical nukes, said Bruce Klingner, the CIA’s former deputy division chief for Korea, comes after North Korea tested a new missile that the North proclaimed would “drastically improve the firepower of the frontline long-range artillery units and enhance the efficiency in the operation of tactical nukes.” Then, in June, Kim and his aides “discussed enhancing capabilities and revising operational plans for ‘frontline units’—likely an indirect reference to deploying tactical nuclear weapons.”
Klinger, who now works at the Heritage Foundation, sees tactical nukes as serving multiple purposes—“in a first strike against leadership, hardened command and control, or high-value military targets, as well as a retaliatory second strike and battlefield counter-force attacks.” And, of course, they “could target U.S. forces arriving on the Korean Peninsula and allied forces preparing a counteroffensive into North Korea, hold allied and U.S. cities at risk, and potentially provide the means for Pyongyang to reunify the peninsula on its terms.”
As if to show the North can fire missiles anytime, anywhere, Kim ordered a barrage of missile tests on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. On Saturday, KCNA reported the test-firing of “super-large multiple rocket launchers” displayed at a conflab of the central committee of the Workers’ Party the same day.
“The three shells of multiple rocket launchers precisely hit a target island” between North Korea and Japan, said KCNA. Then, on Sunday, KCNA reported a long-range artillery sub-unit had greeted the new year by firing a single shell into the sea using a “super-large multiple rocket launcher.”
All told, Kim ordered close to 100 missile tests in 2022 from multiple bases, demonstrating the North’s ability to strike targets almost anywhere in Japan as well as South Korea. It’s widely believed the North’s next underground nuclear test will be that of a tactical nuke rather than a massive hydrogen bomb of the sort that blew up much of a mountain in the North’s most recent nuclear test in September 2017.
Tempting though it is to dismiss Kim’s braggadocio as rhetoric, the more big talk Kim utters, the more missile tests he orders, the more likely he’ll make good on his threats. Clearly he wants the world to pay attention to his grandiose boasts and claims rather than shrug them off as the usual nonsense.
Kim would like his enemies to think he could find a target for real this year. A big question is whether North Korean engineers have figured out how to attach a warhead to a missile. The next underground test may provide some answers.
“The issue is miniaturization of the nuke and its components,” said David Maxwell, a retired army colonel with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “I think the same problem is faced whether the nuke is ‘tactical’ or ‘strategic.’ They have to have a miniaturized nuclear capability.”
Bruce Bechtol, author of books and studies on the North Korean military, said the North’s ability to fit a smaller warhead to a short-range missile “is unknown since we have never seen them do it” despite “what they said they could do in KCNA.” There’s “no evidence,” he said, “unless they got the technology directly either from the Russians or the Chinese—which is of course possible.”
The U.S. and South Korea differ publicly on the degree to which they’re working together to counter the North’s nukes. President Biden responded “no” when asked if the U.S. and South Korea were discussing joint anti-nuclear exercises. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, however, told Chosun Ilbo, the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, “The nuclear weapons belong to the U.S., but the planning, information-sharing exercises and training should be carried out jointly by South Korea and the U.S.”
A spokeswoman for Yoon implied a cover-up by the U.S. Biden “obviously had to say, ‘no,’” South Korea’s Yonhap News quoted her as saying, since “joint nuclear exercise is a term used between nuclear powers.” The White House appeared to echo that explanation Monday, confirming that the U.S. was indeed “providing extended deterrence through the full range of U.S. defense capabilities.” In the face of rising pressure to develop its own nukes, the South has refrained from initiating a nuclear weapons program.
Kim’s enthusiasm for tactical nukes rather than long-range ICBMs or submarine-launched ballistic missiles was evident at the meeting of party bigwigs at which he called for “mass production of tactical nuclear weapons” and “an exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal,” which also includes intercontinental ballistic missiles for destroying targets in the U.S.
The fact that North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency released Kim’s statements in English showed it was intended for North Korea’s foes in Washington and Tokyo after South Korea’s defense ministry, under the conservative President Yoon, re-designated the North as the South’s “enemy”—a word the previous liberal government had banned. Kim cited Yoon’s call for “preparations for war” as making “the development of nuclear force and national defense” his “main orientation” for 2023.
Bruce Bennett, author of numerous reports on North Korea at the RAND Corporation, agrees “a North Korea designated tactical nuclear weapon is the next big thing”—“the ones he plans to use against targets in theater, i.e., South Korea, Japan and potentially China, whereas strategic nuclear weapons would be ones he would plan to use against the United States.”
But Bennett also notes that Kim has talked ominously about “spraying bomb strikes”—a term that “sounds to me like biological weapon use.” Kim, he believes, would also use drones or special operations forces.
The ease with which the North might spread biological or chemical weapons came into focus last week when North Korea sent at least five drones over South Korea. They did no harm before returning safely to North Korea before South Korean warplanes, helicopters and anti-aircraft weapons could shoot any of them down.
“Such provocations, including drone incursions, appear excessive for deterrence and may be intended to scare South Korea into taking a softer policy,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “The high volume of tests at unusual times and from various locations demonstrate that North Korea could launch different types of attack, anytime, and from many directions.”
Evans Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Seoul, is particularly disturbed by North Korea’s guidelines authorizing first use of nuclear weapons “if the regime feels threatened.”
“This is a dangerous and destabilizing doctrine,” he said, while “the Kim regime is developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems designed to give the regime a range of options,” including “a survivable second-strike capability, as seen from its testing of solid-fuel long-range missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and road-mobile, quick-to-launch tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.”
Bruce Bechtol is not convinced, however, that tactical nukes have replaced ICBMs at the top of Kim Jong Un’s agenda.
“The use of nukes of any kind—tactical or otherwise—would likely mean the end of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and the Kim regime,” he said. “Why waste time on something small? I think their highest priority is to have a weaponized nuclear program capable of striking the United States. The most likely platform for this would be an ICBM.”
The Daily Beast · January 4, 2023
4. North Korea is developing a HIMARS for nuclear missiles
"Atomic Annie."
North Korea is developing a HIMARS for nuclear missiles
North Korea wants its own 'Atomic Annie' multiple-launch rocket system.
BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED JAN 4, 2023 2:09 PM
taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · January 4, 2023
North Korea says it is developing a monster 600mm multiple-launch rocket system that it claims can strike targets in South Korea with tactical nuclear weapons, according to the reclusive communist country’s state-run media.
Video of the KN-25 rocket launchers aired by CNN appears to show that each launcher has a maximum payload of up to six rockets.
To put that into perspective, the U.S. military’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, can fire a total of six 227mm Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System munitions up to 43 miles or one 610mm Army Tactical Missile System rocket, with a range of up to 186 miles.
While inspecting 30 of the “super-large multiple launch rocket systems” on New Year’s Eve, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un claimed that all of South Korea is within range of the launchers, which are capable of firing tactical nuclear warheads, according to a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“It will discharge in future the combat mission of overpowering the enemy as a core, offensive weapon of our armed forces,” Kim said in a speech.
North Korea’s state-run media also claims that the rocket launchers were successfully tested on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, striking targets in the Sea of Japan.
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During a recent meeting of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim also called for an “exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal” that would involve mass producing tactical nuclear weapons, the Korean Central News Agency reported on Jan. 1.
When asked about Kim’s comments about increasing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday that the United States has increased its ability to collect intelligence both on and off the Korean peninsula.
“We have been watching closely — and will continue to watch closely — the Kim regime’s pursuit of additional advanced military capabilities — and certainly their nuclear ambitions in that regard — and continue to make sure that we are properly postured to defend both our chief alliances in that part of the world with Japan and South Korea, but also our international security interest in the region and beyond,” Kirby told reporters.
While the KN-25 can carry conventional munitions, it remains to be seen whether North Korea can miniaturize nuclear weapons to the point that they can be fitted onto the weapons system’s 600mm missiles, said Bruce Bennett, a North Korea expert with the RAND Corporation.
The U.S. Army’s “Atomic Annie” cannon had a 280mm diameter and the United States later built nuclear artillery shells with a 155mm diameter, but it is not known if North Korea has been able to master that same technology yet, Bennett told Task & Purpose on Wednesday.
If the KN-25 is eventually able to carry nuclear weapons, each missile would be able to fly up to 250 miles, and that means these weapons systems could potentially do much more damage than the battlefield nuclear weapons fielded by the U.S. military in the past, Bennett said.
The “Davy Crockett” nuclear recoilless rifle fielded by the Army during the Cold War fired a warhead with a yield of between 0.01 and 0.02 kilotons, roughly 10 to 20 tons of TNT. But Kim has talked about using the KN-25 against airfields, ports, and other targets, Bennett said.
“You need something more like 200 to 300 kilotons to neutralize an airfield,” Bennett said. That would be between 200,000 and 300,000 tons of TNT.
Kim is likely describing the nuclear munitions that could be fired by the KN-25 as “tactical” to exploit differences in how South Korea and the United States view the threats posed by short-range missiles, Bennett said. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. government repeatedly discounted the threat posed by such missiles because they cannot reach American territory.
“He’s trying to say: Look U.S., this is not a problem for you; this is a problem for South Korea — so don’t bug me about it; this isn’t something that affects the United States,” Bennett said. “Unfortunately, the U.S. has fallen into the trap of saying: Well, if missiles can’t reach the U.S., then it’s not a problem for us — when in fact it’s a problem for our allies; and therefore it is a problem for us.”
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taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · January 4, 2023
5. Year in Review: Poland and Ukraine defy Putin to emerge as 'new powers in defense in Europe' (And relations with US Asian allies)
An important article here that discusses the relationship between NATO allies and US allies in Northeast Asia.
South Korea is emerging as a partner in the Arsenal of Democracy.
Excerpts:
“Japan and South Korea are increasingly realizing that their security is going to be tied up with the degree to which the United States remains internationalist,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Zack Cooper said. “That means that they can’t just focus on East Asia. They have to focus on supporting some U.S. allies as well, both as a hedge against the possibility that the U.S. wouldn’t be as engaged, but also as a forcing function to ensure ... that it’s a little easier for the U.S. to stay engaged, because its allies are picking up a little more of the burden than they have heretofore."
Japan has played an important role in the Group of Seven, the format by which the world’s seven largest industrialized democracies have imposed severe economic penalties on Russia. Meanwhile, South Korea has emerged as “the fastest growing kid on the block of the European defense market,” according to Kopecny, who oversees Czech defense industrial cooperation.
“The confidence of Europeans towards South Korean defense industry has grown substantially,” Kopecny said. “It started with Estonia, Finland, then Norway, then Poland with howitzers. Now, main battle tanks. Those are all products that are very well perceived and ... those products will be the building blocks of the new axis of military power of Poland, as well as some of the other countries.”
Year in Review: Poland and Ukraine defy Putin to emerge as 'new powers in defense in Europe'
by Joel Gehrke, Foreign Affairs Reporter | December 31, 2022 02:00 PM
Washington Examiner · December 31, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has wrought “a new geopolitical reality” in Europe, according to a senior European defense official, but not the one that Kremlin officials expected.
"The balance is definitely being shifted towards the east,” Czech Deputy Defense Minister Tomas Kopecny told the Washington Examiner, referring to “the rise of Poland and, of course, Ukraine as the new powers in defense in Europe.”
BIDEN TELLS ZELENSKY UKRAINE ‘WILL NEVER STAND ALONE’
Russian President Vladimir Putin expected the invasion would “return and strengthen” Russia’s dominion over the territories conquered at the founding of the modern Russian Empire under Peter the Great. Instead, the Kremlin accelerated the coalescence of power in Central and Eastern European states once erased from political maps by Russian imperialists of centuries past.
Kopecny is wary of any direct analogies to the historic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose boundaries once included most of modern Ukraine — “historical analogies are very, a very sensitive issue in Europe,” he explained — but he isn’t shy about the latent potential of Central European capitals willing to pool their resources in a crisis.
“At the same time, this union was the only one that captured and kept Moscow for some time in history,” he said, referring to an early 17th-century conflict. "Regardless of how it was formed in the history, this unity and brotherhood between Poland and Ukraine is just indisputable. And it will remain for a very, very long time because every single Ukrainian knows that it was thanks to Poland that some of his relatives were safe.”
The states of the region have had their own difficulties, but they have set aside those bad memories, by and large, due to a common recognition of the threat posed by the Kremlin.
That dynamic has received less global attention than German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s stunning announcement of “Zeitenwende,” the impending rearmament of Germany in response to the Kremlin’s breaking of the peace between states in Europe. But it could be more consequential on the continent.
“There have been some very, very important changes for the good, for the positive side, in how we perceive it, in Germany and in Germany's defense posture,” Kopecny said. "They could start to be an important player, but not the leading one. Really, the most heavyweight bloc will be the one of Ukraine and Poland because, together, they will be far more powerful.”
The resuscitation of such a bloc has a historical precedent, though not quite a successful one. "In 1922 there existed a wise plan for a great Baltic bloc from Poland to Finland, a joint defensive alliance; discussions culminated at a conference held in Warsaw," historian John Lukacs recalled in his 1953 history of The Great Powers and Eastern Europe. "But political squabbles within Finland and Poland, the two anchor states, and Lithuanian-Polish enmity made all plans dissolve into thin air; only a frail Estonian-Latvian Alliance remained."
Most of those states now are members of NATO, except for Finland (which is in the process of joining NATO, alongside Sweden) and Ukraine, which aspires to join NATO. "That was unfortunate that this alliance [described by Lukacs] could not be built," another senior European official said. "But we are building another one at the moment while Finland and Sweden are joining NATO. Anchor nation is U.S."
Poland, as another member of the trans-Atlantic alliance, relies on the nuclear guarantee provided by the United States in conjunction with France and the United Kingdom. Yet Warsaw’s conventional military interests now far surpass what it obtains from the U.S., leading to new links between U.S. allies in Central Europe and Northeast Asia.
“Japan and South Korea are increasingly realizing that their security is going to be tied up with the degree to which the United States remains internationalist,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Zack Cooper said. “That means that they can’t just focus on East Asia. They have to focus on supporting some U.S. allies as well, both as a hedge against the possibility that the U.S. wouldn’t be as engaged, but also as a forcing function to ensure ... that it’s a little easier for the U.S. to stay engaged, because its allies are picking up a little more of the burden than they have heretofore."
Japan has played an important role in the Group of Seven, the format by which the world’s seven largest industrialized democracies have imposed severe economic penalties on Russia. Meanwhile, South Korea has emerged as “the fastest growing kid on the block of the European defense market,” according to Kopecny, who oversees Czech defense industrial cooperation.
“The confidence of Europeans towards South Korean defense industry has grown substantially,” Kopecny said. “It started with Estonia, Finland, then Norway, then Poland with howitzers. Now, main battle tanks. Those are all products that are very well perceived and ... those products will be the building blocks of the new axis of military power of Poland, as well as some of the other countries.”
Those relationships could ease the strain on the U.S. defense industrial base, which has expanded and directed vast military stockpiles toward Ukraine, even as U.S. strategists brace for the possibility of a clash with China over Taiwan in the years to come.
“For a long time, the U.S. didn't have to worry so much about whether it could manage challenges in two regions at the same time,” Cooper said. “And so I do think there's a realization that the U.S. maybe can't do it all. And so, both, the allies are going to have to help each other more, but also to the extent that the allies can make it easier for the U.S. to pivot from one region to another when there's need to do so — that really is a force multiplier.”
The most visible example of forces multiplying will come in Ukraine, Kopecny predicted.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
"They will be buying them for the next war to come, and the structure of the military will be so huge that this will be what will make them the biggest," he said, before acknowledging that this dynamic could make some traditional European powers uncomfortable. "It's natural for, say, the current powers not to want to be overshadowed in some respects. But at the same time, it's for the better for all of us here in the EU, so at the end of the day, I believe that it will also be seen as a good thing in Paris and Berlin."
Washington Examiner · December 31, 2022
6. 10. Could North Korea collapse?
I just came across this today (thanks to my friend Kenji-san). It is the most comprehensive lecture about collapse you could listen to in 1 hour. After you get through with the initial insults against us "collapsists" (and especially our Dear NIck Eberstadt) who allegedly "predicted" collapse in the 1990s this is a useful lecture (for example, correctly stating the importance of the rise of markets to create resilience in the north as to why the regime did not collapse, but he does not mention the importance of the Sunshine Policy and the transfer of billion so dollars to the regime. But he does a good job of showing how the regime fears the people and how the conditions produced due to COVID and Kim's current policy decision are making the suffering among the Korean people in the north worse than during the Arduous March). . There is a lot to discuss and argue about (e.g. errors my mentors have pointed out such as the professor talks abotuthe nK state when he should be talking about the regime and party, etc - some IR theory does not perfectly explain the Kim family regime)
Note the resource estimates in the north.
Regarding the last part on contingency planning, I have to say that Bob Collins and I had all that covered and more. And I am proud to say we made no predictions but we used scenario mapping to develop the contingency planning. He describes regime collapse using IR theory but it can be summed up the way Bob and I developed the description (more Bob than me): The regime will collapse when it can no longer govern from the center (Pyongyang) and there is the loss of coherency and support among the military,
But I think this is worth one hour of your time.
The professor is from Australia, and his bio is below. I have never heard of him before.
10. Could North Korea collapse?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_InDCS2zc8
1,268 views Jan 1, 2023
Dr Benjamin Habib
Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations
La Trobe University
https://drbenjaminhabib.com/
In this video...
00:00 Introduction.
01:28 Making predictions vs scenario mapping.
06:07 Scenario #1: State failure and collapse.
13:52 Scenario #2: Managed systemic reform.
23:04 Scenario #3: Popular uprising and revolution.
37:48 Scenario #4: Coup d'état.
43:56 Scenario #5: Externally-imposed regime change.
47:56 Why does the future of North Korea matter to regional states?
51:13 Summary.
BIO
Dr. Benjamin Habib is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Ben is an internationally published scholar with a current teaching and research interests in: (1) traditional and non-traditional security in North Korea; (2) environmental movements and international climate politics; and (3) innovations in university teaching practice in global environmental politics and international relations. He has extensive overseas field experience in Northeast Asia and has led short travel program subjects for undergraduate students to China and South Korea, themed around global citizenship and environmental sustainability. Ben is also a staunch advocate for mental health and neurodiversity, having transformed his nationally-televised panic attack into a vehicle for creating positive change.
Ben has extensive public engagement experience, contributing opinion articles and providing interview commentary to traditional and online media, in addition to delivering public presentations and facilitating workshops with industry partners, secondary education institutions and community organisations. He combines his passion for international relations, environment and mental health as host and producer of the Edge Dwellers Cafe Podcast.
Ben completed his PhD candidature at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia in 2011, after graduating with a B. Arts (Hons) from Flinders University and a B. Arts from the University of South Australia. He has also studied at Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea.
—
Contact:
Email: b.habib@latrobe.edu.au
Twitter: @DrBenjaminHabib
7. North Korean drone entered no-fly zone near Seoul’s presidential office
North Korean drone entered no-fly zone near Seoul’s presidential office
By Min Joo Kim
January 5, 2023 at 2:33 a.m. EST
The Washington Post · by Min Joo Kim · January 5, 2023
SEOUL — A North Korean drone entered a no-fly zone surrounding Seoul’s presidential office last week, South Korea’s military said Thursday, in the latest example of the growing military threat from Pyongyang, which has also ramped up missile testing and sent planes near the border.
The South’s military previously apologized for failing to shoot down North Korean drones that crossed the border Dec. 26 — the first time they had done so in five years — but had denied that the no-fly zone around the top government office was violated in the intrusion. The unmanned aircraft flew over South Korea for five hours, prompting an armed response.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff reversed the denial on Thursday and said one of the five drones had entered the northern end of the 2.3-mile area. It said the initial analysis was modified after an internal review of the military’s readiness posture. The unmanned aircraft did not fly directly over the presidential office in central Seoul’s Yongsan district, said Col. Lee Sung-jun, a JCS spokesman. The JCS said separately that the safety of the office had not been compromised.
The South Korean military does not have sufficient capacity to detect and intercept surveillance drones that are smaller than 10 feet, though larger and more threatening combat drones can be engaged with more easily, Lt. Gen. Kang Shin-chul, chief director of operations at the JCS, said during a televised briefing last week.
The military scrambled fighter jets and attack helicopters to bring down drones that flew over cities including Seoul, the capital and home to some 9 million people. However, they were limited from a more aggressive response because of concerns about civilian safety, Kang said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was briefed Wednesday about countermeasures to the drone intrusion, called for an “overwhelming response capability to North Korean provocations that goes beyond proportional levels.”
Yoon, a conservative who has given Seoul a more hawkish stance toward Pyongyang since taking office last year, also instructed his defense minister to set up a drone unit and develop anti-drone capabilities, according to presidential spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye.
North Korea also fired multiple rounds of ballistic missiles toward the sea last week, capping a record year of weapons tests. The North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, called Sunday for an “exponential increase” in the country’s nuclear arsenal, signaling a continued flurry of military activities in the new year.
Yoon also warned this week that he would consider suspending a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement if the North violates the South’s territory again. The pact, part of former liberal president Moon Jae-in’s efforts at rapprochement with Pyongyang, consists of measures such as setting up buffer zones, ceasing loudspeaker propaganda and demining the heavily armed inter-Korean border.
During his election campaign, Yoon denounced his predecessor’s “subservient” attitude toward Pyongyang and promised a tougher stance, even as he offered economic incentives for the North to ditch its nuclear program. Since Yoon became president in May, Seoul has resumed large-scale drills with its closest ally, the United States, to deter North Korea.
By Min Joo Kim
Min Joo Kim is a reporter for The Washington Post in Seoul. She covers news from South and North Korea. Twitter
The Washington Post · by Min Joo Kim · January 5, 2023
8. South Korea to develop 'stealthy drones' and 'drone killer system'
Comments from Bruce Klingner and me.
South Korea to develop 'stealthy drones' and 'drone killer system'
by Joel Gehrke, Foreign Affairs Reporter | January 04, 2023 05:00 PM
Washington Examiner · January 4, 2023
South Korea will speed up development of stealth drones this year, according to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s team, in response to North Korea's threats.
“[Yoon] called for accelerating the development of stealthy drones this year and quickly establishing a drone killer system," press secretary Kim Eun-hye said Wednesday.
US AND SOUTH KOREA PLANNING FOR ‘COORDINATED RESPONSE’ TO NORTH KOREA
The new emphasis comes in the wake of an incursion of several North Korean drones into South Korean airspace last week, drawing a presidential reprimand for South Korean military officials who struggled to down them. The high-profile embarrassment spurred Yoon to demand that defense officials develop an "overwhelming response capability that goes beyond proportional levels” — and to threaten to scuttle a 2018 military agreement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
"President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed the National Security Office to consider suspending the Sept. 19 military agreement in the event North Korea carries out another provocation violating our territory,” Kim said, per a Yonhap translation.
Yoon has taken a more hawkish line with North Korea than his liberal predecessor, who negotiated the 2018 deal in a bid to mitigate the threat of an accidental clash along the demilitarized zone.
“I think he was quite perturbed that South Korean military couldn’t shoot all these [North Korean drones] down,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Bruce Klingner, a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea, told the Washington Examiner. "I think Yoon was both angry that the North Korean drones penetrated South Korean airspace, probably also [angry] that it got so much media attention, seeming to call into question South Korea’s military capabilities.”
Yet Yoon’s response also seems long in the making, with respect both to his distaste for the 2018 deal and his desire for an expanded drone force. "It is not desirable for us alone to abide by the agreement when North Korea doesn’t,” Lee, the defense minister, told South Korean lawmakers in October.
He could have overlapping motivations for such a demonstrative response, for the consumption of viewers in South Korea and abroad.
“These kinds of comments are meant to be domestically reassuring,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow David Maxwell told the Washington Examiner. “They're already developing these capabilities ... you want to make a prediction that’s something that you know is probably going to come true. So I don’t think they’re starting from ground zero.”
That likelihood points to a broader dynamic of South Korea’s prospective emergence, under Yoon, as a more dynamic power player in the region. In a first-of-its-kind summary of South Korea’s strategy for the Indo-Pacific, Yoon’s administration declared last week that South Korea “aspires to become a Global Pivotal State that actively seeks out agenda for cooperation and shapes discussions in the region and the wider world.” South Korea has already flexed its defense industrial muscle under Yoon by inking a multibillion-dollar arms sale with Poland in defiance of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yoon’s team has embraced an "iron-clad alliance" with the United States, anchored in a perception that both countries face common challenges. That strategic outlook dovetails with an apparent ambition to emerge as one of the world’s leading arms exporters.
“Their defense industry certainly has been really capable, and recently we've really seen them step up their game,” Klingner said. “So clearly they have an intention of expanding their defense industry and their exports. So drones would be a logical step for them to incorporate into that overall plan.”
Unmanned aerial vehicles have emerged as a hot commodity on the international arms market in recent years, a trend driven of late by Ukraine’s effective use of Turkish-made drones to ravage the Russian military columns and supply lines during the battle for Kyiv.
“I think that they will be developing the full range of armed and reconnaissance drones,” Maxwell told the Washington Examiner. “I think that’s clearly what they're trying to do. They're copying models like the Predator, from the U.S. — they see the efficacy of that, what it's done for the United States.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Some of those arms deals might cut into the market share of U.S. defense companies, the FDD analyst acknowledged, but he argued that it would be short-sighted to think of South Korean companies as economic competitors in this regard.
“South Korea is becoming a partner in the arsenal of democracy ... and I think that's really an important capability because the U.S. industrial base is not capable of supporting everybody,” Maxwell said. “In their concept of being a global pivotal state, I think that's one area where they're going to excel in because they have a strong defense industry and they build most of their equipment [to be] interoperable with the United States, and therefore interoperable with other U.S. partners, to include NATO. So I think that's a real positive thing.”
Washington Examiner · January 4, 2023
9. S. Korea's Navy stages New Year's live-fire drills amid N.K. threats
Strength and resolve.
S. Korea's Navy stages New Year's live-fire drills amid N.K. threats | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by 채윤환 · January 5, 2023
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's Navy conducted its first live-fire drills of the year earlier this week, officials said Thursday, in a major display of naval might against evolving North Korean threats.
Designed to check the Navy's combat readiness, the annual drills took place in waters off the country's eastern, western and southern coasts on Wednesday, involving flagship warships and personnel from the Navy's 1st, 2nd and 3rd Fleets.
"We will build a firm readiness posture, with which we can sternly punish any enemy provocations," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lee Jong-ho was quoted as saying as he oversaw the drills aboard the P-3C patrol aircraft.
For the "high-intensity" drills, the Navy mobilized 13 vessels, including the 3,200-ton Eulji Mundeok destroyer, and four aircraft, with a focus on enhancing each fleet's mission capabilities to safeguard their areas of maritime operations.
The 2nd Fleet conducted live-fire and tactical maneuver training in waters west of Taean County, 109 kilometers southwest of Seoul, while the 1st and 3rd Fleets carried out the drills in the East Sea and waters west of the southwestern island of Heuksan, respectively.
During his onsite guidance, Adm. Lee stressed the importance of "realistic" training. "(I) call for a strong and realistic training by enhancing our troops' will to fight and strengthening them mentally," Lee said.
Capt. Kim Kook-hwan, chief of the 3,200-ton KDX-I destroyer, Eulji Mundeok, highlighted his unit's determination to fend off enemy threats.
"If an enemy provokes, we will retaliate against it, like out of a conditioned reflex, and conclude our operation in a victory," he said.
In the wake of the North's continued provocations, including the firing of shots from what it claimed to be a "super-large" multiple rocket launcher, the South Korean military has publicized military drills in a show of its deterrence capabilities.
yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
(END)
en.yna.co.kr · by 채윤환 · January 5, 2023
10. South Korea stands up offensive drone unit after North’s incursion
South Korea stands up offensive drone unit after North’s incursion
By Andrew Salmon - The Washington Times - Wednesday, January 4, 2023
washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon
Subscriber-only
SEOUL — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered his military to establish a joint command drone unit 10 days after North Korean drones dramatically exposed vulnerabilities of his nation’s skies.
The South’s commitment Wednesday to a response of sending two or three drones north for each drone the North sends south raises questions about Seoul’s compliance with the armistice that halted the 1950-1953 Korean War.
After a briefing from the Agency for Defense Development, the joint chiefs of staff, the National Defense Ministry and the presidential National Security Office, Mr. Yoon ordered Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup to establish a joint drone command to oversee surveillance and reconnaissance operations.
Mr. Yoon also ordered the mass production of small drones and the accelerated development of stealth drones, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
Although South Korean military units already operate drones, the new command will operate “at the strategic and operational level that is different from the existing drone battle level,” the Defense Ministry said in a media release. It will “carry out operations in all areas beyond the army’s command level.”
The conservative Mr. Yoon also suggested that if the North continued drone intrusions, the South should consider revoking a 2018 military agreement with the North to reduce tensions. That deal was signed by his presidential predecessor, the liberal Moon Jae-in.
The presidential office in Seoul said North Korea explicitly violated the agreement 17 times, including 15 times since October, Yonhap reported.
Left unmentioned was the drone command’s potential impact on the 1953 armistice. That deal has maintained an uneasy peace on the peninsula for seven decades. Drone flights over the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, even in retaliation for incursions, would violate the armistice, analysts said.
Pyongyang’s provocations shocked South Korea, which is customarily blase about its northern neighbor’s hostilities.
On Dec. 26, five North Korean drones penetrated South Korean airspace. Four flew over Paju, the county north of Seoul and south of the DMZ, and one over Ganghwa Island in the Yellow Sea. One flew as far as Seoul’s northern metropolitan area.
Paju is dense with military facilities, including the U.S. military’s 2nd Infantry Division’s base, and Ganghwa Island is strategically located.
South Korean aircraft and helicopters scrambled and fired more than 100 live rounds. A light attack aircraft crashed while taking off, although no casualties were reported.
South Korean drones were dispatched – for the first time, as far as is known – north of the DMZ on a retaliatory surveillance operation.
All the North’s drones disappeared from South Korean radars, but no wreckage was discovered. All five apparently returned successfully to the North. The South Korean military said it was limited because the drones were small, made irregular maneuvers and were not launched from an airfield.
Perhaps most worrisome was the necessity to briefly halt flights at Seoul’s two commercial airports, in Incheon and Gimpo, for more than an hour. That potentially handed Pyongyang a low-cost, low-risk weapon to wage economic war against the South.
The inability of South’s high-tech military to take down the drones created widespread shock.
On Dec. 27, Mr. Yoon ordered the deployment of two or three drones into North Korea for each drone North Korea sends south, though no intrusions have been reported since Dec. 26. On Dec. 29, South Korea conducted drone defense drills involving unmanned aerial vehicles, attack helicopters, light attack aircraft, 20 mm cannon and short-range surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs.
The military response could create a diplomatic headache.
“The context of this discussion is that, with South Korea responding the way it is being implied right now, it is not adhering to the armistice agreement,” Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean lieutenant general, told The Washington Times. “So we find ourselves at the same level as the North Koreans.”
Steve Tharp, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, said in an interview that a principle of reciprocity exists. Even so, “anytime you fly into the airspace of the other side, that is a violation of the armistice,” Mr. Tharp, who has negotiated extensively with North Koreans, told The Washington Times.
The U.S.-led U.N. Command, which oversees the DMZ, did not respond to a request for comment.
Drones are hardly invulnerable. Ukrainian forces have fought off an onslaught of Russian- and Iranian-made attack drones with electronic jamming, SAMs, radar- and searchlight-guided ground fire, massed small arms and other measures.
Yet Seoul and its environs, densely populated and just 37 miles from the DMZ, presents a particularly tough defensive challenge, and its commercial air volume dwarfs that of Pyongyang. Even debris shot down from an intercepted enemy drone is likely to fall onto sensitive or populated ground.
“Unless we can control the downfall of a drone, it will crash into somebody or something,” said Mr. Chun. “Collateral damage is our problem.”
Small, low-cost drones are ideal asymmetric tools for the impoverished North to deploy against the prosperous South.
“A drone can take out a tank – what an investment that is,” Mr. Tharp said. “What does a drone cost – a couple of thousand dollars? A tank costs a few million.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at [email protected].
washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon
11. [Editorial] Shame on the military for drone infiltration
Thursday
January 5, 2023
dictionary + A - A
[Editorial] Shame on the military for drone infiltration
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2023/01/05/opinion/editorials/North-Korea-drone-infiltration/20230105194523124.html
It has been confirmed that one of the five North Korean drones infiltrated into some sections of the P-73 flight ban zone around the presidential office at Yongsan while it flew over northern Seoul for five hours on December 26. After denying the infiltration, the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Ministry of National Defense belatedly affirmed it and reported it to President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday, nine days after the penetration. We are dumbfounded.
The P-73 zone covering the airspace over the presidential office and his residence in Hannam-dong demands the highest security. Our military authorities said the North Korean drone flew back after barely “touching the edge of the zone,” but that explanation is not convincing. The infiltration of the drone into zone as close as 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) from the presidential office sounds loud alarms. The drone flew over the central Seoul, including the Namdaemun market and Chungmuro, without any constraints. If the drone did carry a remote-controlled camera, it could have taken pictures of the presidential office and residence.
On the very day of the five-drone infiltration, our military found that one of them flew in the sky over northern Seoul for about an hour. But in the tightest security space, the military could not detect the infiltration at all and reported it to the president nine days later. Who could really understand that?
After the JoongAng Ilbo on Dec. 31 first raised the possibility of the drone having advanced into the airspace near the P-73 zone, the Ministry of National Defense denied it. The ministry even expressed “regrets” after a four-star general-turned-lawmaker from the Democratic Party (DP) pointed to the likelihood of the drones penetrating the P-73 zone.
The ministry’s sudden about-face deserves criticism for the lie. We seriously question whether the military really discovered the infiltration belatedly or told the truth after lying about it for a while for fear of massive political repercussions.
The military said it will develop a system to respond to unmanned aerial vehicles by spending 560 billion won ($440.6 million). President Yoon also ordered the military to launch a multipurpose drone unit and produce stealth drones within the year. But what matters is honesty, transparency and discipline. If those critical values are not respected, the military can do nothing.
No matter how cutting-edge weapons our military has, it can never win against the enemy unless it is trusted by the people. President Yoon must hold all related military officers and soldiers accountable for the ominous security breach before it’s too late.
12. South Korea may opt for psychological warfare in response to NK threats
YES, YES, YES.
But it is not simply loudspeakers and leaflets and not simply sending insults of KJU to the north. We need a sophisticated and comprehensive information and influence activities campaign that includes government, military, and civil society activities.
See section 6 (page 46) of this report at this link (https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/fdd-report-maximum-pressure-2-a-plan-for-north-korea.pdf) and excerpted below this article. Mathew Ha and I (and many others) have been thinking about Information and Influence Activities for a long time.
Here are some specific references from a class I developed on the DPRK and the Gray Zone (for the Joint Special Operations University that will assist with Psychological Warfare/Operations/Information and Influence activities.
LTG Chun, In Bum, “How North Korea Wages Political Warfare at Home and Abroad...and How to Respond” ORBIS, Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 6, 2020, page 1-18
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OM-lnGiZHhuUUrI9xsnbR72MN20teWkz/view?usp=sharing
Commander Frederick Vincenzo, “An Information Based Strategy to Reduce North Korea’s Increasing Threat - Recommendations for ROK & U.S. Policy Makers,” Center for New American Security, October 3, 2016, pages 1-15.
https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/an-information-based-strategy-to-reduce-north-koreas-increasing-threat
George Hutchinson, “Army of the Indoctrinated: The Suryong, the Soldier, and Information in the KPA, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea,” April 26, 2022, Read Chapter 5 & 6 pages 57-88.
https://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/Hutchinson_KPA_web_0426.pdf
Jieun Baek, “A Policy of Public Diplomacy with North Korea: A Principled and Pragmatic Approach to Promote Human Rights and Pursue Denuclearization,” Harvard Belfer Center, August 2021, pages 20-28.
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/policy-public-diplomacy-north-korea
David Maxwell, “The Nature of The Kim Family Regime: The Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State,” Red Diamond, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, February 19,2020
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/02/19/the-nature-of-the-kim-family-regime-the-guerrilla-dynasty-and-gulag-state/
David Maxwell, “Unification Options and Scenarios: Assisting A Resistance”, International Journal of Korean Unification Studies Vol. 24, No. 2, 2015, 127–152,
https://www.kinu.or.kr/pyxis-api/1/digital-files/d3f8fb63-4f8c-49c9-a4fa-901d3120bd5a
Suki Kim, “The Underground Movement Trying to Topple the North Korean Regime,” The New Yorker Magazine, November 16, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/23/the-underground-movement-trying-to-topple-the-north-korean-regime
Video: “Conversation with COL (Ret) Dave Maxwell, Potential for North Korea Influence & Information Campaign,” Joint Special Operations University July 14, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0E9032OEOo
Video: David Maxwell, “Beyond Nuclear Crisis: New and Long-Term Strategy for the Korean Peninsula,” Institute of World Politics, July 11, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6XPOWvQGpw&t=49s
Video: David Maxwell, “Security Situation on the Korean Peninsula, “ Institute of World Politics, September 28, 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgiZGWPIKuc&list=FL3fu5rXx0ma6f9Ze3C1i-MA&index=46&t=2s
South Korea may opt for psychological warfare in response to NK threats
The Korea Times · January 5, 2023
By Kang Seung-woo
South Korea is considering resuming psychological warfare operations, such as propaganda broadcasts or propaganda leaflets, against North Korea in the wake of the North's drone infiltration into South Korean airspace, according to a government official, Thursday.
This photo shows one of the balloons containing 1 million anti-Pyongyang leaflets that Fighters for a Free North Korea, a Seoul-based organization of North Korean defectors, claimed it sent toward North Korea from the South Korean city of Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, April 25 and 26, 2022. Yonhap
The idea came to light one day after President Yoon Suk-yeol threatened, Wednesday, to suspend a 2018 military pact if North Korea violates the inter-Korean border again. Last year, North Korea flew five drones across the border for the first time in five years and one of them returned to the North after entering a no-fly zone near the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul.
South and North Korea held a summit on April 27, 2018, where they agreed to stop all hostile acts, including loudspeaker broadcasts and the scattering of leaflets in areas along the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), and to transform the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into a peace zone.
In addition, they also agreed to halt all hostile acts against each other to reduce tensions along the inter-Korean border, Sept. 19, 2018, on the sidelines of another inter-Korean summit. Plus, the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act, better known as the "anti-leaflet law," makes it illegal to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, with violators subject to a maximum prison term of three years or a fine of 30 million won ($23,000).
According to a senior official of the South Korean unification ministry, it has launched a legal review to see if Seoul can resume the use of propaganda loudspeakers along the border or allow propaganda leaflets to be flown into North Korea.
"We are legally reviewing the Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act to determine if we can recommence forbidden acts when the Sept. 19 military agreement is suspended," the official said.
Article 23 of the act stipulates that the president may suspend all or a part of each South-North Korean agreement for a fixed period, when significant changes occur in inter-Korean relations or when it is deemed necessary for national security, maintenance of order or public welfare.
Another government official also said in a media interview that if the military pact is suspended, the South Korean military will be able to use loudspeakers along the border again.
North Korea has been sensitively responding to those acts of psychological warfare, both of which are critical of its leader and its regime. As a result, the tactic resulted in a further escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
In 2015, North Korea came close to threatening war over the propaganda broadcasts, with its leader Kim Jong-un declaring a "quasi-state of war," while the country blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Gaeseong in 2020 in anger over leaflets criticizing its leader, saying such leafleting violates a series of peace agreements between the two sides.
Bruce Bennett, a senior international defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, said words may be more powerful than bullets and keep the peace in the current environment.
"What scares Kim more than his regime collapsing? Shouldn't South Korea and the United States be threatening the North with a steady flow of outside information if he continues his provocations?" Bennett said.
"North Korea uses psychological operations against South Korea and the United States every day. The North understands how important this Cold War approach can be. While not easy for South Korea and the United States to execute across the North Korean iron curtain, there are many options available to implement psychological operations against the North, if [South] Korea and the United States are sufficiently creative."
The Korea Times · January 5, 2023
Information and Influence Activities
By David Maxwell and Mathew Ha
BACKGROUND
Information and influence activities (IIA) are the means by which governments attempt to influence key populations to support strategic objectives. Despotic regimes use IIA to manipulate their populations to maintain authoritarian control. In contrast, the United States can use IIA to promote U.S. strategic objectives, including by informing oppressed populations and promoting principles related to democratic and human rights.220 Thus, IIA provide a key tool for generating the internal divisions and threats to Kim that could incentivize him to negotiate in good faith and relinquish his nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
IIA are a critical and longstanding element of Pyongyang’s efforts to maintain power. The Worker’s Party of Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department has aggressively employed IIA to support the Kim family regime for the past seven decades. North Korea’s information strategy is focused on three broad lines of effort: enhancing the reputation of Kim Jong Un and the Kim dynasty among domestic and international target audiences; undermining the legitimacy of the ROK government; and countering U.S. influence in Korea and the region, with an emphasis on dividing the ROK-U.S. alliance.
Despite Pyongyang’s coordinated and persistent effort, North Koreans are increasingly gaining access to outside information. A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) survey of 36 North Koreans living across several North Korean provinces found that almost 92 percent of them consume foreign media at least once a month. Eighty-three percent assessed that foreign media had a greater impact on their lives than decisions by the North Korean government.221
Despite the limited sample, the survey has several advantages. First, all those queried were living inside North Korea and were not escapees. Moreover, the surveys were conducted in person, meaning “respondents were free to voice critical opinions about their own government unfettered.”222 Relying solely on escapee surveys can distort findings since escapees are usually from border provinces near China and therefore do not necessarily provide a representative sample of the entire North Korean population. The CSIS survey, however, drew opinions from beyond these border areas.223
North Korean defector Thae Yong Ho, formerly the North Korean ambassador to the United Kingdom, speaks to American scholar Robert Kelley at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2019 on May 28, 2019, in Oslo, Norway. (Photo by Julia Reinhart/Getty Images)
A key method of distributing foreign media in North Korea is through cross-border traders and smugglers. These individuals provide foreign media stored on various devices, such as DVDs and thumb drives, which are then distributed at private markets that have emerged in recent decades.224 Since the famines of the 1990s, these private markets have become an important component of everyday life for many non-elite North Koreans. Additionally, the proliferation of smart phones (some 6.5 million) is providing people in the North the ability to communicate. These developments offer opportunities for U.S. and ROK IIA.225
On the other hand, the emergence of fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications technology along the Chinese-North Korean border is a potentially dangerous development. The Chinese are using this technology to track and interdict North Korean smuggling operations.226 Although North Korea cannot yet produce its own 5G technology, leaked documents reveal that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has helped Pyongyang build wireless networks. The Washington Post reports that the Kim regime’s contact with Huawei began as early as 2006, when former leader Kim Jong Il visited Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzen, after which he oversaw the establishment of North Korea’s wireless provider Koryolink. 227
Experts believe this represents the beginning of North Korea and Huawei’s cooperation.228 While North Korean telecommunications capabilities may not yet be ready for 5G technology, this relationship should raise concerns. Huawei could equip the regime with the technology and infrastructure to surveil anyone in North Korea using a smart phone.
ASSESSMENT
The Kim regime is one of the most oppressive and abusive governments in the world. Freedom House gives North Korea the worst possible rating for freedom, political rights, and civil liberties, summarizing the situation in North Korea this way:
North Korea is a one-party state led by a dynastic totalitarian dictatorship. Surveillance is pervasive, arbitrary arrests and detention are common, and punishments for political offenses are severe. The state maintains a system of camps for political prisoners where torture, forced labor, starvation, and other atrocities take place … human rights violations are still widespread, grave, and systematic.229
In its annual human rights report on North Korea, the State Department echoed these concerns, noting that human rights abuses “continued to be a widespread problem.”230 These egregious human rights violations are part of a deliberate, systematic, and brutal system designed to keep the Kim regime in power.231
Any maximum pressure campaign targeting Kim Jong Un should feature robust IIA focused on human rights. A well-orchestrated campaign would enable the United States and South Korea to highlight and confront Kim’s human rights atrocities while shifting his cost-benefit analysis on denuclearization.
Undertaking such operations in a foreign country is a significant decision that should not be taken lightly. However, the nature of the totalitarian Kim regime and its human rights abuses, as well as the severity of the threat it poses, demonstrate the need for such an approach. In fact, such an approach would be consistent with the best traditions of U.S. foreign policy, simultaneously advancing U.S. interests and honoring American democratic and humanitarian principles.
Kim apparently believes that he can best ensure his survival by retaining his nuclear weapons, oppressing the North Korean people, and refusing to negotiate in good faith. The purpose of an IIA campaign would be to change Kim’s perceptions in each of these areas. The goal will be to persuade him that he can better secure his personal survival by respecting the human rights of the North Korean people and agreeing to relinquish his nuclear weapons in a permanent and verifiable manner. Kim must become convinced that the status quo poses a greater threat than charting a new course through good faith diplomatic negotiations.
An effective IIA campaign should target three North Korean audiences: the regime elite, the second-tier leadership, and the North Korean people. Messaging focused on the regime elite should highlight that denuclearization offers the best hope of survival.
The second-tier leadership is a key target audience. It comprises military and party officials outside of the core regime elite who lack sufficient power to act alone but whose collective action during war, crisis, or regime collapse would influence the outcome of any contingency. In the military, this category includes brigade commanders and assistant commanders, commanders and assistant commanders of specialized units (intelligence, missile, and WMD), and key senior staff controlling logistics and transportation. The military second tier would also include senior General Political Bureau and Military Security Command officers assigned to the aforementioned commands. All told, the military second tier numbers approximately 250 personnel.
In the Korean Workers’ Party, officers serving on party committees at the provincial, city, and county levels have enormous influence on all activity within their individual jurisdictions. Party committee chairmen at those levels carry similar authorities. Combined, these individuals add up to approximately 400 personnel across nine provinces, 145 counties, and key cities throughout the country.
Finally, Ministry of State Security (secret police) and Ministry of People’s Security (national police) leaders in those same geographical districts also have enormous influence within their jurisdictions. They also number approximately 400 personnel.
After accounting for roughly 50 key scientists and project leaders of WMD programs, the second-tier leadership totals approximately 1,100 personnel. Each of these individuals has the potential – in critical contingencies – to resist guidance orders, stop or alter logistical and transportation actions, and neutralize elite-level action officers.232
The IIA campaign targeting this second-tier should focus on providing information and media that sow doubt regarding the regime elite and suggest that life could improve if the regime changed its policies. As renowned North Korea analyst Andrei Lankov has noted, informing North Koreans about “attractive alternatives to their current way of life” represents a key way to pressure the regime to change its behavior.233 In addition, messages to the second-tier leadership should highlight how they could play a positive role in a non-nuclear North Korea or a unified Korea.
IIA focused on the third target audience, the North Korean people, should prioritize foreign media. The widespread dissemination of foreign media has already created fissures between the everyday North Koreans and the regime elite, thereby weakening the government’s propaganda and information blockade.234 As the CSIS survey found, North Koreans who consume foreign media will likely continue seeking this information despite the potential consequences if they are caught.235 Moreover, continually injecting foreign media into North Korea will help break down the regime’s ideological controls while encouraging more independent thinking among everyday North Koreans.
Although the United States possesses IIA capabilities, they have not been deployed in a robust and well-coordinated manner. Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia pump news into North Korea via radio, television, and the internet. According to one North Korean escapee, VOA broadcasts are transcribed and provided to the regime elite, who represent up to 10 to 15 percent of North Korea’s 24 million population.236 Similarly, the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor provides funding to nongovernmental organizations for “fostering the free flow of information into, out of, and within the DPRK.”237 Non-governmental organizations such as the Defense Forum Foundation support private efforts such as Free North Korea Radio.238 Given the relatively closed nature of North Korean society, however, it is difficult to assess how many of these programs are performing.
Moreover, an effective IIA campaign requires close coordination between the U.S. and ROK governments. However, Seoul has often undermined effective IIA tools, an approach rooted in the Moon administration’s belief that concessions lead to “better inter-Korean relations.”239 This belief ignores North Korea’s persistent failure to respond to such concessions with verifiable steps toward denuclearization. Washington therefore should remind Seoul that no prior intra-Korean agreements, such as the April Panmunjom Joint Declaration or the September Pyongyang Declaration, should encumber IIA against North Korea.
Bottles containing rice, money, and USB sticks are prepared prior to being thrown into the sea by North Korean defector activists on Ganghwa island, west of Seoul, on May 1, 2018. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Alarmingly, South Korea has cracked down on activities by escapee and refugee organizations. This is particularly problematic because the efforts of such organizations likely represent the most effective IIA. They have been successful in getting information into the North by flying balloons and floating plastic bottles filled with USB drives and other material.240
RECOMMENDATIONS
The United States and South Korea should implement a comprehensive and aggressive IIA campaign in North Korea. The focus should be three-fold: create internal threats against the regime from among the elite, provide the second-tier leadership with alternative paths to survival, and prepare the Korean people for eventual unification under a United Republic of Korea. To do so, we recommend the following steps:
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Develop organizational infrastructure to facilitate IIA: The United States and South Korea lack a single organization to direct IIA against North Korea. Washington and Seoul should establish institutions that would work together to plan and shape combined IIA. Fortunately, as discussed earlier, the United States already has numerous tools at its disposal, such as the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Voice of America; and Radio Free Asia. The United States should centralize these activities under an oversight organization. This organization would coordinate all agencies and departments and work with non-government organizations.
- Under the Moon administration, there will likely be concerns that IIA could upset diplomatic conditions. Admittedly, an IIA campaign targeting Pyongyang could risk stirring additional short-term tensions with Pyongyang. But U.S. diplomats should remind their ROK counterparts that those tensions may ultimately forge a path to the peaceful denuclearization of North Korea. U.S. diplomats also need to remind their South Korean allies that Seoul’s persistent use of concessions has not elicited progress with Pyongyang.
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Encourage Moon’s government to increase intra-Korean people-to-people exchanges: Washington should encourage intra-Korean engagement by sponsoring people-to-people educational and cultural exchanges. Such exchanges could expose North Korea’s intelligentsia and emerging elites to democratic concepts as well as personal relationships with South Koreans.241
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Implement aggressive IIA targeting the North Korea regime: After building a baseline consensus, the United States and South Korea should implement increasingly aggressive IIA targeting the North Korean regime. These activities should inform North Koreans of their universal human rights and civil liberties that the regime is failing to respect. This will undermine the legitimacy of the Kim family regime and give hope to the people living in the North. Alternate sources of information can put regime propaganda in perspective.
- This campaign could also help lay the initial groundwork for emergent leaders who could replace Kim and who might seek to unify with the South as equal partners under the values of individual liberty and freedom, liberal democracy, and a free market economy. At a minimum, this campaign could help persuade Kim that the status quo poses a greater threat than good faith negotiations with the United States and South Korea. The ultimate goal is to create internal divisions and threats that will influence Kim to denuclearize.
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Increase exposure of North Koreans to the outside world: IIA must exploit North Koreans’ growing access to DVDs, USB drives, and smart phones from outside the country.242 These media devices can carry content popular among North Koreans, such as South Korean dramas, which can implicitly help Koreans in the North better understand the difference between the regime they have and the government they deserve.243
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Establish a Korea Defector Information Institute (KDII): There is no single organization in the United States or South Korea that harnesses the information of defectors to support IIA. If both nations worked together to establish a KDII, it could serve as a repository for defector information to inform policymakers, strategists, and those responsible for developing IIA themes and messages. This institute should utilize defector knowledge and advice in devising appropriate messages and communications techniques. It could also encourage North Koreans to defect, particularly members of Office 39 (also known as Department 39), who are knowledgeable of the Kim family regime’s finances.
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Provide military support to ROK-U.S. government programs for IIA: U.S. Psychological Operations (PSYOP) forces should be deployed on a permanent basis to support ROK PSYOP forces as part of a national-level alliance IIA campaign. ROK and U.S. PSYOP forces should advise and assist defector organizations to synchronize themes, messages, and dissemination methods to ensure unity of effort.
13. US will continue to enhance defense readiness against N. Korean threats: Kirby
One of the most important things the ROK/US CFC is doing is to create a new normal for combined readiness training. The command has announced some 20 upcoming exercises in the coming months and the planning for a large scale live fire exercise around October in recognition of the 70th anniversary of the Mutual Defense treaty.
This communicates the message that a high level of readiness is being sustained and that the exercises we are conducting are a planned and not a perceived knee jerk reaction to north Korean provocations. We are going to maintain a high level of readiness to deter a north Korean attack on the South (both conventional and nuclear). That is the focus of deterrence: to prevent a war.
US will continue to enhance defense readiness against N. Korean threats: Kirby
The Korea Times · by 2023-01-05 11:59 | Defense · January 5, 2023
National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby speaks during the daily briefing in the James S Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., in this Aug. 2, 2022 file photo. AFP-Yonhap
The United States will continue to enhance its joint defense readiness with South Korea and Japan by conducting additional joint military exercises against growing North Korean threats, a White House official said Wednesday.
John Kirby, National Security Council (NSC) coordinator for strategic communications, also highlighted that the U.S. has devoted additional intelligence gathering and military capabilities to the region to that end.
"You have seen in just recent weeks some bilateral exercises between the United States and Japan, specifically in response to the increased tensions by the regime in Pyongyang," the NSC official said in a virtual press briefing.
"And you are going to see us continue to look for ways to not only improve our bilateral military cooperation, which is already quite extraordinary, but our trilateral military cooperation with Japan, South Korea and the United States together," he added.
Pyongyang periodically criticizes the U.S.' joint military exercises in the region, accusing them of being aimed at invading the North.
The joint military drills held late last year, however, came on the heels of an unprecedented number of North Korean ballistic missile launches that included eight intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
North Korea fired some 70 ballistic missiles in 2022 alone, setting a new annual record that far exceeded the previous record of 25.
Kirby reiterated the U.S.' commitment to engage in diplomacy with Pyongyang.
North Korea fires a new type of the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Pyongyang International Airport, in this Nov. 18, 2022 file photo released by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. Yonhap
"The offer still stands for us to be willing to sit down with North Koreans without precondition to find a diplomatic path forward to a denuclearization of the DPRK," said the NSC official, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"To date, they have not taken us up on that, of course. Quite the contrary there. They seem to be moving in the opposite direction, which is why we have got to make sure that we have got the kind of capabilities, the kind of readiness in place to protect our national security interests and we are going to do that," he added.
His remark also comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an "exponential" growth of his country's nuclear warheads.
Kirby declined to comment when asked what an "exponential growth" of North Korea's nuclear weapons program could mean, but said the U.S. will continue to closely monitor North Korea.
"We have been watching closely and will continue to watch closely the Kim regime's pursuit of additional advanced military capabilities and certainly their nuclear ambitions in that regard, and continue to make sure that we are properly postured to defend both our chief alliances in that part of the world with Japan and South Korea, but also our greater national security interest in the region and beyond," he said.
"It's why we have done these additional exercises I was talking about before. It's why we have devoted our military capabilities to that part of the world, and we are just going to continue to focus on that," added Kirby. (Yonhap)
The Korea Times · by 2023-01-05 11:59 | Defense · January 5, 2023
14. US concerned about NK's disregard of military agreement with Seoul: State Dept.
This is simply evidence that pieces of paper cannot protect the South from the north.
US concerned about NK's disregard of military agreement with Seoul: State Dept.
The Korea Times · by 2023-01-04 16:52 | Defense · January 5, 2023
State Department Press Secretary Ned Price is seen speaking during a daily press briefing at the department in Washington on Jan. 4 in this captured image. Yonhap
The United States is concerned about North Korea's disregard of a tension-reduction agreement it signed with South Korea in 2018, a state department official said Wednesday.
"We are concerned about the DPRK's apparent disregard of the 2018 comprehensive military agreement, and we call on it to end its irresponsible and escalatory behavior," department press secretary Ned Price said during a daily press briefing.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered his aides to consider suspending the inter-Korean agreement on Wednesday (Seoul time), after North Korea sent five spy drones across the heavily-fortified inter-Korean border last week in what Seoul has called a clear violation of the 2018 agreement.
Yoon threatens to suspend 2018 military pact if North Korea violates border again
North Korea has explicitly violated the military agreement 17 times since it was signed, according to Seoul's presidential office.
"The DPRK has continued to engage in a series of provocations," Price said when asked about the possible suspension of the inter-Korean agreement, while declining to provide any U.S. position on the issue.
Pyongyang fired some 70 ballistic missiles in 2022 alone, setting a new annual record that far exceeded its previous record of 25. (Yonhap)
The Korea Times · by 2023-01-04 16:52 | Defense · January 5, 2023
15. Negotiations alone cannot denuclearize N. Korea: Harry Harris
My summarized strategy outline:
A superior political warfare strategy:
1) Built on the foundation of a strong and ready ROK.US military alliance with the demonstrated (political and nation) will and military capability to conduct the full range of military operations to ensure the defense of South Korea, regional allies, US interests in the region, and the US homeland.
2) A human rights upfront approach
2/A sophisticated information and influence activities campaign
4. The pursuit of a free and unified Korea (with a recognition that the policy of denuclearization then unification must be reversed - e.g., unification first - then denuclearization) - support the ROK Ministry of Unification's new campaign for "Unification On" or "UniOn" ( pronounced either :"Uni-On" or "Union" - union obviously implying unification)
Negotiations alone cannot denuclearize N. Korea: Harry Harris
The Korea Times · January 4, 2023
Harry Harris, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, is seen speaking in a webinar hosted by the Washington Times Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, Jan. 3. Yonhap
Negotiations alone will not rid North Korea of its nuclear ambition, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris argued Tuesday, insisting that U.S. policy of using negotiations to remove North Korea's nuclear weapons is no longer useful.
The former U.S. ambassador stressed the need to combine dialogue with strong sanctions and deterrence to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong-un otherwise.
"The U.S. intelligence community assesses that KJU views nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent against foreign intervention," Harris said in a webinar hosted by the Washington Times Foundation think tank, referring to the North Korean leader by his initials.
"KJU declared last year that he would be willing to employ nukes more broadly in wartime, and last September, he stated unequivocally that he would never give up his nukes and the North Korea's status as a nuclear weapons state is irreversible," he added.
Harris, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, also pointed to Kim's remarks at the recently concluded plenary meeting of the North's ruling Workers' Party that Pyongyang will "exponentially" increase the number of its nuclear arsenal.
"That doesn't sound to me like he's going to get rid of his nukes any time soon. In fact, he's telling us precisely the opposite," he insisted.
The former U.S. ambassador to Seoul highlighted the importance of maintaining pressure on the North through deterrence and sanctions.
"We must not relax sanctions or reduce joint military exercises just to get North Korea to come to the negotiating table. This is a fool's error," he said.
"While we hope for diplomacy with North Korea to be successful, we must recognize that hope alone is not a course of action. The quest for dialogue with the North must never be made at the expense of the ability to respond to threats from the North," he added. (Yonhap)
The Korea Times · January 4, 2023
16. 2023: South Korea's awakening
Excerpts:
A country that wants to be recognized as a great power must win such a position on its own in the international community and prove to existing powers that it is one of them. Many people seem to suffer from "great power syndrome" as South Korea is an economically advanced country that has been recognized for its competitive defense industry, which exports high-tech weapons to foreign countries. But arrogance derived from partial successes can lead to self-destruction. As South Koreans pop open the champagne this New Year it should not be in the delusion that theirs is now a powerful country on the course for greatness.
Rather, with the nuclear problem, South Korea now faces its most unprecedented national security crisis from North Korea since the Korean War armistice in 1953. In 2023, the intensity of North Korea's provocations against South Korea is likely to increase dramatically, with a real possibility that a localized armed conflict will break out between the two Koreas. South Korea will have to manage the Korea-U.S. alliance more carefully and strategically than ever to avoid a deterioration on the Korean Peninsula and a fundamental shift in the geopolitical conditions of Northeast Asia.
German philosopher Georg Hegel said, "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." What happens in the present is not fully comprehensible, but with time we gain sufficient perspective to understand our experiences. After 30 years of failed efforts to denuclearize North Korea, South Koreans have learned enough. Now is the time that they wake up from their fantasies. Hopefully, the year 2023 should mark this awakening.
2023: South Korea's awakening
The Korea Times · January 5, 2023
By Park Jung-won
In 2023, Northeast Asia's path toward a new Cold War paradigm will become increasingly clear. China and Russia will refuse to impose sanctions on North Korea for any of its illegal activities that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions and undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. Xi Jinping's consolidation of near-absolute power in China will signify the disappearance of a "friendly" check on North Korea's aggressive behavior.
And the United States, South Korea's best hope of assistance, is also inextricably caught in a web of rapidly deteriorating relations with China and the uncertainties of the outcome of its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, both of which distract from its other pledges of alliance. South Korea will have no choice but to adapt to this reality.
Nevertheless, there are still many people in South Korea who think that the denuclearization of North Korea can be achieved through dialogue, even though North Korea has officially vowed to become a nuclear power and use nuclear weapons against South Korea. Not a few politicians, officials, scholars and ordinary citizens still maintain this fantasy. In order for South Korea to survive the tough geopolitical challenges of the new Cold War, it must awaken and leave its illusions behind.
First, South Koreans should abandon the misconception that economic aid will convince the North to give up its nuclear weapons and become a normal state. This idealistic notion stems from "functionalism," for which the European Union serves as an example. In Europe's history, wars broke out almost every century, resulting in large-scale deaths and destruction.
In an attempt to avoid this, after World War II, the European Community (and eventually the European Union) was created on the basis of three pillars (economic community, common foreign and security policies and cooperation in justice and home affairs) to establish stability in the region. Former enemies have now become entrenched partners for peace and prosperity.
However, those who recommend this functionalist approach to inter-Korean relations have neglected an important point: all the countries in the European Union share the aim of liberal democracy. The two Koreas, in contrast, have completely different political systems and ideologies. No matter how much South Korea tries to understand and help the North Korean regime with good intentions, it will not be welcomed by the North Korean regime. The official name of North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), yet North Korea is neither a democracy nor a republic.
Despite suffering mass starvation in the late 1990s, North Korea went on to conduct a nuclear test in the early 2000s, and it is now preparing its seventh such test. Its missile technology to deliver such weapons has likewise progressed. North Korea's nuclear weapons are a means of maintaining and consolidating the North Korean regime's power, so they will never be scrapped under any circumstances. A liberal democracy would have no reason to behave this way.
Another great fantasy that deludes South Korean society concerns its geopolitical status. South Korea may have entered the OECD's "rich club," but it is not a great power in the realm of international politics. With the help of the United States and the United Nations, South Korea rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the Korean War.
Thanks to the Korea-U.S. alliance system, South Korea has achieved nothing short of an economic miracle. But great-power status does not come from being well-off. Russia and China are considered great powers even though they are not advanced countries by other measures. And many OECD members, including Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium, are not major powers, despite being economically advanced countries.
A country that wants to be recognized as a great power must win such a position on its own in the international community and prove to existing powers that it is one of them. Many people seem to suffer from "great power syndrome" as South Korea is an economically advanced country that has been recognized for its competitive defense industry, which exports high-tech weapons to foreign countries. But arrogance derived from partial successes can lead to self-destruction. As South Koreans pop open the champagne this New Year it should not be in the delusion that theirs is now a powerful country on the course for greatness.
Rather, with the nuclear problem, South Korea now faces its most unprecedented national security crisis from North Korea since the Korean War armistice in 1953. In 2023, the intensity of North Korea's provocations against South Korea is likely to increase dramatically, with a real possibility that a localized armed conflict will break out between the two Koreas. South Korea will have to manage the Korea-U.S. alliance more carefully and strategically than ever to avoid a deterioration on the Korean Peninsula and a fundamental shift in the geopolitical conditions of Northeast Asia.
German philosopher Georg Hegel said, "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." What happens in the present is not fully comprehensible, but with time we gain sufficient perspective to understand our experiences. After 30 years of failed efforts to denuclearize North Korea, South Koreans have learned enough. Now is the time that they wake up from their fantasies. Hopefully, the year 2023 should mark this awakening.
Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.
The Korea Times · January 5, 2023
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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