Yong Suk Lee
(FPRI) — Long-time Korea observers Robert Carlin and Sieg Hecker claimed in an online article on January 11 this year that Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war. Carlin and Hecker argue that Kim’s (tactical) decision for war would “only come after he concluded [that] all other options had been exhausted, and that the previous strategy shaping North Korea policy since 1990 had irrevocably failed.” Just a few days later, Kim Jong Un abandoned reunification as a national aspiration in a speech and declared that South Korea is a “primary foe and principal enemy,” further fueling regional and international concerns about a possible conflict on the peninsula.
North Korea’s martial declarations or threats of war should not come as a surprise for Korea experts, however. The North has been at war with the United States and South Korea since 1950. North Korea in its current form is an ideological expression of the Kim family of rulers, from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un. Pyongyang has made clear that its primary goal is preservation of the Kim family regime and dynastic succession, not the well-being of the North Korean people, dedicating North Korea’s meager economic resources to build strategic arms to guard the throne. Kim Jong Un’s right to rule comes from the barrel of a gun, as it did for his father and grandfather, and a constant state of conflict with his own people or foes, real or imagined, is the paranoid reality of his regime.
No amount of assurances and economic aid from the United States and South Korea can soothe Pyongyang’s paranoia, although successive South Korean administrations have tried. Unfortunately, South Korea’s very existence is an existential threat to North Korea because it runs counter to the ideological foundation of the Kim family of rulers, showing the world that Koreans can live just fine—free, wealthy, and vibrant—without the Kims.
North Korea has frequently lashed out against South Korea militarily. In March 2010, the North sank a South Korean warship, killing forty-six sailors. In November of the same year, it bombarded a South Korean–held island, Yeonpyeong Do, in the Yellow Sea, resulting in four dead and eighteen seriously wounded. Pyongyang used a South Korean marine corps military exercise occurring on the island as an excuse for the artillery attack. The North Korean attack was well rehearsed and coincided with an internal propaganda campaign to boost the standings of the heir apparent at the time, Kim Jong Un, as an “artillery genius,”according to South Korean officials.
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