He has the capability to reach all of South Korea and virtually all of Japan with his missiles and potentially 50 or 60 nuclear warheads.
With wars in Ukraine and Israel and the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, you might think that the world is already dangerous enough. But now some experts believe that North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, has made a strategic decision to go to war. After cosying up to Vladimir Putin and supplying the Russian autocrat with a million shells for his illegal invasion of Ukraine, as well as a reported “several dozen” short range ballistic missiles, all in return for technology to advance its satellite and nuclear submarine capabilities, Kim has made several alarming moves in recent days that have caused great concern to Korea watchers.
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950”, Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker wrote in January on the website 38North, an outlet devoted to North Korean issues. “The danger is already far beyond the routine warnings from Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations”’. Carlin, a former chief of the Northeast Asia Division of the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence, and Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, are both veteran North Korea analysts who have in the past participated in US-North Korea negotiations. Their opinions are therefore taken seriously in the corridors of power.
Escalations in military activity in North Korea are, of course, fairly common intimidation tactics by nuclear Kim and more often than not have led to wrong conclusions about his intentions. But in recent weeks Pyongyang has stepped up missile launches to an alarming level, the latest being a Pulhwasal-3-31 cruise missile fired two weeks ago from a new diesel-powered submarine. The missile was described as “strategic”, suggesting that it could be armed with a nuclear warhead. State media also reported that after supervising the launch Kim reviewed the site of an under-construction “nuclear submarine”, during which he restated his regime’s goal of building a nuclear-armed navy to counter “perceived threats”.
The expansion of nuclear-capable assets for the navy has been a key objective of Pyongyang in recent years, although US experts believe North Korea is unlikely to be able to develop nuclear-propelled submarines in the near future without external assistance, which will now in all likelihood come from Russia. Currently North Korea has one of the world’s largest fleet of diesel-powered submarines, but these are mostly aging and can only launch torpedoes and mines. The addition of nuclear-powered submarines, which can silently cover long distances, would allow Pyongyang to threaten the US mainland.
Two weeks ago, North Korea launched its first spy satellite, which Pyongyang says will “make a significant contribution to ramping up the war preparedness” of the country and was in response to the South’s resumption of border surveillance. Two days later, North Korea scrapped the “Inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement” (CMA), a key military pact between the two neighbours. It’s now six years since the CMA, designed to build mutual trust and lower tensions, was signed by Kim Jong Un and his then South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in. In it, both parties agreed to cease all live-firings in certain regions around the Peninsula, ban military drills near the border’s de-militarised zone and create military no-fly zones around the DMZ. There have been frequent disputes since the signing, with the two neighbours accusing each other of violations. In 2020 Kim blew up a joint liaison office on the border, and in 2022 North Korea sent five small reconnaissance drones across the border, one of which made its way to the northern edge of the capital, Seoul.
On Thursday, North Korea’s official media announced that parliament had abolished laws for economic cooperation with the South, driving a deeper wedge between the neighbours. While the regime operates on the whims of Kim, the laws had provided a more formal basis for the operation of a mountain resort and factory park north of the border. Both projects, once seen as a model of future cooperation, have been shuttered for years due to
political rancour.
Much of the inter-Korean tension can be traced back to the breakdown of nuclear talks between Kim Jong-Un and former US President Donald Trump. The two met three times in 2018-19, but ultimately failed to agree over how to pace sanctions relief and other US concessions with steps to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme. Around the time that Kim walked away from the talks with the US, he also abandoned negotiations with South Korea, in part because international and US sanctions restricted Seoul’s ability to offer concessions to Pyongyang.
The US departure from Afghanistan in 2021 was seen by Kim as a clear indication of America’s global retreat, an event which emboldened him to escalate his “anti-imperialist” and “anti-US” stance. By contrast, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was seen by the North Korean dictator as a sign of Russia’s strength; all of which probably explains his developing cosy relationship with Vladimir Putin which has led to greater cooperation between Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang. As a result, Russia and China now refuse to work with the US to impose or enforce sanctions on North Korea, and Pyongyang’s provocative actions have fewer consequences, leaving the regime free to increase the quantity and quality of its missiles.
Since 2021, North Korea has conducted an unprecedented number of major missile tests and steadily added to its nuclear arsenal, which it now claims can be used for pre-emptive strikes if necessary. There have been at least 10 rounds of tests of what Pyongyang described as long-range cruise missiles, fired from both land and sea. Kim claims the weapons are nuclear capable and have a range of up to 2,000 kilometres, a distance that would include US military bases in Japan. On 14 January North Korea announced that it had successfully fired a solid-fuel “hypersonic” missile for the first time. The following day, an emboldened Kim Jong Un branded Seoul his “principal enemy” and warned he would not hesitate to annihilate South Korea if necessary. He was speaking at the subservient Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang, having earlier announced that reunification with the South was impossible and that the two Koreas no longer have any kinship or homogeneity. “They are two separate belligerent states in the midst of war”, he said, “the historic time has come at last when we should define as a state most hostile toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea the entity called the Republic of Korea (South
Korea)”. As a sign, Kim ordered the demolition of a major monument, the Arch of Reunification, officially known as the “Monument to the Three Point Charter for National Reunification”, constructed by his father in North Korea’s capital city a year after the 2000 inter-Korea summit. Weeks before the demolition, Kim had called the massive structure an “eyesore”.
So is all this a clear message that Kim Jong Un is about to unleash his forces on his “most hostile” neighbour? He certainly has the capability to reach all of South Korea and virtually all of Japan with his missiles and potentially 50 or 60 nuclear warheads. Carlin and Hecker warn us that the evidence of the past year opens the real possibility that the situation may have reached the point that the West must seriously consider a worst case – that Pyongyang could be planning to move in ways that completely defy its calculations. While Washington and Seoul cling to the belief that their alliance backed by “ironclad” deterrence will keep Kim on the status-quo trajectory and encourage him to believe that if the North attacks the counterattack will totally destroy the North Korean regime, Carlin and Hecker
argue that clinging to these beliefs may be fatal. If, as they suspect, Kim has convinced himself that after decades of trying, there is no way to engage the United States, his recent words and actions point towards the prospects of using his nuclear arsenal. If that comes to pass, they say, even an eventual victory by the South aided by the US, in the ensuing war will be empty: “the wreckage, boundless and bare, will stretch as far as the eye can see”. Certainly as far as Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.