WHY NORTH KOREA WILL INEVITABLY STRIKE AGAIN / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ( VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

Why North Korea will inevitably strike again

Andrei Lankov

Published: December 21 2010 23:42

So, Seoul is in a self-congratulatory (and slightly bellicose) mood. On Monday, the South Korean military held artillery drills in the disputed waters around the Yeonpyeong island, the target of the massive North Korean attack in November.

They have held such exercises before, but this time the North Koreans claimed that the drills constituted an infringement of their sovereignty, so they would retaliate on a huge scale. They did not.

It seems that the majority opinion in Seoul is that North Koreans blinked when faced with determination and the willingness to use force – and few people doubt that the promised North Korean “retaliation”, if actually carried out, would trigger a colossal South Korean military response. So the South Korean decision-makers believe now that toughness worked, and the Seoul public, which has been unusually bellicose recently, largely shares this opinion.

But this seems to be a delusion. The North Korean leaders did not duck the fight this time because they were afraid.

Rather, they did what a cold-minded tactician should do: they avoided an engagement under unfavourable conditions chosen by the opponent, in order to strike the opponent at the time and place of their own choice, suddenly and forcefully.

This year, North Korea has staged two major sudden attacks on South Korean facilities, both in the disputed waters along the western coast. In April it torpedoed a warship, and in November it shelled an island.

These attacks fit with the well-tested North Korean tactics: when Pyongyang needs something, it first drives tensions high and then extracts necessary concessions as a reward for its willingness to ease the tensions.

And what does it want this time? It is seeking a resumption of South Korean aid.

Since the late 1990s, the South has provided North Korea with generous and essentially unconditional aid, but after 2008 the aid was much reduced by the new conservative administration in Seoul. So the North Korean policy planners decided to demonstrate that they could penalise any South Korean government that was too stubborn in dealing with Pyongyang.

The targets of the recent attacks are the South Korean economy and the minds of South Korean voters, not South Korean guns or warships. South Korea is highly dependent on the international markets, and prospective foreign partners do not enjoy newspaper headlines about a “coming war in Korea”. The South Korean voter does not like the atmosphere of tension either. The North Korean policy planners reason that a constant sense of crisis and an economic slowdown will influence the South Korean voters, who will eventually support a party more ready to accommodate Pyongyang’s demands.

Pyongyang needs this aid not because it is desperate, but because it wants to diversify its sources of income. It has grown too dependent on aid from China, and this is not what Pyongyang’s leaders want. They want Americans and South Koreans back, so they can resume their usual game of milking a few mutually antagonistic sponsors whom they can then play off against one another.

Since the current Seoul government shows no sign of giving in, and its hardline approach is seemingly encouraged by the lack of the promised revenge last Monday, we can be almost sure that in the next few months North Koreans will strike again. They will do it not as a reaction to some South Korean drills, but rather at a time and place of their choice, when and where they hope to maximise the political impact of their military strike.

It seems this time the South Korean government is determined to strike back mightily, and this is dangerous.

The retaliatory strikes will be useless. The lives of North Korean soldiers and sailors are of no value to the tiny Pyongyang elite: their scions do not serve in the military, but shop in Paris instead. They have sacrificed countless lives for the survival of the regime in the past (up to one million were starved to death during the famine of the late 1990s), and they again will sacrifice as many lives as necessary without losing any sleep. Also, the loss of a few pieces of antiquated military hardware is not going to be a major problem for them.

They will not be intimidated by anything short of direct strikes against their villas, and such strikes are nearly certain to trigger a major war.

Indeed, in the worst-case scenario, the chain of retaliation and counter-retaliation might escalate into a general war with disastrous consequences. The South would be likely to win – unless China decided that it made geopolitical sense to support the North quietly – but the cost of victory would be huge: essentially, Korea would be pushed back to the 1960s. This nightmarish scenario could unfold next year.

Far more likely, though, is that this exchange will remain under control. In this case, the retaliation will merely help the North Koreans to achieve their goals of “teaching Seoul a lesson”. News reports about exchanges of fire are certain to increase the sense of crisis.

This is exactly what the Pyongyang strategists want.

So, under the current circumstances restraint is by far the best option. We can just hope potential intoxication with the supposed “triumph of deterrence” will not push Seoul to overreact to the next provocation – for such provocation is nearly certain to happen in the near future.

The writer is professor at the Kookmin University (Seoul) and author of numerous books on North Korean history and society

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.