North Korea’s saber-rattling continues

North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – DPRK) has abrogated all nonaggression agreements with South Korea, the joint declaration on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and cut off the direct telephone line between the two countries. This follows from a statement of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, North Korea’s governmental body in charge of relations with South Korea. “The South Korean puppet forces, in collusion with the US, are working with bloodshot eyes to invade the DPRK. This situation reduced to dead letters of the inter-Korean agreements on nonaggression, which call for no use of force against each other, prevention of accidental military clashes, peaceful settlement of disputes, and setup of nonaggression demarcation line,” the statement says. North Korea also nullified the other day the Korean Armistice Agreement signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The immediate cause of such bellicose statements and actions was a UN Security Council resolution to increased sanctions against North Korea in response to its nuclear test on February 12. The resolution allows blocking banking transactions, freezing North Korean accounts, examining aircraft, ships, and diplomats in search of major cash if it is suspected that this money is intended for the development of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. The document binds all UN member states to prevent the establishment of joint financial companies and the opening of North Korean banks’ branches which can be used for the production of mass destruction weapons. It also comprises an enlarged list of the individuals and organizations that are subject to sanctions. After a long preliminary discussion, the draft resolution was moved by the US and China, which allowed it to be passed unanimously.

But what really caused Pyongyang to denounce agreements and make threats were large-scale US-South Korean military exercises Key Resolve and Foal Eagle. In reply, North Korea decided to hold its own big war games, and the leader Kim Jong-un visited the unit that was involved in the Yellow Sea Tae-Enphendo island incident in 2011, which, according to various sources, left several South Korean marines dead and about 20 wounded. International experts found out that a North Korean midget submarine had sunk the South Korean corvette Cheonan.

North Korean literary and diplomatic exercises are not a novelty. The rhetoric was no less menacing after the abovementioned clashes, but conflicts were not allowed to escalate until recently. But now the situation is somewhat different.

After testing its missiles and nuclear devices, Pyongyang launched a bitter intimidation campaign against its potential enemies, first of all, South Korea, the US, and Japan. The North Korean TV beamed a clip that shows the just-tested nuclear-tipped missile striking at New York.

This naturally raises the question: what then? Who does Kim Jong-un think should get scared?

First of all, South Korea. The “puppet regime” is being told that it is extremely vulnerable and will receive an unheard-of powerful blow. It would be wrong to say that Seoul is taking a nonchalant attitude to this. The ongoing war game is a preparation for being able to give a rebuff. Pyongyang has already been warned that South Korean medium- and short-range missile systems have been alerted. Unlike North Korean, whose army has a greater numerical strength but is armed with a lot of obsolete and obsolescent weapons, its southern adversary has the most up-to-date weaponry and well-trained armed forces. Some experts point out a high ideological morale in the North Korean army, but the southerners are in no way inferior in this respect.

It is too early to speak seriously about Pyongyang’s danger for Washington. The latter is ignoring the threats. Tokyo also remains equally calm. It was easy to forecast this result. Leaving aside the home-policy aspect, there are only two addressees left. Oddly enough, it is Beijing and, to some extent, Moscow.

Reciprocal irritation in the former Celestial Empire and the Country of Morning Freshness has been on the rise for quite a while. Nevertheless, it is China that has been supporting, out of its own considerations, the North Korean regime diplomatically and materially. The world has developed a stereotype that Pyongyang depends on Beijing and is its younger brother. In reality, things are not so unambiguous and straightforward.

Even North Korea’s first leader Kim Il-sung was rather an unsuitable client first for the USSR and then for China. Pyongyang would show off its independence on any occasion, which Beijing had to put up with until a certain moment. This moment has come.

North Korea’s leaders deliberately chose the time for their missile and nuclear tests and menacing gestures. Washington is now busy projecting the image of a peacemaker, while Beijing has to address its domestic problems. A transfer of power is underway in China, and foreign policy issues have slipped to the background for some time. It is not the right time for the new Chinese leader Xi Jinping and First Vice-Prime Minister Li Keqiang, who belong to different groupings, to plunge into foreign political adventures. They should first find out which of the top functionaries will be doing this or that job. Besides, China itself has serious differences with its neighbor over some islands.

Beijing cautioned the North Korean leadership in no uncertain terms against the missile and nuclear tests, but they remained heedless. So China changed its attitude, which resulted in the abovementioned UN Security Council joint resolution. Besides, China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi has called for changing the tune. “We call on all relevant parties to bear in mind the larger interest, stay calm, exercise restraint, and refrain from taking any moves that may further worsen the situation,” Yang said. In the current conditions, this call is addressed to Pyongyang because all the other interested parties are quite restrained.

On its part, Pyongyang is making bellicose statements in an attempt to have an impact on Beijing. Should the Korean Peninsula conflict enter a hot phase, refugees will rush in droves to China and Russia. Clearly, neither Moscow nor, all the more, Beijing wants events to take this course. So the North Korean leadership is warning them. After the Enphendo island incident, the Chinese and Russian diplomacy made an all-out effort to explain in easy-to-grasp terms to Pyongyang’s hot heads that verbal threats and gun salvos are altogether different things. Pyongyang gave in. Now it seems to be trying to take revenge. The North Korean leadership is showing that nobody else is an authority for it. Beijing is unlikely to leave this unanswered, but no one knows when this will occur.

In all probability, tension on the Korean Peninsula will be mounting. As the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says, “It is dangerous that verbal attacks are only driving the regime into a blind alley from which it will be impossible to get out with an amiable mien. Therefore, the probability of military provocations on the border between the two Koreas is increasing – moreover, they are more and more likely. Yet they are sure to be non-nuclear.” Pyongyang will confine itself to saber-rattling.