South Korean Artillery Fire – How Will North Korea Respond?

December 20, 2010

So despite protests South Korea did its announced live fire artillery drill at the disputed border today but North Korea did not immediately respond in kind.

Good. With the South Korean military on high alarm and a lot of the U.S. fleet around an immediate response would have been quite dangerous. And why fight on your enemies' terms?

But just as the South could not back off for fear of losing face, the North will now have to do something to keep its face. It will do that something pretty soon but probably still at a surprising place and time.

What might something be?

Another nuke test or firing off of some bigger missiles is a possibility but might be just too normal and predictable to be seen as an appropriate response. Something asymmetric like a daring infiltration into the South to blow up this or that bridge or military outpost is my best guess.

But your guess is as good as mine. How do you think North Korea will respond to this provocation?

Posted by b on December 20, 2010 at 16:01 UTC | Permalink

Comments

A new nuke test is already priced from all sides. There have been repeated reports about a new tunnel being dug on the site of the previous test. And as the previous test failed to some extend North Korea needs a new test to validate their technology.

Posted by: ThePaper | Dec 20 2010 16:50 utc | 1

“How do you think North Korea will respond to this provocation?”
How is it a “provocation”? Because the North Koreans, who just recently SHELLED CIVILIANS in a COMPLETELY UNPROVOKED attack, are irrational enough to be provoked by a routine military exercise, that makes it a “provocation”?
Your characterization is ridiculous.

Posted by: Will | Dec 20 2010 17:33 utc | 2

@Will
Defending Korea Line Seen Contrary to Law by Kissinger Remains U.S. Policy

The sea border that has become the main battleground between North and South Korea 57 years after it was imposed by a U.S. general has been called legally indefensible by American officials for more than three decades.
Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a 1975 classified cable that the unilaterally drawn Northern Limit Line was “clearly contrary to international law.” Two years before, the American ambassador said in another cable that many nations would view South Korea and its U.S. ally as “in the wrong” if clashes occurred in disputed areas along the boundary.

The first arty firing South Korea did was already a clear provocation. It was not routine. It fired, despite heavy protest, from an island in disputed (and likely not really South Korean, see Kissinger) westward which is in that area towards North Korean water and land. The North Koreans responded as promised. With some 150 shots of which some 90 fell into the see, most of the rest hit the South Korean artillery base killing 2 military, 2 civilians working there and wounding 17 military. A few rounds did hit civilian places but no one was harmed there.
So unlike what you say it was 1. a provoked attack and 2. not on civilians.
Oh yeah, I can prove all the above from South Korean press accounts.
The “training” today was a clear provocation and a very dangerous move. There was a real chance of escalation. Thankfully the North was rational enough not to fall for it. The people in South Korea should fire their government for endangering them with such stupid brinkmanship.

Posted by: b | Dec 20 2010 17:46 utc | 3

b, losing instead of loosing
apologise by for not being able to do much more than correct
& it is hard to predict what the north koreans will do – not because they are crazy, in fact they are no more crazier than the political & econoic elites in the west who risk & take the lives of innocent with great regularity

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 20 2010 18:22 utc | 4

wrt to provocations, i had read in an interview published at korea policy institute that

in early August, North Korean artillery had fired live shells into the waters close to Baegnyeong Island and Yeonpyeong Island, islands controlled by South Korea but located closer to North Korea in the West Sea (Yellow Sea).
Back in August, North Korea was responding to artillery fire from South Korean bases on those islands. In September, South Korea held artillery exercises again. In October, no artillery exercises were held. But on November 23rd, according to a leaked South Korean Ministry of National Defense report, artillery units on those islands—as part of the large, nation-wide military exercise Hoguk—again fired artillery into waters claimed by North Korea.
On that day, November 23rd, from 10:15 am until North Korea began shelling Yeonpyeong Island at 2:34 pm, South Korean artillery units had fired 3,657 times, or over 900 shells per hour, into waters claimed by North Korea.

the northern limit line is something the u.s. derived & imposed by itself, well outside of any maritime or int’l laws, so it is not really binding outside of the might-makes-right enforcement by the more powerful party in the manufactured dispute. otherwise, noko has the more legit stance here. this gives them some useful leverage if they can keep level heads and not play into their opponents gameplan.

Posted by: b real | Dec 20 2010 20:40 utc | 5

This is from the “Wikileaks and Media Disinformation – North Korea, Iran and Belarus” article linked to by Anonymous in the “NYT Headline Turns Fact On Its Head” thread.

The American historian Bruce Cummings in his revealing book North Korea quotes an American official who met the DPRK leader Kim Jong Il in 2000 who had this to say about the North Korean leader ” he’s amazingly well-informed and extremely well-read.. he is practical, thoughtful, listened very hard. He has a sense of humour. He’s not the madman many people portrayed him as.” This is a far cry from the psychotic, Charles Manson-like madman universally propagated by the mainstream media. The DPRK has never been a threat to international security. It is simply a country that has refused to be colonised by the United States.

This flies in the face of everything I’ve been led to believe about Kim Jong Il and in the interest of understanding NK better and possibly exposing more US propaganda (and my own credulousness), I’d be interested in hearing Monolycus’ take on this.

Posted by: juannie | Dec 21 2010 8:26 utc | 6

“I’d be interested in hearing Monolycus’ take on this.”

I’m hesitant to respond to this for a number of reasons. To begin with, I am not a foreign policy expert, and my opinions and conclusions do not carry any weight. There is no benefit to be had by my being vindicated for any of them, however my reputation can only suffer later by having been proved to be off-base. If I were to strictly observe a risk/reward analysis, I could only conclude that the correct course of action would be to remain silent.
Secondly, I do not live in North Korea and have no reason to expect that I will be invited to enjoy a soirée hosted by Leader Kim firsthand (charming though I have heard they can be.) My take on things has been informed by my anecdotal experiences with the peoples in South Korea. I am sure that there are enough “national character” similarities in a blanket sense for me to gauge things very generally, but I do not personally know any of the major players except through the filter of news reports (which puts me at the same disadvantage shared by every contributor here.)
Thirdly, I fail to see how I can articulate my thoughts on this subject in such a way as not to sound like a complete asshole. My initial reaction was something along the lines of “Well, duh.” We don’t live in a cartoon populated by supervillians, and I never expected that Kim Jong-il actually fed Hans Blix to sharks or tied damsels to railroad tracks in his spare time.
Taking the formidable question of differences in cultural psychology off the table for a moment (and that is, I think, the primary difficulty that people are having in understanding how to manage this situation), there are still two very human problems that arise here that only provide more fuel to the propaganda machine. The first problem is that we have a tendency to think in black and white terms of “good” and “evil.” One technique that has been very useful in managing people’s perceptions is to ascribe superhuman (and easily debunked) “evil” qualities to an individual in order to absolve them of wrongdoing or to derail genuine debate by overloading it with all manner of hooey. Dick Cheney, for example, very successfully co-opted the cartoonish Darth Vader label so that more mundane and salient charges against him just didn’t seem so bad by comparison. If it can not be demonstrated that somebody actually and regularly eats kittens, then it is apparently not worth anyone’s while to look into those petty charges of graft and corruption.
The second problem is that while we regularly use terminology like “madman,” we never once actually define what we mean by it, so that instances of apparent lucidity seem to upend everything that we have projected on to an individual and suddenly we think the game has changed entirely. This is a simple variation of the “Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and dog-lover” rhetoric which can get people buzzing off-topic for hours (and I do apologize for the Godwin there. It’s just for demonstrative purposes.) Kim Jong-il apparently loves beer and pizza. Well, what kind of a lunatic wouldn’t love beer and pizza? He must be an all right kind of guy after all, and he just happens to enjoy that the DPRK state propaganda apparatus reports claims that he can change the weather with his mood or that his father could make grenades out of pine cones. He’s obviously a sensible guy who takes absolute control over the life and death, education and free expression of the peoples of an entire country with a quirky grain of salt.
Now, please, do not think that my obvious distaste for that repressive regime makes me an advocate for war here. I would have liked to have seen an extension of Sunshine Policy tactics to minimize the bloodshed here and allowed the situation to crumble away internally. However, there is another megalomaniac in the South who feels otherwise, and a population of starving people in the North combined with angry people in the South who feel, perhaps justifiably, that something more expeditious ought to be done. I’m not an expert, so I really am not qualified to say.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 22 2010 1:45 utc | 7

errata: The sentence in the fourth paragraph should read” “If it can be demonstrated that somebody does not actually and regularly eat kittens…”

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 22 2010 1:59 utc | 8

@juannie #6
I re-read my response, and there are many things I would like to point to in an attempt to justify my tone, but I think at the end of the day, I really am kind of a jerk. I didn’t mean to come across as dismissive as I ended up doing, and I really did take your observation seriously.
The “Well, duh” from my #7 response was not aimed at you, personally, in the least. It came from my memories of many business meetings in Soko in which it is a cultural expectation for a successful person to present the appearance of listening to and digesting what their subordinates are saying, even when they aren’t really doing so. I fell for it many, many times until I realized it is simply how things are done here. My “Well, duh” stemmed from my own embarrassment.
The second link in my #7 came closest to actually addressing your question, but one has to scroll a bit to find the relevant bits, and I should have snipped them at the time. I will do so now (emphasis added)…

US Special Envoy for the Korean Peace Talks, Charles Kartman, who was involved in the 2000 Madeleine Albright summit with Kim, characterised Kim Jong-il as a reasonable man in negotiations, to the point, but with a sense of humor and personally attentive to the people he was hosting.[118] However, psychological evaluations conclude that Kim Jong-il’s antisocial features, such as his fearlessness in the face of sanctions and punishment, serve to make negotiations extraordinarily difficult.[119]
The field of psychology has long been fascinated with the personality assessment of dictators, a notion that resulted in an extensive personality evaluation of Kim Jong-il. The report, compiled by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal (with the assistance of a South Korean psychiatrist considered an expert on Kim Jong-il’s behavior), concluded that the “big six” group of personality disorders shared by dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein (sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal) were also shared by Kim Jong-il—coinciding primarily with the profile of Saddam Hussein.[119] The evaluation also finds that Kim Jong-il appears to pride himself on North Korea’s independence, despite the extreme hardships it appears to place on the North Korean people—an attribute appearing to emanate from his antisocial personality pattern.[119] This notion also encourages other cognitive issues, such as self-deception, as subsidiary components to Kim Jong-il’s personality. Many of the stories about Kim Jong Il’s eccentricities and decadent life-style are exaggerated, possibly circulated by South Korean intelligence to discredit the Northern regime.

I hope that addresses your query a bit more directly, and I apologize for my previous tone. During MoonofA’s hiatus, I have frequented other online communities, but none of them compose themselves with the mutual respect that characterizes this place, and I am afraid that I have fallen into some bad habits.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 22 2010 15:26 utc | 9

I wonder if those personality disorders are so much different for the leaders of the free world. How would Harry Truman compare to Saddam Hussein? What about the current guy? he seems a bit narcissistic, doesn’t he?
sadistic seems to encompass quite a few of the boys and girls in charge of europe and north america.
if only there could be one standard for all.

Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 22 2010 16:16 utc | 10

South Korea keeps provoking North Korea and plans more provocation actions in the near future. Now it’s performing large military exercises just north of Seul.
It’s unlikely that North Korea will answer those provocations immediately but it’s likely they will be eventually a ‘payback’.
S. Korean Christmas tree sign of new propaganda war
South Korea Mobilizes For New Military Drills
Was US style christianism usual in Korea before the 40s and the US ‘protectorate’? Or we could it colonization.

Posted by: ThePaper | Dec 22 2010 19:09 utc | 11

“Was US style christianism usual in Korea before the 40s and the US ‘protectorate’?”

This topic was touched on long ago before the MoA hiatus. X-Mas is observed in the south, but it’s not huge, and neither X-Mas nor Christianity here could be described as “US style.”
b looked at the distribution of Christians in business and government (as opposed to Buddhists), and it becomes very clear that converting to “Christianity” here is seen as a career move.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 22 2010 23:04 utc | 12

Thanks for the elaboration Mono. I went back and read your links and found an answer to my question there and your posting the quotes from the link puts it on record here. I’m appreciative.
dan, I think your insinuation is quite accurate. I don’t think, for the majority of situations, you can climb the to the heights of government or corporate management and not exhibit or behave in a psychopathic manner. Whether one is clinically psychopathic is not totally relevant. The ability to behave so is. The ‘big six’ personality disorders fit into the psychopathic character quite well.

Posted by: juannie | Dec 23 2010 1:41 utc | 13

Back to sabre-rattling for now, apparently.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 23 2010 23:15 utc | 14

This is becoming a pissing contest that could end up as World War III.

Posted by: Copeland | Dec 23 2010 23:26 utc | 15

A long and detailed analysis of the recent events: Korean Brinkmanship, American Provocation, and the Road to War: the manufacturing of a crisis by Tim Beal at Japan Focus.

Posted by: Philippe | Dec 25 2010 13:25 utc | 16

The most dangerous man in Korea

Posted by: ThePaper | Dec 25 2010 18:53 utc | 17

@ Dan of steele: “I wonder if those personality disorders are so much different for the leaders of the free world. How would Harry Truman compare to Saddam Hussein?”
I’ve been meaning to share this anecdote for a while and when I saw the recent mention of the psychopathy of both individuals in corporations and of corporate entities themselves, I thought I may as well share with moa-ites a loose description of what was said at a late nite debate when the glasses are verging on empty yet no one has sufficient discomfort with that state of affairs to pull themselves off the sand/chair and stumble to the esky/icebox/chillybin.
Everyone feeling warm and relaxed after a hard weekend swimming n fishing paddling and sailing, the food has been sufficiently digested to relax the body, and the mind may have been dulled by alcohol but not too much since we’ve all made it past middle age and know the price that overindulgence would wreak.
Someone mumbles something about ‘fuckin psychopaths who beat their kids’ obviously responding to one of the current shock horrors out of the usual feast of ‘poor people are assholes’ stories in the local media.
Most grunt their assent, others decide that neither they nor the others present have sufficient energy to endure a vigerous debate on the worthlessness of getting emotionally invested in the bullshit with an agenda that passes for news.
Someone, a merchant capitalist whose simplistic black & white view of life enables decisions like dismissing a longterm employee without a qualm as long as the ‘bottom line justifies’ (not that I’m judging lol) asks “Hey M… you’re a psychologist, what is a psychopath? What does it mean?”
M grunts – an educational psychologist who must have had thousands of young people referred to him during his career, he normally dodges any work related question lest it lead him to discussing a specific which in the forty years plus I have known him he has never come close to doing.
So I murmur something like “Isn’t it an inability to show empathy for others?” whereupon the original questioner responds with a mixture of disbelief, disapproval and disappointment. Disbelief that insufficient empathy could be regarded as problematic, disapproval – his standard response for anything that emanates from ‘that pinko’s lips’ and disappointment that his question didn’t elicit an answer from the sage himself – the psychologist.
At that point M responds “he is correct; psychopaths are people who aren’t able to conceptualise how their actions will effect others, they aren’t all bad though – it doesn’t mean they are all mass murderers or anything. Back when we still regarded it as a condition and kids were referred to me because they were diagnosed as psychopathic or having psychopathic tendencies, usually because they had done something wrong and not shown any remorse, the standard thinking was that you would steer them into ‘pro social options’.
“What the hell does that mean?” asked the original questioner. “Pro social – what sort of pc bulldust is that?”
“Well” said M, “You need to understand that about 10% of the population are psychopathic or have ‘psycohpathic tendencies’ – We can’t throw the key away on 10% of humanity. They aren’t all fucking cannibals or baby killers. So we treated them. They can’t be cured in the normal sense. There is every chance that you have a friend of acquaintance who is psychopathic” he said, with barely a glance at the questioner. “Pro socialisation meant that we would encourage the kids to direct their ability to not feel for others into an area which was considered to be a ‘social good’. Business was the usual path I tried to encourage the kids into. Apparently not worrying about the effect your actions have on others is considered an asset in the business world.”
The questioner was unusually quiet, M continued:
“Although now you have to ask yourself if that was really good for our community. Is having those who can’t feel others’ pain in charge of major decision making within communities, really the best outcome for a society?”
So there we have it. It is no coincidence, or even a result of social evolution that leaders & those in charge of corporations are likely to be unempathetic creeps, it is the result of a sustained, self destructive effort by society to fuck itself.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 26 2010 22:36 utc | 18

Mr Lee, SoKo president relents and now wants 6-party talks ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12087986
Quite a volte-face, if true.

Posted by: Philippe | Dec 29 2010 8:37 utc | 19

@Phillipe – if the Washington Post is right, Lee (finally) got some pressure from Obama
S.Korean president faces conflicting pressures as he toughens N. Korea response

Lee’s shift in thinking has prompted modest but growing concern in the Obama administration, where officials worry that an overly aggressive South Korea could become a liability in its own right.
Political analysts in Seoul and Washington predict that Lee will soon face pressure from the United States to reengage diplomatically with the North.
…

A bit too late in my view …

Posted by: b | Dec 29 2010 13:58 utc | 20

A bit too late in my view …

Agreed.
It seems that the US foreign policy finally start to wake up to the fact that too much support for the more hawkish elements in SoKo / Japan doesn’t buy you that much good.
There are some indications that the Obama admin are finally shifting their stand a little on the base issues in Okinawa (Funtema) – way too late, after they managed to contribute to the near collapse of the DPJ admin in Jpn (the current Jpn admin has been postponing taking decisions or more importantly executing decisions without as much as a peep from the US – a few months ago, the US would have been much more vocal).

Posted by: Philippe | Dec 29 2010 23:37 utc | 21

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