Child psychology says North Korea will attack South Korea

On June 25 1950 the North Korean Army under cover of an enormous artillery barrage crossed the 38th parallel into the Republic of Korea (South) initiating what is generally known as the Korean War. It was to be a conflict which created enormous global pressure at the time with a United Nation’s force comprising a number of Western countries — including South Africa — pitted against the North and its allies ie USSR and the People’s Republic of China.

The resulting damage and loss of human life was staggering with about half a million UN forces killed as well as more than a million from the opposing coalition.

In 1953 former US president Dwight Eisenhower and the UN accepted a proposal, put forward by India, for a Korean armistice which resulted in the creation of a demilitarised zone (DMZ) along that 38th parallel. To this day no formal surrender has ever been achieved and the conflict which was ended under that uneasy truce exists even now.

As some of you will know, Korea was occupied by Japan prior to World War II and then divided into two parts at the end of that conflict. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North) was placed under the influence of the USSR while the South was monitored by the US with the country divided along the famous 38th parallel. The idea was to allow a unified Korea to obtain its independence five years after the war with international oversight for the duration of that period.

The Cold War however intervened and both the West and communist countries ensured that their half of the country was under the control of those who supported their ideology making a transfer to unity impossible. When the North invaded the South in 1950 it was to be the first conflict post WWII where these ideologies clashed and that was conducted primarily through proxies.

In the period after the Korean War and after a somewhat shaky start, South Korea prospered and grew into a modern industrialised economy capable of competing on a global stage.

North Korea, on the other hand, started promisingly enough after the war but then somehow managed to come to a full stop from about 1975 onwards. Its gross domestic product today is roughly 3% of that of its neighbour in the South. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has, from its inception in 1948, been ruled by Kim Il-sung (the Great Leader) and thereafter his son Kim Jong-Il (the Dear Leader) who have somehow overseen its retreat into a cocoon becoming known as “The Hermit Kingdom”.

Indeed many analysts believe that Pyongyang has become so isolated and paranoid that it views the outside world through a somewhat childlike glaze wherein everything beyond its borders is evil. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that for centuries Korea lived under the shadow of its two giant neighbours, China and Japan, as well as the Cold War which placed it in the middle of a superpower conflict between another neighbour Russia (USSR) and the US.

Whatever the reason the fact is that up to now, other than China, North Korea has generally listened to no-one.

It is therefore a cause of great concern all round that this week has seen even China seemingly unable to curb Pyongyang. China is after all the country that ensures North Korea has fuel and food and without which the DPRK would be staring mass starvation in the face.

While it is all very well for US ambassador Susan Rice to speak of consensus having been achieved with regard to the resolution being prepared by the UN, this does not answer the deeply troubling questions of why North Korea ignored resolution 1718 of the UN to test their missiles and thereafter thumbed their nose at China?

Moreover while analysts debate about whether North Korea is using blackmail to get more aid, wants nukes for security, wants to speak to the US directly, is testing Obama, is concerned with the transfer of power from Kim Jong-Il to one of his three sons which may involve a regency, is or isn’t willing to re-engage with the six-nations summit led by China or otherwise one fact keeps presenting itself — North Korea keeps escalating the tension exponentially on a daily basis no matter what the threat from the UN or anybody else.

In 1994 Jimmy Carter managed to do a Chamberlain and bring a dodgy peace to the table. In 2005 when North Korea revealed that it had nuclear weapons the Bush administration laughed it off as bluster. The test that North Korea managed then yielded only a single kiloton. Nobody is laughing now that the DPRK are testing nuclear weapons estimated to have a strength of about 20 kilotons, which is more or less the same as the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Worse is the fact that North Korea has the largest concentration of artillery in the world set up in the DMZ and capable of delivering half a million shells on Seoul at the drop of a hat. This means that should the UN go for a clinical strike to remove the nuclear threat, that artillery would put a serious dent into Seoul the likes of which we last saw in WWII.

The economy, other than the military, is almost non-existent and survives primarily through aid from China. Millions of North Koreans have in the past fled across the Chinese border and it is the fear that should the country implode many millions more will follow them. This has kept China away from aggressively pursuing sanctions in the past and is a fear shared by South Korea which will also be hit by a devastating flood of refugees across their borders.

With the DPRK doing almost no trade it is also hard to sanction North Korea effectively (her nuclear programme from material to scientist is self-sufficient). Moreover they are quite happy to see her people starve or suffer hardship while spending their limited resources on the military. Weapons are interpreted as security and “self-reliance” which was the doctrine sold to the people by the Great Leader and continued under the Dear Leader.

Accordingly threats are going to fall on a very limited number of deaf ears in the Hermit Kingdom. They have shut their people off from the planet, filled their heads with propaganda that would have made Hitler proud and told them that never mind how hungry they are, what does that matter when they see what big guns the country has. No threat about suffering in war would be sufficient to bring about the pressure needed to occasion mass protests by the starving people of that country?

In the past it has always been a case of give us aid or else we will shoot. Now it appears as if the mentality is everybody hates us we don’t care — we have huge guns and if you don’t play nicely we are going to show you all just how bad we can be. In the face of UN resolution 1718 this week alone they have launched/tested five missiles and have now confirmed that they no longer consider themselves bound by the truce of 1953. Worse South Korea has now agreed to use its ships to assist in blocking material getting through to North Korea, which according to Pyongyang is an act of war.

While it is still highly unlikely that the missiles built so far have been adapted to carry a nuclear payload to Alaska and beyond, they are certainly capable of firing a substantial amount of missiles at their immediate neighbours in the South. In addition the DPRK army is ready to cross the border and has the will to lose millions of people, which neither the South nor any of her allies possess.

It’s the petulant kid throwing his tantrum and this time he’s going to break his toys. He’s going to show Bush and all the other kids that laughed at him just how wrong they are to laugh.

Which leaves what as a response to a conventional strike by North Korea on South Korea?

Nukes? Sanctions? Conventional warfare? Tons of prayers?

Remember just one barrage of that artillery leaves you with Seoul under rubble.

Bear in mind that the DPRK would be alone and without aid even from China should this be the case. How desperate would this lonely, paranoid child become? A child who has been fed a diet of “if you cry and stamp your feet we will give you what you want”.

Of course while all of this is going on, Japan and other countries in the region now claim that they need nukes to act as a deterrent. All of which must have Tehran and the Taliban in Pakistan fascinated. They now have a working example in progress of just how far the international community can be pushed on the issue of nuclear weapons. If North Korea fares splendidly out of all this you better believe that the stakes to get nukes just went up in Iran and gives new meaning to the insurgency in Pakistan.

What I have absolutely no doubt about is that North Korea, like a child who keeps getting rewards to keep him quiet, is capable of and currently intent on launching an attack on Seoul. The attack will be a miscalculation on their part because it will force the UN to respond in kind but this will not stop them from showing the world how seriously they must be taken when they don’t get their own way.

If the UN does a Zimbabwe on this ie the Security Council split occasions non-action you can stand by the biggest proliferation of nuclear weapons since the race began.

Either way stand by for fireworks.