[Even as the North has matched Mr. Trump’s recent bellicose rhetoric, its military has warned units on the border with South Korea against rash decisions and reminded them to report up the chain of command before taking any action, according to South Korean intelligence officials who briefed lawmakers on Tuesday.]
By Choe Sang-Hun
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An
anti-American rally on Saturday in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
The
banner denounces
“the sanctions of the imperialists.” Credit Kim
Won-Jin/Agence France-Presse
— Getty Images
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SEOUL,
South Korea — In the dead of
night on Saturday, American B-1B long-range bombers, escorted by F-15 fighter
jets, prowled along North Korea’s east coast, in one of the United States
military’s most daring maneuvers on the peninsula in decades.
Two days later, North Korea’s foreign
minister, Ri Yong-ho, declared that Pyongyang had the right to shoot down
American bombers even if they were outside its airspace — another escalation in
the war of words between the North and President Trump.
But when those planes were near its shores,
North Korea did nothing. South Korean intelligence officials told lawmakers on
Tuesday that the North’s air-defense radar may have failed to detect their
presence. Or, they said, Pyongyang may have simply chosen to avoid a
confrontation.
Either possibility would seem to contradict
the image North Korea has sought to project: that of a nuclear power eager and
able to take on the United States. Behind the North’s belligerent rhetoric,
some analysts see a leadership anxious to avoid a war it can’t win, and careful
to leave itself a rhetorical way out even as it makes threats.
“I hear fear in their voice,” said Shin
Won-sik, a three-star general who was the South Korean military’s top
operational strategist before he retired in 2015. “They can’t fight a war with
the Americans when their fighter jets don’t even fly far because of lack of
fuel and fear of crashing.”
Even as the North has matched Mr. Trump’s recent
bellicose rhetoric, its military has warned units on the border with South
Korea against rash decisions and reminded them to report up the chain of
command before taking any action, according to South Korean intelligence
officials who briefed lawmakers on Tuesday.
“They are careful to avoid an accidental
provocation or clash,” Lee Cheol-woo, chairman of the South Korean Parliament’s
intelligence committee, quoted officials as saying during the closed-door
session.
The extreme rhetoric on both sides and the
unconventional nature of both leaders are widely seen as volatile elements in
the current standoff between North Korea and the United States over Pyongyang’s
nuclear weapons program. Many people fear that Mr. Kim or Mr. Trump might be
impulsive enough to start a conflict even if their advisers warn them against
it.
But while some longtime observers of North
Korea agreed that the situation was fraught with uncertainty, they said it
would be wise not to overreact to Pyongyang’s aggressive statements.
“They may have the will but not the means to
fight the Americans,” said Shin In-kyun, a military expert who runs the Korea
Defense Network, a civic group.
The threat to shoot down a United States
bomber is a case in point. North Korea last shot down an American warplane in
1969, killing all 31 members of the crew of a spy plane that was flying off its
coast. In 1994, it shot down a United States Army helicopter that accidentally
crossed into its airspace.
But today, military analysts said, it would
be all but impossible for North Korea to shoot down American warplanes like
B-1B strategic bombers, F-15 fighter jets or F-35 stealth fighters, especially
if they were flying in international airspace well off the North’s coasts.
North Korea’s SA-5 land-to-air missiles have
a range of only 155 miles, they said. American warplanes operate under the
protection of radar-jamming technology, and North Korea’s aging MiG fighter
jets, which are often grounded for lack of fuel and parts, are no match for
them, Mr. Shin and other analysts said.
Much as Mr. Trump’s aggressive rhetoric about
North Korea — like his threat at the United Nations to “totally destroy” the
country — appeals to his core supporters, Mr. Kim needs to demonstrate to his
people that he is not backing down from foreign threats, analysts said.
But they noted that the North tends to couch
its threats, however lurid, with carefully worded conditions.
When North Korea threatened in August to
create an “enveloping fire” around the American territory of Guam with
ballistic missiles, its original statement said only that it was “seriously
examining” such a plan. Responding on Friday to Mr. Trump’s United Nations
speech, Mr. Kim called him a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.” But he did not
commit to a course of action, saying only that he would “consider” the “highest
level of hard-line countermeasure in history.”
And Mr. Ri, the foreign minister, did not say
Monday that North Korea would shoot down American bombers, only that it had
“the right” to do so.
“The North Koreans know how to choose their
words,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a visiting research fellow at the Asan Institute
for Policy Studies in Seoul, who served as a presidential secretary for
security strategy in South Korea until early this year. “They know how to
calculate their stakes. They are not reckless.”
With its threats, North Korea is trying to
make the United States think twice about further shows of force, even as it
seeks to portray itself as playing defense against an American bully, said Lee
Sung-yoon, a Korea expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University.
At the same time, Pyongyang probably hopes
China and South Korea will call for calm and restraint, while using Mr. Trump’s
threats as justification to conduct another missile or nuclear test, Mr. Lee
said.
“North Korea has to sound tough because it
fears that if it is pushed back under American pressure now, it will never
regain its ground,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at
Dongguk University in Seoul. “It fears that if it backs down, China and Russia
won’t come to its aid.”
Analysts said the lack of a regular,
high-level diplomatic contact between Pyongyang and Washington made it likelier
that one side would misread the other’s intentions, rendering the recent
bombastic rhetoric all the more dangerous.
“The level of mutual understanding between
the United States and North Korea is low, while the chances of miscalculation
are high,” Mr. Cheon said.
Lu Kang, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday at a regular news conference in Beijing
that China was “very displeased with the escalating war of words between the
United States and North Korea,” adding that there would be “no winners from
rashly triggering war on the peninsula.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from
Beijing.
