Kim Jong-un’s North Korea fires a ballistic missile that flies over Japan: sirens sound and invitations to reach the nearest shelters are spread. For the North Korean dictator, a return to the past – but also the threat of a “first strike”
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT FROM BEIJING
“Missile coming, missile coming. Evacuate immediately “. The inhabitants of the prefecture of Aomori on the island of Honshu and those of the island of Hokkaido.
Life suspended for about twenty minutes, in the North of Japanalso stop the high-speed trains.
A North Korean missile passed over the archipelago this morningin a test that marks a further escalation of the threat of Kim Jong-un. The answer came a few hours later: shortly after midnight Italian time, the Seoul armed forces announced that South Korea and the US had launched 4 surface-to-ground missiles into the East China Sea.
It is a dramatic return to the past in the Pyongyang Marshal’s display of strength: had launched a missile over the Japanese archipelago for the first time in 2017, at the height of his challenge with Donald Trump. Five years later, Kim appears to be returning to the old strategy.
The missile flew for 22 minutes, about 4,600 kilometers, the longest distance traveled by a North Korean bomb in a test and plunged into the Pacific Ocean, about 3,200 km east of the archipelago. Usually the North Korean technicians program the trajectory of their missiles with a very pronounced angle of elevation, to make them fall back into the sea west of Japan, avoiding the dangerous overflight of the archipelago. This morning’s test reminded Tokyo and Seoul that their cities are under fire. The warning also applies to the United States, which has tens of thousands of soldiers deployed in Japanese and South Korean bases.
Military analysts believe the bomb was one Hwasong-12an IRBM (Intermediate-range ballistic missile) capable of reaching even the large American base in Guam.
The general alarm ceased, the Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida called North Korean action “barbaric”; South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol promised a solid reaction to the challenge; Washington speaks of “robust response” to the new provocation.
This year North Korea has already launched 42 missiles in 23 tests, five in the past ten days.
Overwhelmed by the noise of the war in Ukraine, Kim Jong-un tries to get the attention he thinks he deserves and that Joe Biden does not seem willing to give him. In 2017, after a northern missile flew over Japan, Donald Trump reacted with a speech from the UN General Assembly gallery, warning “rocket man” that the United States would “wipe his regime off the face of the earth”. if it hadn’t stopped. After weeks of tension, in early 2018 Kim surprised Trump and the rest of the world by declaring a moratorium on missile tests and opening a phase of dialogue. The negotiation failed during the February 2019 Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi, when the Americans realized that the Marshal would never give up his nuclear arsenal.
What is Pyongyang’s strategy now? It seems that Kim is no longer looking for negotiation, but wants to convince South Koreans and Americans that he is ready to use the nuclear weapon first. A blackmail that would force Seoul to make concessions so as not to risk being hit with a devastating device.
Two recent moves prove this theory.
1) In June Kim published a “Plan for the modification and expansion of the operational tasks entrusted to the border units”, illustrated to the generals at a conference. It would be deploy tactical nuclear weapons ready for use on the battlefield on the 38th Parallel by the North Korean artillery. In the propaganda images, an Army officer was seen pointing out the possible targets of tactical nuclear weapons on a map of South Korea. Roughly speaking, when we speak of “tactical nuclear power”, we refer to bombs for close use, on the battlefield to annihilate the rear of the enemy; “strategic” weapons, on the other hand, are long and very long range ones, aimed at distant targets (cities) to threaten the adversary and “dissuade” him from any action. It is the so-called “nuclear deterrent”. In theory, the strategic deterrent serves to avoid war; the tactical arsenal to win a battle with devastating results. It is to this second option that the new directive discussed in June by Kim with his generals refers.
2) In September Kim Jong-un got the Supreme People’s Assembly (the Northern Parliament) to vote a law that sanctions the “automatic” and preventive use of nuclear weapons in case of danger to the regime. The circumstances for the use of nuclear weapons include the case of “hostile forces attacking state leaders or the military chain of command and control” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the official name of the northern regime). The law specifies that in order to unleash nuclear retaliation it is not necessary that “hostile action” has already taken place or is in progress, as long as it is judged to be “imminent”.
Means that Kim would be ready, in the event of a dramatic crisis, at the “first strike”, the first use of nuclear weaponseven without the enemies having fired a nuclear shot.
The message, as well as military, is political: Kim has sworn before the Supreme Assembly that North Korea will remain a nuclear power “as long as imperialism exists” and that the new law “draws an indelible line on our nuclear weapons, establishes that there will never be negotiation and agreement on them, we will never give them up, even if we still have to face a hundred years of sanctions”.
In theory, the refusal to give up the arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is nothing new. It is evident since the negotiations with Donald Trump failed in February 2019 (at the Hanoi summit where The Donald had to acknowledge that “the friend” was playing with rigged cards) that Kim will never deprive himself of the nuclear devices, which make up his life insurance (he thoroughly studied the end of Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam in Iraq, who did not have them).
And it is clear that his goal is for the international community to recognize North Korea’s status as a nuclear power. Washington estimates that Pyongyang currently has 60 nuclear weapons and the ability to build another 6 per year. With such a clear and articulated declaration, which goes so far as to threaten the “first strike” against Americans and South Koreans, the Marshal seems to have wanted to give a definitive blow to the hopes of a negotiation with the United States. Denuclearization has always been the goal of every American president, Republican or Democrat.
There is however one last path, narrow and bumpy. “Negotiations on arms control and the reduction of the Northern arsenal in exchange for a relaxation or cancellation of UN sanctions” explains Andrei Lankov, director of “NK News” recognized as one of the leading experts on the North Korean question. The problem, the Russian scholar warns, is that the failure of the Trump administration’s attempt at a trade-off between international sanctions and the freezing of the Northern nuclear development program has reduced the negotiating space. “In the United States, any agreement with Pyongyang would encounter strong resistance, because it would lead to the recognition of the enemy as a nuclear power”.
If such talks were to restart “the opposition and the American press would accuse the White House of weakness and defeatism, of surrender to a small Asian dictatorship” (close to China, ed). Lankov, who also attended Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, concludes with a bold suggestion: “It would take a bit of dishonesty to restart the negotiations”.
That is to say, the White House should “sell” to the Washington Congress, public opinion and the press an attempt to reduce Kim’s nuclear arsenal as the first step in a process towards complete denuclearization.
The alternative to this “dishonest” approach to at least get a freeze on Kim’s nuclear run is to stand by and watchwhile its scientists develop new, more sophisticated and dangerous missiles and launch systems.
October 4, 2022 (change October 5, 2022 | 00:49)
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