Korea May Be on the Brink of a New War
Photo source: vborodinova (pixabay.com
By CK Armstrong
Last Friday, North Korea fired a cruise missile off the western coast of the country, its fourth missile test so far this year. Military provocations from North Korea are nothing new; for decades they’ve appeared like clockwork, especially when there are Presidential elections in the US or South Korea (both are up for elections this year). Many analysts have interpreted these provocations as attempts to get political or economic concessions from North Korea’s adversaries or influence domestic politics in South Korea or the US. But the past year has been different. Since the beginning of 2023, North Korea has stepped up both its aggressive rhetoric and its weapons testing in ways not seen in many years. Two of America’s leading experts on North Korea’s politics and nuclear program have warned that supreme leader Kim Jong Un may have given up on diplomacy with the US and South Korea and may be moving toward a military attack on the South.
In late December, Kim gave a speech to the ruling Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee that suggested his country had given up on dialogue with South Korea, a policy his grandfather Kim Il Sung implemented more than fifty years ago, and would treat the South as just another hostile state. To underscore his point, the monumental arch in Pyongyang dedicated to Grandfather Kim’s Three Principles of National Unification was torn down last month. The implication is that the only way to unify North and South Korea is through a North Korean military takeover or regime change in the South. Combined with North Korea’s demonstrated ability to launch nuclear-capable missiles to South Korea, Japan, US military targets in the Pacific, and possibly the continental US itself – as many as 60 deliverable warheads, by some estimates – Kim’s words and actions may be bringing Korea closer to war than at any time since the 1950s. A new war on the Korean Peninsula would not only be a nuclear war but one that would inevitably involve the US, South Korea’s closest ally.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel, the possibility of a surprise attack by North Korea against the South can’t be dismissed. We’ve been there before. In June 1950, the Soviet Union supported North Korea in launching an attack on South Korea that was backed by China and drew the US and more than a dozen other countries into a devastating three-year war. Now, for the first time since the late 1950s, North Korea has the firm support of both China and Russia. While China remains the major source of economic support for North Korea, Pyongyang and Moscow have developed a closer military relationship than in many years and North Korea has even supplied Russia with ammunition to help in its war against Ukraine. With both Russia and China in conflict with the US, North Korea can count on Moscow and Beijing in its own confrontation against the US and its allies Japan and South Korea. The “new Cold War” emerging since the late 2010s has become a hot war in Europe and the Middle East, with a de facto alliance of Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea engaging the West along a whole series of flashpoints. While all eyes are on Taiwan as the major flashpoint in East Asia, the Korean situation is at least as dangerous, if not more so.
The last thing the US and the world need is a new war in East Asia alongside the one in Ukraine and the dangerously escalating conflict in the Middle East. A second Korean War would be devastating, possibly killing millions of people on the Korean Peninsula and beyond. The US and its allies need to take North Korea’s words and deeds seriously, to contain and de-escalate the situation before it spins out of control.
Dr. Armstrong is an Independent Scholar and retired academic who has spent many years writing and commenting on Korean and East Asian affairs for the media, government, and scholarly community.