Dokdo: distraction and diversion

The North Koreans have got to love this one. The ruckus over Dokdo/Takeshima gets so much play in Korea and Japan that Koreans and Japanese tend to forget they’ve got a real enemy lurking somewhere over the 38th parallel.

That would be North Korea, whose strategists may not know how to run their economy but are past masters at playing one side against another when it comes to dealing with their foes. Korea’s righteous wrath over Dokdo versus Japan’s indignant claims to Takeshima are so loud and shrill as to drown out concerns about what Kim Jong-un and Company is up to up there.

Wouldn’t it be great for the North Koreans if Korea and Japan actually got into a skirmish with one another over these two rocky islets way out there where nobody would be noticing them if both sides weren’t saying they’re “ours”? No gunfire is about to break out over Dokdo/Takeshima, but South Korea does stage periodic military exercises in the area just to show it’s good and ready for anything.

In point of fact, this quarrel is meaningless and useless since South Korea controls the islets and there’s absolutely nothing Japan can or will do about it. Not so the confrontation with North Korea.

Alarmingly, while “Marshall” Kim Jong-un presents his smilingly fat face for the cameras in visits to military units, factories and fun fairs, analysts see him as anything but a benign figure in his stance toward South Korea. The betting among those who may know is that he’s if anything more inclined than was his late father to stir up trouble if only to show he’s a tough guy after all.

To judge from this line of thinking, the torpedo attack that sunk the Cheonan in March 2010 and then the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island eight months later were just the opening rounds.

Next time, according to Koh Young-hwan, a former North Korean diplomat who defected more than 20 years ago, “North Korea’s provocations against South Korea would be more like regular warfare than a guerrilla attack.” Kim Jong-un has made clear he would uphold his father’s “seongun” or military first policy.

Koh, now at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, is not terribly impressed by reform measures announced on June 28. No way, he says, will they “go beyond the scope of Kim Jong-il’s July 1, 2002, economic measures” ― prescriptions for change that did nothing.

What makes this analysis all the more disturbing is that Kim Jong-un in the eight months since the death of Kim Jong-il does seem interested in reform ― certainly a good idea considering the dilapidated and backward state of the North Korean economy today. He ― or those around him ― do want to shove military and Workers’ Party leaders out of control of the economy and get it into the hands of the Cabinet.

There’s a chance, in the process, that Bureau 39, once the center for the regime’s nefarious counterfeiting, drug smuggling and arms exporting has diminished in importance or been eliminated. That would be one way to undercut the power of the multi-tentacle military that Kim Jong-il courted and relied on to guarantee his place at the apex of the structure.

An issue at the heart of the struggle is who’s got the money ― in the North Korean case, stacks of U.S. $100 bills. It’s been said that (former) General Ri Yong-ho, the (former) chief of staff of the armed forces, who was unceremoniously stripped of all his posts a few weeks ago, had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed in his residence.

That would not be too surprising, according to intelligence analysts, considering that many of North Korea’s military and party leaders were known to hold piles of foreign currency ― and sometimes able to get it into Swiss bank accounts.

“The party and politicians were deeply involved in economic activities,” said one long-time analyst. “It would not be unusual for them to have a lot of U.S. dollars in their houses.” The possession of all that cash, though, had a downside. When some of them got to thinking too seriously of the need for economic reform, they risked getting purged, even executed.

Kim Jong-un would find it a lot easier to follow through on the cleansing of the ranks in control of the money if he could divert them with a show of military force.

How about another attack on one of those islands out there in the Yellow Sea within eyesight of the North’s southwestern coast? He’s been visiting navy units along the coast, talking about turning the Yellow Sea into “a graveyard” for South Koreans. Nothing like a battle reminiscent of June 2002, when six South Korean sailors died, to demonstrate his macho qualities.

The danger of such an unexpected attack ― or another nuclear test, a missile launch, intermittent shelling or just about anything ― is many times higher than that of anything other than rhetoric over Dokdo/Takeshima.

The fuss over Dokdo, meanwhile, makes it all the easier for the North Koreans to devise a way to catch everyone by surprise. The specter of South Korea and Japan, bound to the U.S. in separate alliances, at each other’s throats gives the North much needed space to carry out whatever surprises it’s scheming next. <The Korea Times/Donald Krik>

news@theasian.asia