Amid geopolitical flare-ups from Ukraine to the Middle East, new threats from North Korea seem more dangerous than ever. North Korea is cutting – figuratively and literally – the bridges with Seoul, blowing up near the military demarcation line roads and railway lines, which have been disused in recent years.
- It further fortifies the North Korean side adjacent to the demilitarized zone.
- In a show of force, state media broadcast images of more than 1.4 million young men rushing to enlist in the Korean People’s Army.
- The North Korean leader openly warns of war on any violation of North Korean territory “even by 0.001 millimeter”.
- He says he will use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” if attacked by South Korea and its allies, first and foremost the US.
- It would be considered a “declaration of war,” he said, if a drone, like those that recently dropped propaganda leaflets even in the capital Pyongyang, entered its airspace again.
Seoul denies any involvement, amid months of balloon launches by its northern neighbor with all manner of rubbish, including excrement. Movement, which provoked the resounding response of South Korea.
Not only with the resumption since last summer of loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border, but also with the suspension of a 2018 agreement to prevent armed conflict.
Cold War relations
Technically the north and south of the Korean peninsula still remain in a state of war, 71 years after the end of the Korean War. The first conflict of the Cold War ended with an armistice, but no peace treaty.
Since then North and South Korea have been separated by a demilitarized zone, about four kilometers wide. Having gone through forty waves, bilateral relations are at their nadir today.
The borders are completely closed. Pyongyang’s blowing up of the last road and rail links was largely a symbolic move, as cross-border trade has been frozen for years.
A practical exception was a brief period in the early 2000s when the Pyongyang regime opened the Kaesong Industrial Zone to South Korean businesses, while millions of South Korean tourists visited Mount Kungang, a tourist and special administrative region of North Korea. .
But all that is now in the past, as is the prospect of peaceful reunification.
Something that Kim Jong Un made sure – after the inglorious end of the diplomatic “flirt” between 2018 and 2019 with the then president of the USA, Donald Trump – to underline, by ordering in the summer of 2020 the blowing up of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office on the northern side of the borders.
The election of conservative Yoon Suk-yeol to the presidency of South Korea in 2022 marked a further escalation, strengthening Seoul’s alliance with the US and Japan.
In the face of North Korea’s new nuclear threats, Washington has increased its military presence in the region and intensified joint military exercises with regional partners.
The recent arrival of the USS Vermont nuclear submarine in South Korea alarmed Pyongyang, which responded with a new show of force, releasing a photo of Kim Jong Un at a secret uranium enrichment facility and proceeding with the test of a new ballistic missile.
Changing the international context
Amid a critical election season and a shift in its geostrategic focus to Asia, the US is calling on North Korea to stop its provocations.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Pyongyang, opposes an escalation in the region, at least at this stage.
“Tensions on the peninsula are against the common interests of all parties,” Beijing said, as it seeks to avoid new risks to its shaky post-pandemic economic recovery.
In the foreground, however, Moscow now projects.
“The wording of the agreement is clear,” commented Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov the other day when asked about the interstate defense cooperation signed last June in Pyongyang by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Now it has not only the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula as its background. Western allegations of arms and munitions shipments from Pyongyang to Moscow for the war in Ukraine are now being added to claims by strategically besieged Kiev and geopolitically anxious Seoul of Russian support and North Korean troops.
They speak of an alliance of interests between two authoritarian regimes, in which the Kremlin’s war machine finds a new feeder and Pyongyang gains in revenue, nuclear know-how and battlefield experience.
Western media are now abuzz with reports of the new “axis of evil” between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, aiming to challenge the existing status quo on the international chessboard.
So, with the Middle East on fire, the EU imposed sanctions on Iran for bolstering Russia’s arsenal in its invasion of Ukraine.
And the US for the first time imposed sanctions on Chinese companies for supplying weapons systems to Moscow. At the same time, they announced the formation of a Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Group against North Korea.
New balances
Although lacking international legitimacy as it does not have a UN mandate, this new group aspires to be a quasi-replacement for the UN panel of experts on North Korea.
His mission was not renewed last spring following Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council, with China abstaining.
In a first reaction at the time, the US, South Korea and Japan announced the creation of a sanctions monitoring mechanism against Pyongyang.
Now this is expanding with the participation of Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and Canada.
In short, seven of the eleven countries of the newly formed Multilateral Monitoring Group are members of NATO.
In contrast, the Pyongyang regime is attempting to expand its own alliances, boosting its special relationship with Russia and China.
Just last month, a North Korean Foreign Ministry delegation completed a tour of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia – all member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
It was preceded by visits by North Korean officials to Mongolia and Iran, amid growing evidence of close military and nuclear cooperation between Tehran and Pyongyang.
North Korea’s geopolitical realignment has raised the possibility of a dramatic move by Pyongyang in the next 6-18 months.
Crucial elections in the USA on November 5 are considered crucial for developments in general.
Regardless of whether it is Kamala Harris or Donald Trump who succeeds Joe Biden in the White House, ignoring the danger of a two-front war in East Asia – from North Korea to its south and from China to Taiwan – will it was “Highway to Armageddon”.
