North Korea, Kim Breaks with South: Tensions Run High

North Korea conducted an underwater nuclear weapons test on January 19. This was done, as Pyongyang points out, in protest of joint military exercises by South Korea, the USA, and Japan. The use of the Haeil-5-23, the name given to underwater drones with nuclear capability, is just the latest demonstration action by Kim Jong Un in these early weeks of the year and is indicative of the ever-growing tensions.

One of the symbols of Pyongyang, the capital of the North, is the Reunification Arch. A monument built by his grandfather Kim Il Sung that symbolizes the perfect union of the two Koreas, divided into North and South since 1953, when the border line running along the 38th parallel was drawn after the Korean War armistice.

It now appears that Kim Jong Un wants to tear down the monument, as well as change the constitution amid rising tensions that define Seoul as enemy number one, eliminating his grandfather’s paternalistic plans for “reunification.” Korea will be unified not by reunification but by conquering the South if war breaks out, as Kim himself announced in a speech to a plenary session of parliament.

For years there has been friction between Pyongyang and Seoul, tensions that have risen and fallen periodically and which, fortunately, have never, until today, led to an irreparable result. But now, year 2018, the year of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae In’s (then president of South Korea) embrace, seems very far away. A joint statement was then issued on the occasion: “The two leaders solemnly declared in front of 80 million people in our country and around the world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and that a new era of peace has begun.” The two leaders planted a pine tree in the demilitarized zone and watered it with water from both Koreas.

Kim has now abolished the three agencies that handled inter-Korean dialog and cooperation: Country’s Peaceful Reunification Committee, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau, and the Geumgangsan International Tourism Office, thus sending out bellicose signals: “Violation of less than a millimeter of northern territory would constitute a provocation of war.”

The month of January began (Day 5) with North Korean artillery firing two hundred rounds in front of some South Korean islands; on Day 14 it was the turn of a solid fueled medium range missile equipped with a hypersonic warhead that could potentially hit US bases in Japan and on the island of Guam. On January 15, Kim gave a speech where he expressed the desire to change the constitution to include the goal of “completely occupying and subjugating the South to include it as part of the territory of the People’s Republic.” Finally, the underwater drone test took place on January 19.

The reaction of the South was not long in coming: “If North Korea starts provocations, we will react much more sharply,” President Yoon Suk Yeol explained.