Kim Jong-un shaken by early New Year’s missile strike: ‘Dangerous nuclear strategy for 22 years’
Shaken by the "missile launch" early in the New Year. An urgent report by military journalist Buntaro Kuroi
On the morning of the 5th, North Korea launched a missile. It is said to be a possible ballistic missile. It has been 10 years since Kim Jong-un succeeded his father, Kim Jong-il, and assumed power. Since the beginning of the year, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has taken a vigorous “offensive” stance.
Two conditions” for maintaining a dictatorship
There are two conditions for a dictator to maintain dictatorial power. The most important one is a thoroughgoing rule of coercive power that eradicates anyone who stands in the way of the dictatorship, which he has achieved over the past decade by purging many of the regime’s leading officials, including his uncle Jang Sung-taek.
However, this is not enough to maintain dictatorial power. Dictatorships also disturb peace in the international community and cause conflict with foreign countries. In order to maintain their dictatorship, they trample human rights and face pressure from the international community for democratization. Such conflicts can lead to military intervention by foreign countries, which can lead to their destruction. There have been many examples of this in the past, including Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Libyan Colonel Gaddafi, the previous Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and General Noriega in Panama.
Moreover, in the case of North Korea, it has been militarily confronting the US and South Korean forces since the Korean War. If it were to go to war and be defeated, it is highly unlikely that it would be able to maintain its dictatorship. From North Korea’s point of view, in order to ensure the maintenance of its dictatorship, it is absolutely necessary to have a deterrent force that is competitive with U.S. and South Korean forces.
For this reason, North Korea has been strengthening its military capabilities since the days of its grandfather Kim Il Sung.
North Korea has been confronting the U.S. and South Korean forces across the armistice line, but if another war were to break out, North Korea would not stand a chance in hell. After all, the U.S. military has nuclear weapons. Although the U.S. forces in South Korea are not equipped with nuclear weapons, they can attack North Korea at any time from a distance. From North Korea’s point of view, in order to prevent such an attack, they would have to have nuclear weapons themselves.
Kim Il Sung began to explore the path to nuclear armament early on. In the 1960s, with the cooperation of the Soviet Union, he built a small research reactor (light water reactor), and in the 1980s, he built a graphite-moderated reactor and a spent fuel reprocessing facility, and began secretly extracting plutonium.
However, the U.S. found out about this and it became an international problem in the late 1980s. Kim Il Sung repeatedly played the game of secretly developing nuclear weapons and negotiating when they were discovered. Kim Il Sung wanted to develop nuclear weapons, but he did not want to start a war with the United States in the process. That would mean certain defeat. Therefore, Kim Il Sung’s approach was to continue negotiations with the U.S. to the extent that it did not lead to war, while at the same time proceeding with nuclear development in secret.
In 2006, Kim Il Sung succeeded in his long-held dream of acquiring nuclear weapons.
After Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, he was succeeded by Kim Jong Il, who also pursued nuclear development in secret. This naturally provoked opposition from the international community, but the North Koreans were able to overcome this with push and pull negotiation techniques, and in 2006 they finally conducted a successful nuclear test. At the time, some media reported that Kim Jong-il was not serious about developing nuclear weapons, but that his goal was to gain economic support from the international community through negotiations.
At the same time, Kim Jong-il also developed ballistic missiles and successfully conducted his second nuclear test in 2009. Kim Jong-il died two years later, but his successor Kim Jong-un, like his grandfather and father, continued to develop nuclear missiles.
By the time of Kim Jong-il’s reign, rudimentary nuclear bombs had already been built, and the Nodong, a semi-medium-range missile capable of targeting Japan and U.S. forces in Japan, had been completed (although a larger Taepodong had also been built, it was non-mobile and therefore non-combatant). North Korea’s nuclear and missile technologies became even more advanced in the era of Kim Jong-un, and they no longer concealed their development.
The Kim Jong-un regime started in December 2011, but nuclear tests continued in February 2013, January 2016, September 2013, and September 2017.
On the other hand, the development of new types of missiles using liquid fuel engine technology made in the former Soviet Union progressed rapidly in 2017, with the successful launch tests of the Mars 12, which has a range of Guam, the Mars 14, which can reach the west coast of the U.S. mainland, and the Mars 15, which can reach the east coast.
The status of the development of technology for atmospheric re-entry of warheads that generate high heat is unclear.
In the vein of the former diplomatic card theory mentioned above, some media commentators have said that Kim Jong-un is firing missiles with the aim of dragging the U.S. into negotiations, but this is not actually the case. Instead, Kim Jong-un aims to secure nuclear deterrence against the U.S. in order to maintain his dictatorial regime, and he has accomplished this to a significant degree.
Developing new weapons while avoiding war with the US
Moreover, in the process, he has acted cleverly to avoid war with the United States. In particular, when it succeeded in developing a missile that could reach the U.S. in 2017, it turned around and launched a reconciliation offensive to defuse tense relations with the U.S. It used the PyeongChang Olympics in February 2018 as an opportunity to win over the South Korean government of Moon Jae-in, and offered to negotiate with the Trump administration to ease tensions while flirting with “denuclearization. This led to the first ever US-North Korea summit in June of the same year.
In reality, however, North Korea has not agreed to denuclearization at all since then, and has made its nuclear armament a fact of life. As a condition for denuclearization, North Korea has always stated that the U.S. must give up its nuclear capability against North Korea, and it has consistently refused to give up its nuclear weapons on its own. In other words, from the beginning Kim Jong-un had no intention of unilaterally giving up the nuclear missiles that can reach the U.S., the most important force for the survival of his dictatorship.
Incidentally, there was a view in some quarters that North Korea would denuclearize in order to lift economic sanctions, but the lifting of sanctions is not a prerequisite for the survival of the dictatorship, and North Korea itself has made it clear that it does not place the highest priority on lifting sanctions (*During the new Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, North Korea itself closed its border with China and suspended trade). (*During the new Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, North Korea itself closed its border with China and suspended trade, confirming that lifting sanctions is not its top policy priority.)
In its efforts to thaw relations with the United States, North Korea refused to denuclearize at the second U.S.-North Korea summit in February 2019, and when that summit broke down, the North Korean government, with the backing of China and Russia, avoided pressure from the international community and pushed forward to strengthen its capabilities, including new missiles.
Among these new weapons are the KN-23, a leaping glide short-range missile, and the Mars 8, a hypersonic medium-range glide missile (launched once but not yet completed), which are aimed at evading missile defenses such as the U.S. Aegis by flying at low altitudes. In other words, Kim Jong-un first developed a nuclear ICBM that could reach the U.S., and then set up a rapprochement with the U.S. to avoid war while refusing to denuclearize, and then proceeded to develop new, practical weapons such as missiles that could penetrate missile defenses. It is a very clever strategy.
Thus, in North Korea, Kim Il-sung initiated the nuclear armament program, Kim Jong-il achieved rudimentary nuclear armament, and Kim Jong-un built a realistic nuclear capability against the United States. In the meantime, each of the three generations of dictators bargained meticulously to avoid war with the United States.
Successful bargaining, a nuclear-armed nation
In the past decade, Kim Jong-un has succeeded in this difficult bargain. The U.S. is no longer considering a hard-line policy of forcing North Korea to denuclearize by force. In effect, North Korea is now a nuclear-armed country. Kim Jong-un is an extremely dangerous strategist.
There is no doubt that Kim Jong-un will continue to strengthen his nuclear missile capability in 2022. At the Party Congress in January 2021, Kim Jong-un announced some of the details of his five-year plan to strengthen military power, and he will continue to conduct the necessary “tests” to continue this plan.
First, it will launch the Arctic Star 5, a submarine-launched ballistic missile for a nuclear attack on Guam, which has already been completed but has not yet been tested. There is also a possibility that it will be launched from a new submarine that is believed to be nearing completion. North Korea has publicly stated that it is developing a nuclear-powered submarine, which is capable of long-duration submarines and is said to be the ultimate nuclear force platform, and although its completion is probably still some time away, the necessary tests may be conducted.
Also, a new type of long-range cruise missile for use against South Korea and Japan will be tested repeatedly to improve its performance. It will also continue to test the launch of the Mars 8 hypersonic medium-range glide missile, which aims to break through the U.S. missile defense and launch a nuclear attack on Japan and Guam. There is also a possibility that the KN-23, a leapfrogging short-range missile that Aegis ships cannot shoot down, will be modified to extend its range to more than 1,000 kilometers so that it can target all of Japan.
The most alarming possibility is a new nuclear test. North Korea’s last nuclear test was in September 2017, and since then, it has made significant progress in reducing the size and weight of its missiles and enhancing their power (hydrogen bombs), and North Korea would like to conduct a demonstration test.
However, unlike the aforementioned missile test, a nuclear test would make it difficult for China and Russia, which are behind North Korea, to protect it, and it is inevitable that the U.S. Biden administration would take a strong stance. In other words, missile launches will be repeated in 2022, but whether or not a nuclear test will be carried out will be carefully determined by Kim Jong-un based on the international political situation. For example, if the confrontation between Russia or China and the United States intensifies due to the conflict in Ukraine or the Taiwan issue, Kim Jong-un will have a great opportunity to conduct a nuclear test.
In 2022, Kim Jong-un’s “strategy” will be something to keep an eye on.
Reporting and writing by： Fumitaro Kuroi photo： KNS/KCNA/AFP/Afro
