North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a strategic missile base in an undisclosed location on Oct. 23, 2024. (KCNA/Yonhap)
By Kim Yeon-chul, former minister of unification and current professor at Inje University
The Korean Peninsula has yet to see its second modern war. Why is that? It’s because both sides command a military capacity that would allow for mutually assured destruction. Like two scorpions inside a bottle, attacking the other means suicide. War is mutual extinction. Yet there has been a change in the deterrence structure that has prevented war thus far. This is the closest we’ve come to armed conflict since the armistice was signed, and compared to the limited war of 1968 one could say that the current situation is much more precarious.
Firstly, there is the crisis management capacity of the US, the country that wields wartime operational control (OPCON) of our military. When armed North Korean guerrillas attacked the Blue House on Jan. 21, 1968, the Park Chung-hee administration wanted to retaliate. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration in Washington was already dealing with the war in Vietnam, and didn’t want a war on the Korean Peninsula to add to its troubles. The US decided to negotiate with North Korea to save the 83 crewmen of the USS Pueblo who were captured by North Korean Navy patrols off the coast of Wonsan. Johnson sent Cyrus Vance, his deputy secretary of defense, as a special envoy to dissuade Park. When Park threatened to pull South Korean troops from Vietnam that were fighting for the Americans, Johnson threatened to pull US troops from Korean soil.
Yet the US of today is not playing its role in containing the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. The wars in Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East have put the Korean Peninsula on the back burner. Even the UN Command, or UNC, which has been tasked with administering and monitoring the Armistice Agreement, is playing truant. Leaflet launches, loudspeaker broadcasts, and drone incursions are all violations of the Armistice Agreement and of UNC regulations, yet it continues to simply stand by and watch. The command has a clear duty to not investigate the situation but to prevent another violation of such regulations. They should look to the efforts of the UNC commander who prevented South Korea from retaliating in 1968.
Second is the difference between the traditional right wing and the new right we’re seeing today. In 1968, Park was a heavy drinker, and often gave official orders while drinking. Generals waited for retaliation orders from the drunk Park until morning, barely escaping a crisis. When Johnson asked Vance how he knew this, he said that the Korean generals communicated their troubles to the UNC commander. Prime Minister Chung Il-kwon and senior presidential secretary Lee Hu-rak both personally appealed to Vance and asked him to dissuade Park. At the time, the bureaucrats surrounding Park worked to block a drunk president from rash actions.
The new right is different from the traditional right. The new right is armed with the inferiority complex that comes with political conversion, so they have an extremist view of history. The traditional right was filled with people who had fought in the war, so they were cautious when it came to war. The new right did not fight in the war, and is therefore quick to call for retaliation. The traditional right at least put up pretexts of patriotism, but the new right mostly pursues its own private interests. The new right is excessively partisan, with no sense of communal ethics. Most critical of all is that those who belong to the new right are incompetent.
Third, North Korea-Russia relations are different now. When the North Korean navy captured the USS Pueblo in 1968, the US initially assumed that the Soviets and North Koreans were in cahoots, but the Soviets were unaware of the incident. When North Korean leader Kim Il-sung brought up the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, which North Korea and the Soviet Union signed in 1961, and asked for Soviet military intervention, the Soviets drew a line in the sand, saying the agreement only called for defensive military intervention, not offensive. The Soviets said that North Korea’s capture of the vessel was a violation of international law, and communicated a clear message that they opposed the North’s military adventurism.
Today’s North Korea-Russia relations are a different story. This is a decisive change, the kind of which we never saw during the Cold War. North Korea started sending shells and manpower to a Russia at war, and is now dispatching mercenaries. North Korea also has a lot to gain from Russia. In particular, increased military cooperation with Russia could change the military order on the Korean Peninsula. The Korean Peninsula entered a practical new Cold War regime when North Korea-Russia relations evolved into a “blood alliance.” Historically, any time the Korean Peninsula became an ideological battleground, we endured the tragedy of war.
The Korean Peninsula stands at the fork in the road between peace and war. Of course, the chances of actual war are not high. When judgments based on the inertia of the past are often wrong at historical turning points. Cracks are forming in the deterrence structure that prevented wars in the past, a critical change. We need to be more alert than ever before.
First off, we need to demand that the US take responsibility as the country that wields wartime OPCON of our military. We also need to call on the UN Command to fulfill its role in administering the Armistice Agreement. We also need response measures from forces of peace that are capable of wisely overcoming the chaotic period before and after the US presidential election.
In 1968, there were key aides that prevented a drunk president from taking us to war, but there are no such aides within the current administration, so the opposition needs to take the lead to form a coalition for peace. We must not forget that there may be another post-war Korea if we see another war on the Korean Peninsula.
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