North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
inspects drills by the Korean People's Army (KPA) Navy at an undisclosed
location on North Korea's east coast in a photo from the state-run
Korean Central News Agency taken on March 25, 2013.
HIDE CAPTION
Kim Jong Un and North Korea's military
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Scott Snyder: Kim Jong Un ratchets up threats toward South Korea and U.S. to record level
- Snyder: Bluff, followed by "charm offensive," is typical strategy but Kim gets closer to brink
- We don't know what Kim is trying to prove, Snyder says, or what political events drive him
- Snyder: South Korea and U.S. are tired of chest-thumping and it's not working anymore
Editor's note: Scott A. Snyder is
senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on
U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining
CFR, Snyder was a senior associate in the international relations
program of The Asia Foundation, where he founded and directed the Center
for U.S.-Korea Policy and served as The Asia Foundation's
representative in Korea.
(CNN) -- North Korea, under its untested young
leader Kim Jong Un, has ratcheted up the threats toward South Korea and
the United States to unprecedented levels and with greater intensity
than ever before.
A torrent of threats has
flowed from North Korean spokesmen, including a promise of preemptive
nuclear strikes on the United States and calls to "break the waists of
the crazy enemies, totally cut their windpipes and thus clearly show
them what a real war is like."
North Korean
brinkmanship, bluff, and bluster are stock elements in its diplomatic
toolkit, but why have the threats become so outsized, and how worried
should we be? Is North Korea playing the same game it has always played,
or does the now-nuclear playbook of a rash young leader represent a new
threat the we cannot afford to ignore?
Scott A. Snyder
In some respects, we have
seen this movie before. North Korea has long used its bluff and bluster
as a form of self-defense to keep potential enemies off guard, to
strengthen internal political control, magnify external threats to
promote national unity, and to symbolically express dissatisfaction when
international trends are not going its way.
This year, converging
factors are squeezing North Korea, creating a stronger-than-usual
response in the face of seemingly greater international pressure.
The U.N. Security Council
resolution passing financial sanctions on North Korea following its
satellite and nuclear tests were tougher than expected, and coincide
with U.S.-South Korea military exercises organized to show political resolve to deter North Korean aggression. The establishment of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry into North Korea's human rights situation tarnishes the standing of the new leadership. North Korea's over-the-top responses belie a sense of vulnerability.
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North Korea has a record
of testing the mettle of each new South Korean leader through threats
and provocation in an apparent hazing ritual that also determines its
strategies toward the South.
South Korea has responded
threat for threat in recent weeks to signal to North Korea that it will
not be blackmailed by its neighbor's seeming nuclear advantage. Recent
South Korean media reports of military plans to target thousands of statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il
in North Korea are virtually guaranteed to throw North Koreans into a
frenzy of effort to defend and show loyalty to the Kim family
leadership.
North Korea: Nuclear war is 'simmering'
North Korea ratchets up tension
North Korea military on 'highest alert'
But the intensity and
frequency of threats in Kim Jong Un's first year of leadership is
uncomfortably high, raising questions about whether junior Kim fully
understands the ritualistic rules of the inter-Korean "threat-down";
whether he might be more accepting of risks than his father, and whether
he's more likely to make miscalculations that could drive a
hair-trigger situation over the edge.
Moreover, no one can be
sure whether internal political challenges or a need to consolidate
political control are driving young Kim to walk even closer to the edge
than usual.
North Korea has
historically employed guerrilla-style methods in carrying out
provocations, using elements of surprise and ambiguity of attribution to
avoid risks of full-scale escalation. If North Korea decides to follow
through on its threats through direct confrontation, however, this would
be evidence that something is going terribly wrong inside its new
leadership.
How can North Korea's
frenzy of threats be brought under control? Past behavior shows a
pattern of threats followed by diplomatic "charm offensives" designed to
ease tensions and reap diplomatic gains in an environment of general
relief that the situation has calmed down.
Although South Korea and
the United States are weary of this game, South Korea has started to
provide opportunities for North Korea to climb down as spring military
exercises start to wrap up.
The new South Korean
government has separated humanitarian aid from nuclear weapons
negotiations, and President Park Geun-hye has patiently held out an
olive branch in the form of her "trustpolitik" policy, which promises
step-by-step efforts to stabilize inter-Korean relations.
Given the North Korean
leadership's contradictory need for South Korea to be both an enemy and a
source of economic assistance, this might prove to be the more
difficult phase in dealing with North Korea as its well-worn strategy of
alternating threat and diplomacy continues to yield diminishing
returns.
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