Ideas@TheCentre
The North Korea mystery
On Tuesday, North Korea launched an unprovoked attack against South Korea by firing dozens of artillery rounds on Yeongpyeong Island near the disputed border between the countries in the Yellow Sea. The attack killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded several other military personnel and civilians. This comes only eight months after the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship that led to the death of 46 servicemen. The Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine, according to an international team of experts.
Some experts believe that East Asia's future could resemble Western Europe at the turn of the last century, and that the Korean Peninsula could be the powder keg of the 'Balkans' of the twenty-first century. But there is a serious problem in preventing disaster in the region: experts know next to nothing about what we need to know about North Korea.
Take the current leader Kim Jong-il and his son and heir-apparent Kim Jong-un. Building a psychological profile of leaders is especially important in authoritarian countries. For example, we have a fair idea of what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from Iran is like, and therefore what drives him. Yet, beyond unhelpful descriptors such as 'paranoid,' 'egotistical,' and 'cruel,' the Kim clan – especially Kim Jong-un – is a complete mystery.
Then there is the issue of use of force. Military action, and even war, is generally seen as the continuation of politics by other (more extreme) means. Unintended escalation is always possible but we assume states initiate violence for instrumental reasons: they believe that it will further some aspect of their national interest.
But we do not really know why Pyongyang sank the Cheonan, and why it fired shells on Yeongpyeong Island. Experts are linking it to some aspect of the impending leadership succession from father Jong-il to son Jong-un: politicians and generals trying to move themselves up the pecking order by demonstrating how tough they are. Even so, this still explains very little. If true, North Korea's use of force has little conventional foreign policy logic to it – meaning that it is all but impossible to design a 'rational' response.
Unavoidably, this could be the least enlightening piece written for Ideas@TheCentre. Even more unfortunate is the fact that North Korea is a nuclear armed state with the second largest army in the world.
John Lee is a foreign policy research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
