YEONPYEONG ISLAND
Months after the Cheonan sinking, the West Sea witnessed one more violent clash. On the afternoon of November 23, 2010, North Korean artillery on the mainland and a small island off the coast shelled one of the five South Korean–held islands, Yeonpyeong-do. Several days before, North Korean artillery units in the vicinity had moved to new positions. That morning the North passed a message to the South Korean military, warning of a “resolute physical counterstrike” if the South did not cancel an artillery exercise on Yeonpyeong-do planned for later in the day.* The warning did not seem serious to the South Koreans, so the exercise went ahead on schedule. Around 2:45 P.M., not long after it ended, North Korean shells began to fall on and around the island—eventually around 170 over the next hour. Rattled and caught by surprise, South Korean Marines asked for guidance up the chain of command, then returned fire as best they could given failures in their equipment. Two Marines and two civilians who had been working on one of the island’s military posts at the time were killed. Several more Marines and a few civilians were listed as wounded. The North Korean shells caused several fires, and scenes of the smoke rising from the island were quickly available on the cell phones of the South Korean population on the mainland.
The South Koreans, stung by their losses and seeming inability to respond quickly and forcefully to an attack on their soil, announced they would hold another exercise in December. The North Koreans issued a warning that such a move would result in its army carrying out “a second and third unpredictable self-defensive blow.” Washington, worried that another clash would escalate out of control, attempted to persuade the South not to proceed. Amid thunderous warnings from the North, US officials held tense meetings in Washington to decide what to do, and the JCS chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, was sent to Seoul to lay out the case for restraint before President Lee. South Korea went ahead with a slightly altered exercise. The North Koreans did nothing, beyond noting that “the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation,” dismissing the South’s move as “child’s play” and claiming that for fear of additional retaliation, the South had changed the direction in which its artillery had fired.
The attack on Yeonpyeong-do is usually lumped together with the sinking of the corvette Cheonan earlier in the year, but the two events were fundamentally different. Sinking the Cheonan was almost certainly a retaliatory move by North Korea for an earlier naval defeat in the West Sea. Yeonpyeong-do was not. The Cheonan was attacked by stealth, a particularly deadly part of a long game of black operations by the two sides. The Yeonpyeong-do shelling was openly prepared and executed by the North Korean People’s Army Fourth Corps and set off an artillery duel, the first such large-scale exchange of fire between the two armies in decades. What we do not know is why, at a time when there was every indication that Kim Jong Il wanted a stable environment externally to help secure the succession, he would have approved such a blatant large-scale attack so much out of character with past North Korean practice.
KIM JONG IL’S DEATH AND BEYOND
Kim Jong Il did not pay taxes, but he could not avoid the second of the inevitable fates. When he died in December 2011, his plans for the political succession of his son Kim Jong Un were under way but incomplete. In August 2010, Kim had visited China, perhaps to inform the Chinese of his intention to proceed in September with a Workers Party conference (only the third such meeting since the party’s founding in 1945) at which he would publicly debut his son. Some sources contend that he brought Kim Jong Un on the trip, especially to show him those parts of northeast China where his grandfather Kim Il Sung had conducted anti-Japanese guerrilla operations.
After a slight unexplained delay, the party conference was held in September, and as part of the succession scenario, in addition to Kim Jong Un’s emergence, a number of personnel changes were announced, bringing in or elevating figures to support the succession. The very fact the conference was held reinforced earlier signs that Kim Jong Il was moving to put the party back in place as the regime’s leading political force, after years of emphasis on “military first.” Over the next year, Kim Jong Un appeared regularly with his father on inspection visits, with the media using photographs to make clear what was not expressly stated in public, that he was the designated number two and preparing to step into the post of top leader. In May 2011, as a test, it appears Kim Jong Un was left in charge of the country when his father traveled to China. When the senior Kim’s train returned, the son greeted it at the station, and North Korean television showed high-level cadre bowing low to the younger man as they emerged from the train.
The elder Kim would not survive to see these rituals reach their logical conclusion. According to an official North Korean announcement on December 19,2011, Kim died of a heart attack—brought on by “physical and mental exhaustion”—on the morning of the seventeenth while on his train traveling to yet another on-site inspection. The delay in announcing the death was not unusual for the North—the announcement of Kim Il Sung’s death in July 1994 had been similarly held up for nearly two days. One of Kim Jong Il’s last public appearances, reported two days before his death, was to the Hana Electronic Joint Venture Company—a joint venture with a European group—only a few hundred yards from the Tongil Market, one of the markets that his July 2002 economic measures had helped establish.
From time to time, North Korean television has carried a program for children called World’s Classic Fairy Tales. In the past, the selections had included “The Snow Queen,” “The Little Match Girl,” and even “Fine Dog Lassie.” In October 2012, the choice was “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” For many foreign observers—and perhaps for a few North Koreans in positions of authority as well—there were questions when Kim Jong Un, the relatively untested successor, was suddenly thrown into the role of Supreme Leader in December 2011. Was he really ready to assume power? Like the emperor in the children’s tale, would he walk essentially naked, clothed in imaginary trappings of power until someone in the leadership, perhaps a disgruntled army general brandishing a revolver, pointed out that a twenty-eight-year-old had no business ruling a nuclear-armed country of 24 million people? On December 30, the day after the memorial service for Kim Jong Il, North Korean media announced that Kim Jong Un had “assumed the supreme commandership of the KPA at the bequest of leader Kim Jong Il on October 8, 2011.” That put the new leader in control of the army explicitly at the direction of the former Supreme Leader—a bequest no one would dare (or so it was hoped) contradict.
It did not take long for Kim Jong Un to make clear that, unlike his father who had seemed emotionally paralyzed after Kim Il Song’s death in 1994, he was going to move quickly to assert himself. North Korean media over and over conveyed the message to the population that as bad as it was to lose their Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, no one should stop work, but rather turn their “grief” into increased production. After the funeral was over, the younger Kim immediately began appearing in public, showing off his new, youthful, hands-on style of leadership. On the first day of the new year, he appeared at one of the army’s premier tank units. North Korean television showed Kim meticulously inspecting the base, exactly as his father had in the past, and then appearing with the soldiers who deliriously chanted his name.
Besides attending to the business of consolidating power internally, the new leader had a pressing foreign-policy matter. One of the main pillars for the succession, putting relations with the United States back on track, was still in process when Kim Jong Il died. US and North Korean negotiators were in Beijing on the day of his death, waiting to put final touches on the first agreement Washington and Pyongyang had reached since the Obama administration took office in 2009.
Pyongyang had laid the groundwork for the negotiations in March 2011, when, following discussions with Russian deputy foreign minister Aleksei Borodavkin, the North announced it was “not opposed to” discussion of “a morator
ium on nuclear test and ballistic missile launches, access of IAEA experts to uranium enrichment facilities in the Yongbyon area, and discussion of the issue of uranium enrichment.” In July US-DPRK talks began, focusing on these points. The talks continued in October and were prepared to wrap up in Beijing in December after nailing down details, under the overall deal, of US provision of 240,000 tons of food assistance. Kim’s death put off the final agreement until February 29, 2012, when it was announced in parallel but not completely identical press releases from the two capitals. This was not a case of postmeeting press statements with different nuances, but actually different versions of what had been agreed on—and the differences were not minor.
For the Americans, the most important result of the talks was the North Korean agreement to “implement a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities. The DPRK has also agreed to the return of IAEA inspectors to verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment activities at Yongbyon and confirm the disablement of the 5-MW reactor and associated facilities.”
The North Korean version of this key section was different in important respects, adding the proviso that the moratorium would last “while productive [US-DPRK] dialogue continues” and limiting the description of the IAEA’s activities to monitoring “the moratorium on uranium enrichment.” In addition, the North Korean version of the overall results was much fuller than Washington’s. Pyongyang presented the outcome in the form of a joint agreement, noting at a few points that “both” sides had agreed to particular provisions: for example, “Both the DPRK and the U.S. agreed to make a number of simultaneous moves aimed at building confidence as part of the efforts to improve the relations between the DPRK and the U.S.” The American version avoided any sense that there had been common agreement and went out of its way to downplay the results, pointing out that they were “limited” and underlining that the “United States still has profound concerns regarding North Korean behavior across a wide range of areas.”
If the so-called Leap Day Agreement had lasted, these differences might have become serious points of contention. As it happened, the deal turned out to be not even a first “limited” step; it fell apart quickly and acrimoniously. In early March, a high-level DPRK Foreign Ministry official was in New York at an academic conference also attended by US and ROK officials. The North Korean told participants that the DPRK’s new leader wanted a new, peaceful relationship with the United States. That olive branch was soon swept away when on March 16, barely two weeks after the talks in Beijing had concluded, Pyongyang announced that in April it planned to launch into polar orbit a “working satellite” from its newly completed launch center on the country’s west coast.*
For all the differences in the two sides’ announcements of the results of the Leap Day Agreement, the sticking point turned out to be North Korea’s claims to a space program, for which it would need ballistic missiles as launch vehicles—forbidden to the North by a series of UN Security Council resolutions. In late March, a DPRK diplomat told Americans at a conference in Europe that at the talks leading up to the Leap Day Agreement, the North several times had rejected US formulations on the missile issue on the grounds that these precluded the North’s “right” to a space program. The chief US negotiator, Ambassador Glyn Davies (who had replaced Stephen Bosworth at the end of 2011), has said that at the final session of the talks, in February 2012, he impressed on the North Koreans that a space launch would completely scuttle the deal and that they indicated they understood.
Mindful of previous complaints, the North’s announcement about the planned launch noted that “a safe flight orbit has been chosen so that carrier rocket debris to be generated during the flight would not have any impact on neighboring countries.” In this case, given the flight path from the new launch center, it was Filipinos rather than Japanese who might be concerned.
In a completely unprecedented development—seemingly in line with Kim Jong Un’s new leadership style—a few days before the launch Pyongyang invited the foreign press into the country to visit the new launch facility as well as the launch control center near Pyongyang. The rocket blasted off in the early morning on April 13, but veered off course and exploded about a minute into flight. Several hours later, in another unprecedented move of openness, DPRK television interrupted normal programming to announce the satellite had “failed to enter its preset orbit.”**
Washington declared the Leap Day deal no longer valid. Administration officials portrayed the deal as a “test” of North Korea, a test that, in their eyes, North Korea had failed. Whether something could have been salvaged from the deal—assuming the political flak in Washington from going back to the table was survivable—is impossible to know. Getting IAEA inspectors to Yongbyon and into the enrichment facility might have yielded valuable insights, but IAEA director general Yukiya Amano was not prepared to take the initiative.
Speculation that the launch failure was a serious embarrassment to Kim Jong Un, possibly undermining his position, proved baseless. Two days before the launch attempt, Kim had assumed the title of “first secretary” of the Workers Party, and his formal grasp of the levers of power was now complete.
THE NEW LOOK
A few days after the launch, Kim gave his maiden address in public, on the centennial of his grandfather’s birth. In tone and substance, it was not the speech of a young ruler shaken by recent failure. Kim laid out (as he had to party cadres a few days earlier) what seemed to be a new approach on several levels. Though paying homage to his father’s rule, he strongly implied that his was the start of a new era, that North Koreans could look to the future with confidence, “without tightening their belts any longer and fully enjoy wealth and prosperity under socialism.” He left the door open to dealing with Seoul, and, by implication, with Washington as well.
For the rest of 2012, Kim Jong Un set about establishing an image for himself vastly different from his father’s. Where Kim Jong Il had seemed aloof, Kim Jong Un was publicly warm. He hugged babies, sat on the floor with new apartment dwellers, and brought his wife along with him into the public eye. He posed patiently as women soldiers, one by one, stood beside him for their pictures to be taken.
The regime encouraged stories in the international media of major economic reform efforts, especially in the agricultural area, but then pulled back. The theme of “belt tightening” became a focus of disagreement, much as Kim Jong Il’s new economic measures in 2002 had been debated in the media. Yet it seems unlikely that such disagreement—then or now—would emerge if change were not in the wind. How much change, how far it might be developed, and how long it could be sustained remained an open question at the end of Kim Jong Un’s first year in power.
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* Due to torrential rains and flooding in Pyongyang, the summit was rescheduled for October.
** Negative views within the administration about dealing with North Korea made such an idea impossible to consider for very long. Besides, there was an enduring fear of “doing an Albright”—being perceived as somehow endorsing the Kim regime. That fear lasted into the next US administration as well.
* The theme was strikingly similar to what a North Korean negotiator had said several years before during US-DPRK missile talks in New York. The North had looked around stores in Manhattan, he noted. “We don’t need to sell missiles if we can use our light industry to earn money selling goods to the United States.” Even during the Kumchang-ri negotiations in 1999, the North Koreans had suggested that the empty cavern might be utilized by American companies interested in a place for a light industry factory.
* To avoid a potentially embarrassing situation of orchestra members having to decide whether to stand if Kim Jong Il walked into the hall, the musicians had waited to go onstage until the audience filled the hall and the lights went down.
* After decades in Geneva, Ri Chol returned to Pyongyang in early 2010 to become
an important figure among Kim Jong Un’s advisers.
* The Verification Bureau in the State Department, as verification specialists naturally do, devised what would be an ideal program. North Korea, however, tended to see as espionage what the United States considered verification.
* By January 2008, the United States was looking for other countries outside of the six-party talks who might supply the Japanese portion.
* August 14 was either the very day of, or a day or two after, Kim Jong Il’s stroke.
* One of the charges in the 2006 UN Security Council resolution had been that by failing to give such notice, the North had endangered ships and aircraft. That charge, at least, the North Koreans were preemptively swatting away.
* The North sent a similar message to the administration via the New York channel shortly before releasing its formal public statement, though as is often the case, the private message was tougher than the public one.
* How much better was never clear. Seoul would probably have balked at too forward leaning a US policy, and, as previously noted, there was deep skepticism in the White House that engagement with Pyongyang was worth trying.
* They were also moved by Lee’s telling of his impoverished childhood and how his experience, multiplied many times over by the generation growing up after the Korean War, meant that Koreans were truly pro-American in their hearts.
* The Singapore meeting almost never happened. In early September, the North Koreans, without warning to the South, released a large amount of water from one of their dams near the demilitarized zone. Six campers downstream in South Korea were swept away in the ensuing flood. The ROK government quickly sent a message to Pyongyang calling for an explanation. The North, literally within hours (and probably under Kim Jong Il’s direct, urgent orders), replied that it had been forced to release the water because levels behind the dam had risen unexpectedly and that it would give advance notice of future discharges. The reaction by the South Korea public to the episode was ugly enough that a different or laggard response from Pyongyang would probably have made it impossible for the Blue House to proceed with Kim’s August initiative for talks.
The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History Page 68