by Van Torrey
“Sir, I have considered this, and I am pleased that you have asked for my opinion,” answered Yang evenly. “I am very uneasy about this new regime in North Korea. When I visited there recently, General Fhang seemed very defensive, perhaps combative is a better word. He denied knowing anything about this terrorist activity and did not display any willingness to discuss the evidence that had been presented to us by Secretary Randolph.”
“Yes, go on,” replied the Premier.
“At the end of the meeting I made it clear to General Fhang that the Chinese government would not condone such activity on the part of the DPRK, and we would have to condemn it publicly if we are to be true to our strategy of international cooperation with our progressive trading partners. Therefore, sir, even if we have to pay somewhat more for the raw materials we currently get from North Korea in the short term, I suggest we cancel the trading contracts we have with North Korea and break diplomatic relations with them unless and until the government of the DPRK begins to show a more conciliatory attitude toward the United States, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China. If it comes to choosing between our trade with the USA and the DPRK in the short term, there can be no question about which of the two is of more value to us. I also believe that taking a hard line against the DPRK will solidify our relations with Japan. Their trade is also very important to our economy, and the Japanese feel continually threatened by North Korea militarily.”
“What you suggest will send a dramatic signal to Pyongyang, Minister Yang, but such measures are not risk-free for us,” replied the Premier. “I fear such actions will threaten the new leadership and could be a catalyst for General Fhang to make moves that are unwise for him and threatening to the region as a whole.”
“All too true, sir,” answered Yang, “however, I doubt that we can remain neutral in this matter. The Americans have a strong case for retaliation. If we show solidarity with them, I believe we can have a say in tempering whatever action they may be considering. As for President Hunter, I do not think we should confuse the restraint she has shown so far with a lack of resolve to respond to these provocations. In summary, this is a chance we need to take to show leadership to our trading partners.”
*
The news hit the CIA Flash News ticker, as well as the State Department’s message center at the same time. Computer screens in all the major diplomatic missions throughout the world came up with essentially the same breaking news:
“The People’s Republic of China today announced they have recalled their ambassador from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, and severed diplomatic relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, over a dispute regarding the DPRK government’s involvement in the recent terrorist attack on the cruise ship Caribbean Star. Thirty-Six Americans were killed in the attack and twenty six remain hospitalized with injuries suffered in the attack. It is believed American authorities have at least three suspected terrorists in custody and the investigation is ongoing.” Source: Reuters.
“Well, Ms. President, this is an unexpected surprise.” remarked Philip Johnson. “The Chinese seem to have taken our recent diplomatic initiatives seriously for a change. We can only hope this represents a change of heart and philosophy on their part,” he concluded.
“Yes, please cable Ambassador Bledsoe and ask him to express our thanks to Foreign Minister Yang for this show of support.”
“I also think this sends a subtle message to us from the Chinese,” remarked Secretary Randolph cautiously, as the three met in the Oval Office.
“And how so?” asked Rachel Hunter.
“By taking such an extraordinary move, Ms. President, I believe the Chinese are asking everyone involved, the United States, South Korea, and even Japan, to try to deal with this matter diplomatically before resorting to force, which in their view, would be very destabilizing to the region.”
“As much as I would like to be accommodating to the Chinese, considering the risk they have taken with this diplomatic step, I’m afraid they have not yet walked a mile in our moccasins as the Native Americans would put it. The Chinese are concerned about their economic future as it relates to this matter, but we have suffered great loss of life and ongoing human suffering from this event. As Commander-in-Chief and President, I cannot let such an act go unpunished. We will retaliate, gentlemen.”
Alexander Randolph, ever the diplomat, but no naïve freshman diplomat when it came to resolving disputes between sovereign nations, asked Rachel Hunter if she thought one modest effort in the vein of diplomacy could be attempted. “Ms. President, perhaps you could prevail on your friend, Mr. Delagarde, to ask the Swiss mission in Pyongyang to deliver a diplomatic note to General Fhang. At the very least it would be supportive of the Chinese, showing the PRC government that we tried this avenue first.”
“Agreed, Alex,” said Rachel Hunter. “You draft it and I’ll sign it and get it faxed off to him immediately.”
Twenty-four hours later the head of the Swiss legation in Pyongyang delivered a parchment envelope, sealed with a dollop of red sealing wax in which the seal of the Swiss Embassy was imprinted, to the executive offices of General Fhang.
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Via: Diplomatic Mission of the Government of Switzerland, Pyongyang, DPRK
To: General Fhang Jhai, President, DPRK
In order to avoid a measured response by the U.S. to the DPRK attack on the cruise liner Caribbean Star in the Caribbean Sea on 25 May of this year, the United States of America demands that the government of the DPRK deliver any and all North Korean officials responsible for the planning and operational control of this terrorist act to the U.S. Army Delegate-in-Charge at the Joint U.N. Armistice Command Center at Panmunjom, Korea, within twenty-four hours after receipt of this memorandum in Pyongyang, North Korea, for the purpose of remanding them for trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, for crimes against humanity and other capital crimes which that court may deem appropriate. Failure to do so will be regarded by the United States as a refusal on the part of the government of the DPRK to work cooperatively toward a possible diplomatic solution to this extremely grave and dangerous international crisis.
(Signed)
The Honorable Rachel Hunter
President of the United States of America
*
General Fhang Jhai looked at the diplomatic note with a combined expression of disdain and disbelief. “This American woman has completely lost her mind! This...this shrieking hyena...this AMERICAN BITCH dares to send me such an insulting message, making DEMANDS of me, and insulting the Brilliant New Light! She cannot be serious. I will never negotiate with her as a representative of America.”
*
General Fhang had taken to drinking in his office well before leaving work at the end of the day. It was now only seventeen-hundred hours on the day the diplomatic note from the U.S. President had been received, and Fhang was already raving from a combination of alcohol and the steady doses of bad news he had been receiving from General Kim, now the increasingly paranoid North Korean leader’s only trusted associate, regarding the defection of China’s diplomatic mission and the pressure he felt from the American demands. In Fhang’s increasingly infrequent contacts with reality, he knew North Korea was nothing more than a third-world dictatorship, and she was now under diplomatic attack by two major World powers, the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Her former protector from back in the days of the elder Chong, the Russian Federation, had lost interest in supporting North Korea years ago. General Fhang suddenly felt as if the jaws of a giant vise were closing in on him, making him feel like a rat in a trap. A cornered rat, bent on survival, could be dangerous indeed.
*
The U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, USS Florida (SSGN-728), was station-keeping in the Sea of Japan off the East coast of North Korea acting as a deterrent for any surprise missile strike from North Korea ag
ainst Japan. Running submerged the Florida worked an irregular triangular pattern running from the South Korean port of Busan, north toward the Russian port of Vladivostok, east toward the Japanese city of Sapporo, and southwest, skirting the west coast of Japan, back toward Busan. In order to stay unpredictable, the silent boomer would stop along the way for days at a time to listen on her ultra-sensitive passive sonar for other submarines in the continual game of cat-and-mouse that was life itself for submariners of every country’s navy. Despite the Florida’s continual movement within the geographic limits on Japan Station, as it was known within the U.S. Navy submarine community, the submarine was never out of operational range of her large complement of subsonic BGM-109 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles to hit any target within North Korea in a very short amount of time.
On this current deployment the Florida had undergone many missile firing drills to remain proficient at carrying out a missile firing after receipt of a targeting order and, so far, they had all been drills - dry runs. But to the 155 officers and men aboard, every drill was simply the run-up to the actual firing they all felt they would get one day, and they executed flawlessly. Today would be different.
“Captain, we have flash messaging traffic from COMSUBPAC. It is a firing order, sir.” The Yeoman gave the decoded message to Captain Thomas, who signed for it. “XO, we have a firing order from COMSUBPAC, call the Weapons Officer.” In a few moments the three officers opened the security safe in the Captain’s quarters and extracted three plastic baseball card-sized packets and cracked them open. They each compared the coding on the message with that shown on their individual packet. The Captain was first to comment. “This message is valid.” In order, the XO and the Weapons Officer replied, “I concur, sir.” The Captain responded to the others by saying, “We have a valid order, this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”
The content of the message indicated that a total of six BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles were to be fired at selected targets in North Korea, three at strategic infrastructure at the Pyongyang International Airport, and three at key harbor infrastructure in the important North Korean East Coast port of Wonsan. It appeared the intention was to strike with conventional, non-nuclear, warheads at diverse critical commercial infrastructure in North Korea, while minimizing collateral damage to civilians. These targets had been pre-selected, based on surveillance satellite imagery, for their potential to disable the efficient functionality of the overall facility where they were located. The main control tower and single runway at Pyongyang International, and the large loading and unloading crane complex servicing container ships in the Wonsan harbor complex were on the list. Loss of these individual targets alone had the potential to cripple North Korea’s fragile economy for months or longer.
The Weapons Team on the USS Florida entered the photographic imagery and the precise GPS coordinates into the electronic memory of the Tomahawk that was to service each target and gave the “weapons ready” signal to the XO of the Florida. Next the Time-on-Target data was calculated to assure that the missiles arrived at both targets that were approximately one-hundred-thirty miles apart, at exactly the same moment. Once a T-O-T was established, a firing solution was given to the XO by the Weapons Officer. “Sir, we have a firing solution,” the Exec told the Captain. “Aye, XO prepare the boat to fire missiles on my mark.”
The XO responded by speaking into the ship’s PA system, “Prepare to fire missiles.”
Within two minutes the Chief of the Boat reported to the XO, “Sir, we have reached firing depth. We are prepared to fire.”
“Sir, the boat is ready to fire,” the XO reported to the Captain.
“Execute firing sequence, XO,” replied the Captain.
Within thirty seconds three Tomahawk cruise missiles with their thousand pound explosive warheads had broken the surface of the Sea of Japan and were streaking at five-hundred-fifty miles per hour toward their targets at Pyongyang International Airport. Minutes later, three additional Tomahawks were launched from the Florida and were on their way to the North Korean harbor at Wonsan. Ten minutes after firing, the Florida had reached her normal dive depth of four-hundred feet and had stealthily departed the firing area.
The men on the Florida would have to wait until their return to port to see the video imagery of their weapons striking the targets. The video imagery from the last few hundred yards of the flights was televised in real-time to U.S. Air Force drone aircraft operating out of a U.S. air base in South Korea. Within seconds of each other, the images from Pyongyang and Wonsan converged showing the last few seconds from the flight path of each missile, followed suddenly by a blank screen. In seconds a new image appeared, this one from the camera on each drone showing massive fireballs from the explosion of the warheads, followed by images of the damage to each target impacted. The result was dramatic. Six targets impacted, six targets burning and destroyed. The damage was huge and impressive, leaving only bits and pieces of the Tomahawks themselves.
*
General Fhang was beside himself with smoldering rage as reports of the overwhelming damage to his country’s commercial infrastructure continued to pour in. Not only was his main commercial airport and most important seaport heavily damaged, many highly skilled personnel had been killed in the raids. Loss of such difficult-to-replace human resources was yet another serious aspect of the overall physical damage to these targets.
General Fhang chose to tour the damaged sites along with General Kim by helicopter, starting with Pyongyang’s airport, and found his engineers’ damage assessments more pessimistic than at first glance after the attacks. The main control tower was completely destroyed along with flight management radar and all the airport’s central electrical and communications systems. The fuel storage area, including millions of gallons of Jet-A fuel was a charred mass and still burning. A huge crater in the middle of the main single runway had made the runway unusable as well as severing much of the electrical and plumbing conduit that ran beneath it. It would take months and perhaps hundreds of millions in scarce hard currency, where it took over 130 North Korean Won to buy one U.S. Dollar, to put the airport back to providing even basic service.
As the two men landed by helicopter near the seaport complex at Wonsan, they were greeted by the Harbor Master who had even grimmer news. Due to the damage sustained to the main crane complex, the movement of container traffic in and out of the harbor was at a standstill. One of the missiles had destroyed the main crude oil delivery and storage complex in the harbor and severely damaged a crude carrier that was unloading crude oil. Those fires were still burning out of control. The third missile had heavily damaged the main power station serving Wonsan, making repairs to the docks by electrically intensive equipment even more difficult. The cost in hard currency to repair the damage at Wonsan could be even greater than what would be needed at Pyongyang.
After the tour of the damage at Wonsan and during the flight back to Pyongyang, General Fhang was uncharacteristically silent. Kim took this brooding as a dangerous sign and kept his silence while he busied himself by taking notes about the disappointing tour. There had been no proof delivered to General Fhang, but there was suspicion on the part of everyone close to the damage that it had been inflicted by U.S. or South Korean missiles. Only Fhang and Kim were aware of the note from President Hunter which made it clear to both that the Americans were responsible.
That night Fhang asked General Kim to dine with him and So-song at his residence. They spoke of other things during dinner, but afterward, Fhang asked Kim to his private study, where Kim settled for sipping the excellent French Cognac and Fhang continued consuming prodigious amounts of Russian vodka. In doing so, Fhang continued his often repeated rant about, “Vodka being the only good thing coming out of Russia these days.”
“General Kim, I must confess to you, as my confidant, that I am very sad at the moment. I thought that replacing the Chongs with my vision of a Brilliant New Light in the form of reunifying the Korean pe
ninsula would be good for our people and bring me respect from my Asian peers as an enlightened leader. Instead, my hopes have been dashed by events that were beyond my control. You know full well that I had no culpability in the death of the American President,” Fhang ranted belligerently. “As for this insane idea of planting a terrorist cell in the United States, I would have vetoed that out of hand, had I been consulted. Instead, this wretched hangover from the Chongs has infected me like the plague and much of our commercial infrastructure lies in ruins. It will cost hundreds of millions, millions we could be using for other progressive needs, to repair this damage inflicted on us by the Americans. What is worse, our relations with China are threatened when we need their support the most, and they think I am just another petty dictator of a third world, backwater accident of geography.”
Fhang grew silent as if pondering a decisive chess move, and General Kim saw a moment to speak. “Sir, I agree matters look grim at the moment, but perhaps this would be an opportunity to send a diplomatic note to both the Chinese and the United States explaining these unusual circumstances and the fact that you were not in control of these specific actions...”
“Not in control?!...tell them that on top of everything else they suspect of me, I am not in control?” he bellowed drunkenly. “If they have not laughed at me by now, both China and the Americans would think me nothing more than a pitiful joke!”
“Sir, I didn’t mean it that way,” said Kim, as he tried to refocus Fhang away from his inebriated self-pity and delusional judgments. “But, perhaps an explanation, and it is the truth, could be the beginning of a constructive dialogue.”