Hostile Policy: N. Korea Threatens ‘Confrontration’ Along Sea Boundary

It looks like Joe Biden was right about at least one thing:

Military tension escalated sharply along the inter-Korean border on Saturday as North Korea vowed to take an “all-out confrontational posture” against South Korea, just hours after it said it would hold onto its nuclear arms. South Korea put its military on heightened alert, warning that armed clashes might take place in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea ….

“Now that traitor (South Korean President) Lee Myung-bak and his group opted for confrontation,” said a spokesman for the chief of the General Staff of the North’s Korean People’s Army, “our revolutionary armed forces are compelled to take an all-out confrontational posture to shatter them.” [….]

“There will exist in the West Sea of Korea only the extension of the Military Demarcation Line designated by the DPRK till the day of national reunification, not the illegal ‘Northern Limit Line,'” he said. DPRK is the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. [Yonhap]

President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on June 26, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who seldom gets overly excited about North Korea’s B.S., seems to be taking this seriously. In addition to putting the military on alert, he’s called an emergency cabinet meeting and asked the U.S. Air Force to increase surveillance flights near the area.

The North has a long history of using the NLL as an easy, low-risk way to intimidate the South Koreans and the Americans. It provoked naval clashes there in 1999, 2002, and 2004.

Having reported the essential facts, the Yonhap correspondent sprang from his chair, ran downstairs to the sidewalk soju tent, and stuck microphones into the faces of the patrons. Seriously … is this what passes for expert analysis in South Korea!?

Pyongyang was widely expected to refrain from provocative behavior ahead of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration to ensure smooth nuclear negotiations with the U.S.

Widely expected among whom, exactly? Evidently, among the anonymous academic conclave that meets bi-weekly to issue edicts of South Korean analytical consensus, complete with white smoke from the chimney, with a membership that apparently possesses less collective good judgment than … Joe Biden. And this:

“We should note that the statements are coming out just before the Obama administration’s inauguration,” he said. “As for whether the military threat on the South will materialize, we have to keep in mind that North Korea’s focus is improving relations with the U.S..”

And this is just their unique way of showing it.

Update: The Korea Times headline reads, “N. Korea Military Threatens to Wipe Out South.” The actual quotation reads, “[P]uppet military warhawks [have driven] our revolutionary armed forces to take a strong military retaliatory step to wipe them out.” While that’s not quite what the headline promises, it still supports my argument that the North Korean regime ought to be designated as a specially designated terrorist entity, a move that would have some severe economic consequences.

Update 1/18: My wife, who always has her thumb firmly planted on the pulse of the Korean Street, says it’s now in vogue to believe that President Lee is taking this crisis as seriously as he is to boost his sagging popularity with the voters. That’s a fine conspiracy theory, but not necessarily one that applies well to reality. Let’s face it: South Koreans didn’t vote Lee into office to stop the extortion payments to North Korea, restore relations with America, or shift the focus of their nation’s foreign and defense policies away from two isolated and uninhabitable specks of guano. No matter how much objective sense those policies might make, I doubt — admittedly without statistical support — that those policies have much emotional appeal on The Korean Street or will give Lee any advantage over the opposition:

The main opposition Democratic Party also expressed regret over North Korea’s saber-rattling.

“First of all, North Korea’s position is regrettable,” party spokeswoman Kim Yoo-jung said, adding that the Lee government, which has been taking a hard-line stance on Pyongyang, is also to blame for the tension.

“The government should change its North Korea policy and show the political will to improve inter-Korean ties,” she said. [Yonhap]

Yonhap opens that piece by saying, “South Korea’s rival political parties joined hands Sunday to accuse North Korea of escalating tension on the peninsula.” The quotations in the article don’t support that conclusion, however. The parties still disagree on North Korea policy, they’re still trying to position themselves to take advantage over the other, and no external threat up to (and for some, including) invasion will elevate patriotism over party.

On a more calculating level, if Lee wants to deter the North Koreans from pulling crap like this in the future, joining the Proliferation Security Initiative would be a sensible option to actually exercise, as opposed to continuing to discuss endlessly. What are the North Koreans and their Fifth Column in the South going to say? That Lee is even more of a sycophant and a traitor?