Korean War II: It’s (probably) over for now, but it’s not over

They came, they talked, and they solved nothing, but after a tense weekend, at least Korea is not at war. As of this writing, it looks like representatives of the two Korean governments will continue to talk and solve nothing, except to calm South Korea’s foreign investors. The North will not admit that it laid the mines that forever maimed Staff Sergeant Kim Jung-Won and Sergeant Ha Jae-Heon, the South will eventually relent on blaring propaganda to a few hundred captive North Korean conscripts, and the North will continue to disseminate its propaganda inside South Korea in far more efficient ways. Eventually, Pyongyang will demobilize the army to help with the harvest. In a year, hardly anyone will remember this week.

Except, of course, for Kim Jung-Won and Ha Jae-Heon.

I’ve always been interested in the chronology of North Korea’s provocation cycles. As an analogue to recent events, the cycle that interests me most is the one leading up to the attack on the Cheonan in March 2010, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island that November. A review of the history preceding those attacks shows that although the first seven months of 2009 were filled with provocations, Pyongyang was relatively conciliatory for the rest of the year, and the early months of 2010 were a time of relative (and ultimately, deceptive) calm.

President Obama began 2009 with an inauguration speech that offered to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” As if to reaffirm that peace is anathema to a regime founded on isolation and conflict, North Korea responded with a familiar cycle of provocations – a missile test (April), a nuclear test (May), a U.N. Security Council resolution (June) answered with another round of missile tests (July). Also during this period, the North Koreans announced that they had begun (April) and completed (November) reprocessing a batch of plutonium at Yongbyon – all in flagrant violation of George W. Bush’s deathbed accord of 2007, known here as Agreed Framework 2.0.

In August, North Korea released journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to Bill Clinton, released a South Korean businessman it had detained at Kaesong, and sent a high-level delegation to the funeral of Kim Dae-Jung (whose widow Kim Jong-Un very recently snubbed). In November, North Korea called on the U.S. to accept bilateral talks. These developments caused some journalists and analysts to declare a “charm offensive.”

(The other significant event of this period was the Great Confiscation of December 2009, which appears to have caused a degree of internal unrest in North Korea. I do not overlook this as another potential explanation for North Korea’s subsequent conduct. Over the last summer, there was also a spike in reports of internal dissent and resistance in the North.)

Then came January 2010, and North Korea’s New Year speech. Analysis of it followed the formula that “vagueness times mendacity divided by selection bias times preconception plus confirmation bias equals garbage with the predictive utility of an asthmatic nonagenarian’s horoscope.” Accordingly, some analysts seized on an isolated reference to “good-neighborliness and friendship with other countries.” Given the events of 2009, Pyongyang must have known that this olive branch could only bear so much fruit, but for eleven more weeks, there was Peace in Our Time.

If you don’t see much of a pattern here, you’re not alone. What’s noticeable about the period leading up to March 26, 2010 is the relative absence of clashes between North and South Korean forces, and the rhetorical preponderance of conciliation over hostility, even as Pyongyang premeditated the murder of 46 young sailors. The most significant incident during this interlude was North Korea’s shelling of disputed, South Korean-controlled waters in January 2010. Then, North Korea backed away from direct confrontation when South Korean and U.S. forces were engaged and watchful. If that pattern holds today, Pyongyang will wait until Seoul lets its guard down and attack at an unexpected time, place, and manner. That is why this may be over for now, but it’s not over.

The attacks of 2010 were the most significant North Korean attacks since 1968. They also went mostly unanswered, and wrong-footed a U.S.-Korea alliance that found itself unable to deter them. Last week’s events marked the first North Korean artillery attack on the South Korean mainland for many years. One hopes that South Korea’s superficially forceful response will deter rational men in Pyongyang from greater outrages, but I doubt it. Even if the South Korean artillery had hit something or someone, that someone was expendable to Kim Jong-Un, and speakers blaring k-pop won’t deter much of anything, either. If North Korea’s political system really is addicted to confrontation, and if Pyongyang continues to gain confidence from the protection of a nuclear arsenal, the next provocations may set another grim precedent.