The next few weeks may be critical for US-North Korean diplomacy.
North Korean missile and Kim Jong-un’s ‘Christmas gift’ decision:
Talks with Donald Trump have not gone according to plan. Strict economic sanctions remain in place and it appears Washington is not going to budge despite Pyongyang’s insistence that they come up with another deal to resolve the nuclear issue by the end of the year.
Donald Trump, too, seems to be frustrated. He has once again hinted at the possibility of military action against North Korea if necessary, despite highlighting his “good relationship” with the North Korean leader.
“I think we’re seeing the start of what could be a return to a very familiar crisis in 2020,” Ankit Panda, North Korea expert at the Federation of American Scientists, told the BBC.
“We’re beginning to see the scenario that many of us had warned of from the get-go of diplomacy: a capricious and irritable Trump coming to terms with the reality of his reality-TV diplomacy with North Korea.”
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Just 15 months ago, the leaders of North and South held hands on Mt Paektu, optimistic that they would be able to come to some kind of an agreement to finally end the Korean War.
That hope has now gone.
Pyongyang is refusing to hold talks with Seoul. Last week North Korea carried out artillery drills near the sea border with the South at Kim Jong-un’s request. This breached a military agreement reached between the two countries last year.
The South has every reason to be cautious when the North is near this border. In November 2010, North Korean forces fired around 170 artillery shells and rockets at Yeonpyeong Island, killing four South Koreans. There are now fears that tensions are beginning to ramp up once again.
There is certainly no shortage of warning signs from North Korea about where its diplomatic relationship with Washington and Seoul is heading.
The latest came earlier this week. Deputy Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song hinted that the regime could resume long-range missile tests in the next few weeks if Washington refused to change its negotiating position and said “it is entirely up to the US what Christmas gift it will select” – a phrase that was almost certainly designed to be picked up by the US press pack.
Then, once again, the Supreme Leader got back on his white horse and climbed Mt Paektu, North Korea’s most sacred mountain. The images and prose in state media were rich in political and ideological messaging.
Merry Christmas from Supreme Leader
Dozens of photos showed him ploughing through the snow on his way to the “revolutionary” mountain top. The visit comes at a time when “the imperialists and class enemies make a more frantic attempt to undermine the ideological, revolutionary and class positions of our Party”, the North Korean leader is quoted as saying.
The statement added that he was getting his people ready for “the harshness and protracted character of our revolution.”
North Koreans are being warned that hard times lie ahead.
Kim Jong-un is also convening a surprise meeting of his ruling party leaders. North Korea’s most powerful political committee will meet in late December to “discuss and decide on critical issues”. Put simply, this does not bode well. It is possible Mr Kim is already convinced that talks with the US will not work and is getting ready to hand out new orders.
Return of rocket man?
So is rocket man ready to make a return?
Some would argue he never left. This year has been one of North Korea’s busiest in terms of testing.
Kim Jong-un’s small impoverished state which is under strict international sanctions has managed to develop three new missile systems, all of which have been tested since talks between Mr Trump and the North Korean leader broke down in Hanoi in February.
“All of the missiles have several things in common,” Vipin Narang, a security studies professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told me earlier this year.
“They are solid fuel, they are mobile, they are fast, they fly low, and at least the KN-23 can manoeuvre inflight, which is very impressive.
“Any one of the missiles would pose a challenge to regional and ROK missile defences given these characteristics. Together, they pose a nightmare.”
But all 13 launches in 2019 were brushed off by Mr Trump. After all, Mr Kim had kept his promise not to test long-range weapons or a nuclear weapon.
However, the North Korean leader also hinted that this promise had an expiry date and that the moratorium on testing would end on 31 December if there was no deal with the US.
Satellite launch?
Kim Jong-un may think that if he wants to win back the US president’s attention and pressure him for a better deal, he is going to have to go bigger and bolder. There are also various components of his new short-range missiles that he may be eager to try out on longer-range weapons.
One way to do that would be to launch a satellite. It wouldn’t technically break his promise, and it would be headline-grabbing both domestically and internationally.
“The reasons to suspect a satellite launch may be awaiting us are complex, ” said Ankit Panda, “but broadly speaking, we have several indicators, including evidence of work on new SLVs [satellite launch vehicles] from 2017 and increased references to space activities in state media this year.
“We’re also overdue for one, given the lack of any serious space activities despite a well-maintained space program in North Korea since 2016.”
Analysts are watching the satellite launch station in Sohae carefully. This site was one which North Korea had pledged to dismantle. [It did not.]
“We haven’t seen any activity which would indicate that there’s an impending test,” said Melissa Hanham, an expert on open-source intelligence and director of the Datayo Project at the One Earth Future Foundation.
“However, it is still a fully functioning facility. They didn’t dismantle the launch pad – they can still test missiles from there.”
Another option for Pyongyang would be to try out its new solid-fuel technology on a longer-range missile. Melissa Hanham said this fuel type has tactical advantages and would make North Korea’s long-range missiles quicker and more powerful.
“Solid fuel missiles are easier to hide from surveillance and spy satellites, because they can be fuelled and don’t necessarily have a convoy of fuel vehicles around them for satellites to detect. They can also be stored and launch more quickly than liquid fuel missiles since they are pre-fuelled and ready to go.”
But surely testing a long-range missile which Washington could see as a threat to the US would risk angering an unpredictable Donald Trump?
The US president had declared the stand-off with North Korea as “largely solved” last year. He may find that a difficult claim to make at his re-election rallies if Pyongyang is firing off missiles capable of hitting Los Angeles.
“At best, North Korea is trying to get the US to negotiate on its terms by ramping up public pressure and urgency. At worst, North Korea doesn’t really intend to negotiate at all, and is just trying to lay the public groundwork for Washington to bear the blame for an escalation of tensions,” said Mintaro Oba, a former Korea Desk Officer at the US Department of State.
“Either way, North Korea is skilled at using public means to put the burden of action – and the burden of blame – on the United States.
Rachel Minyoung Lee, an analyst at NK News, also believes North Korea has already made up its mind that talks with the US will not work.
“In fact, I have my doubts about whether Pyongyang had much faith in an outcome from its diplomacy with the US even before the Stockholm talks were held in October,” she said.
Washington has played down the significance of North Korea’s year-end deadline. The US Special Representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, called it “artificial” and warned it would be a “huge mistake and a missed opportunity” for North Korea to take any provocative steps.
It is true that Kim Jong-un’s plans are still not clear but all the signs coming from Pyongyang would suggest they are serious about this year-end deadline.
As Professor John Delury of Seoul’s Yonsei University told Reuters news agency, “The signals suggest the window for diplomacy is closing fast, if not already shut.”
Donald Trump has revived his derisive “Rocket Man” nickname for Kim and is again threatening to use military force against North Korea, and North Korea Turns Up Heat on Trump, Calls Him ‘Dotard’ Again:
North Korea may be preparing to conduct engine tests at a long-range rocket launch site, stepping up pressure on President Donald Trump ahead of a year-end deadline it imposed to get a better deal from the U.S. in nuclear disarmament talks.
A satellite image from Thursday shows activity at its Sohae Launch Facility, which leader Kim Jong Un had once said he dismantled in a concession to Trump. [He did not.] The move comes as the two sides have revisited old insults — “Rocket Man” from Trump and “dotard” from North Korea — while Pyongyang said Washington’s behavior will determine what “Christmas gift” it gets from Kim.
The commercial satellite image shows activity at the Sohae facility that includes what appears to be a newly arrived shipping container at the engine test stand, according to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who works with the U.S.-based imaging company Planet Labs.
“This isn’t the Christmas gift that North Korea promises, but it is a lump of coal in Trump’s stocking,” said Lewis, a specialist in analyzing in satellite imagery. He added “this is one more sign that we’ve reached the end of diplomacy and a return to missile testing.”
North Korea’s deadline puts one of Trump’s biggest foreign policy “achievements” on the line just as he gears up for re-election. [Most analysts would argue that Trump gave Kim Jong-Un the legitimacy and world stage as a nuclear power leader that he desperately sought and desired, and he got nothing in return. This is not an achievement, but rather appeasement.] Kim has demanded Trump ease up on sanctions choking his country’s paltry economy and end what Pyongyang sees as Washington’s “hostile intent” toward it.
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But the bonhomie has been tested this week, with Trump reviving his derisive “Rocket Man” nickname for Kim and again threatening to use military force against North Korea. One of Pyongyang’s top nuclear envoys, who once praised the “mysteriously wonderful” chemistry between the leaders, slammed Trump for using words that had prompted “waves of hatred” among the North Korean people. She also dusted off an old insult the state has used for Trump.
“If any language and expressions stoking the atmosphere of confrontation are used once again on purpose at a crucial moment as now, that must really be diagnosed as the relapse of the dotage of a dotard,” Choe Son Hui, first vice-minister of foreign affairs, was quoted Thursday as saying by the state’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Any shift by Kim could come as soon as the North Korean leader’s annual New Year’s address, which he has previously used to ratchet tensions up and down. The ruling Workers’ Party announced a rare meeting in Pyongyang later this month “to discuss and decide on crucial issues” due to the “changed situation at home and abroad.”
While Trump and Kim have held three face-to-face meetings since June 2018 and lavished praise on each other over the past two years, they’ve achieved little beyond a vague promise to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” North Korea has continued to expand a nuclear weapons program that it sees as a vital deterrent against the threat of American invasion.
U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, Guam and Japan will be on heightened alert this holiday season.
North Korea said it conducted a “very important test” at a rocket launch site on Saturday, the same day a senior diplomat said denuclearization is off the negotiating table. “North Korea claims to have carried out a ‘very important’ test at rocket launch site”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/12/07/north-korea-claims-have-carried-out-very-important-rocket-test/
“The test paves the way for North Korea to launch a satellite or intercontinental ballistic missile around the end of this year, experts said, fulfilling a threat to give the United States an unwelcome ‘Christmas gift.’”