Seoul: North Korean officials raged for days over US-South Korean military exercises, promising a violent response. That reaction came this week, when the North fired more than 20 missiles – one of which fell near the South Korean maritime border. It was a significant increase in a year that has already seen the most North Korean missile tests ever, and it raises an important question: How far will they go? North Korea’s playbook has traditionally been to intensify provocation until it gets the attention of the US – and then negotiate sanctions relief or other concessions that it sees as a position of power. sees.
The bar may be high for attention these days, with the United States focused on the upcoming elections and consumed by war in Russia and West Ukraine. This could mean the North will have to do more to get the response it wants – but it also raises the possibility that Pyongyang could push South Korea too far. There is already growing discussion about building an indigenous nuclear program in Seoul.
North Korean observers have long outlined the various levels Pyongyang has used to express its anger. At the bottom of the list is the fiery rhetoric in the state-controlled media. It may then progress to a short-range missile launch of the type seen on Wednesday.
Then will come long-range tests, including ICBMs designed to target the United States or intermediate missiles, such as the one the North has hit deep in the Pacific, in the past over the Japanese archipelago. At the top of the list is the test explosion of one of their nuclear devices.
Each new level escalates tensions already on the Korean peninsula, where hundreds of thousands of troops from both sides and the United States are locked in along the world’s most heavily armed border. And while bloodshed is fairly rare these days (2010, in contrast, attacks killed 50 South Koreans), the relatively limited geographic area of many soldiers operating with such powerful weapons increases the likelihood that a miscalculation may lead to There may be conflict.
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One of 23 missiles fired on Wednesday landed close enough to the South Korean island to sound air strike sirens and move residents to underground shelters. Another landed 26 kilometers (16 mi) from the shared border with Korea.
Concerns were already running high as North Korea threatened to use nuclear weapons a few hours earlier so that the United States and South Korea would pay “the most terrible price in history.” For months, South Korean and US officials have been expecting North Korea to test a nuclear bomb. It will be the seventh such test and will push for even stronger sanctions at the United Nations. Whether Russia and China, countries that have traditionally defended the north, will allow further punishment to the UN is unclear.
It is important to note that with each North Korean weapons test – whether it is the shortest-range missile or the nuclear bomb – in Pyongyang scientists are closer to their ultimate goal of a fully functional nuclear arsenal that can target every city on the American mainland. able to.
A recent analysis based on satellite imagery showed that the North has made dramatic progress on new construction at its Sohe Satellite Launching Station.
In addition to expanding its capability to send satellite launch vehicles, the station “is also supporting usable technology development by North Korea’s emerging intercontinental ballistic missile programs,” wrote Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., Victor Cha and Jennifer Jun of the Center for Strategic. could.” and the International Studies Think Tank in Washington.
The latest launches follow a series of North Korean tests of nuclear-capable missiles. And a new North Korean law authorizes the retrospective use of nuclear weapons in a number of situations, although there is widespread doubt that North American and South Korean forces will use those bombs first. North Korea says it is responding to a US-South Korean military exercise it sees as a rehearsal for an invasion.
But Pyongyang is also very well aware of what is happening in the world – especially as it relates to its rivals. US President Joe Biden is preparing to travel to Asia for a series of summits, and faces crucial midterm elections this month.
There’s a lot going on to get Biden’s attention, but Pyongyang has previously timed its weapons test around US elections, possibly in hopes of pushing itself higher on presidents’ foreign policy to-do lists.
There is also a war going on in Ukraine, where Russia has faced several setbacks recently. North Korea may realize that Moscow, which has been a supporter of the North and its military for decades, could benefit from a distraction from missile tests for Washington. And the barrage also comes as South Korea mourns the deaths of more than 150 people as the crowds throng to Halloween fun – the country’s worst disaster in years.
But another North Korean nuclear test could also be a risk to the North, Jeffrey Robertson, an associate professor of diplomatic studies at Yonsei University, wrote recently. “Over the past thirty years, a rough balance has been struck between South Korea’s vastly superior conventional capability (and its alliances with the US) and North Korea’s nascent nuclear weapons capability,” he said.