[Peace] From the Nation

[Karen Aram]

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US and South Korean battleships in the western Pacific Ocean in May of 2017. (Reuters / Courtesy of the US Navy)
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This week, cries of alarm about North Korea’s possible resumption of ICBM testing—or worse—will reverberate through the media. The coverage began on Sunday, when The New York Times brought out David Sanger, its star national security reporter, for a front-page screamer <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/world/asia/north-korea-missile-test-trump-kim.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage> designed to bring the standoff in Northeast Asia to a Christmas boil.

American military and intelligence sources are “tracking North Korea’s actions by the hour” and “bracing for an imminent test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching American shores,” Sanger reported. The crisis was inevitable because, over the past 18 months of sporadic talks between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the “North has bolstered its arsenal of missiles and its stockpile of bomb-ready nuclear material.”

But the Times, as it does frequently in its coverage of these talks, omitted key developments on the Korean Peninsula, including in the South, that have contributed to the current standoff.


 
 
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Perhaps the most overlooked is the massive military buildup in South Korea over the past two years. On December 9, as tensions were rising once again, the South Korean Air Force released to the media a stunning video recreation <https://youtu.be/4IHqQpV_8RE> of a preemptive attack on the North Korean ballistic missile network that Kim may soon test again.

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The four-minute film was first broadcast on JTBC, a major television network. It shows South Korea’s crack pilots—who are heavily supplied with US-made weapons—finding and then pummeling a North Korean ICBM launch site with drones, missiles, heavy bombers, and stealth fighters. Among them are the Global Hawk, the giant surveillance aircraft made by Northrop Grumman, and stealth F-35A attack planes made by Lockheed Martin.

“The glory of victory is promised under any circumstances,” the narrator declares over a background of stirring martial music. The film portrays <https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/12/12/South-Korea-releases-pre-emptive-strike-video-amid-rising-tensions/6281576154475/> the Republic of Korea as a valiant, independent force, acting swiftly with its precision strike capabilities to destroy Pyongyang’s long-range Hwasong-14 ICBM, which North Korea first tested in 2017 and which US and ROK officials fear it may test again.


The film is a reminder that South Korea, through its alliance with the United States, has built one of the most powerful armed forces in the world—the seventh largest, according to a recent survey <https://www.businessinsider.com/most-powerful-militaries-in-the-world-ranked-2019-9#18-north-korea-8>—and outspends its rival to the North, the 18th largest, by a ratio of five to one. It also underscores the determination of President Moon Jae-in, a former special forces soldier <https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/moon-jae-in-from-special-forces-soldier-to-south-koreas-president-shoo-in> who set the denuclearization talks in motion with his famous Olympic diplomacy in 2018, to defend his nation’s security at all costs.

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But it’s also a sign of a US-led military buildup in Northeast Asia that has raised tensions in the region to an alarming degree, even as North Korea threatens to resume the ballistic-missile testing that sparked the last crisis on the peninsula, in 2017. The buildup includes:

The US military’s tests of missiles previously banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the arms agreement abandoned by the Trump administration <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/22/vladimir-putin-trump-must-explain-decision-nix-nuke-weapons-treaty/1726173002/>.
The massive military machine built by South Korea in recent years, as illustrated in the ROK Air Force video. It has been fueled by massive purchases of sophisticated US weapons that have been pushed by US think tanks <https://news.kcij.org/21> with ties to the US arms industry.
The simultaneous and rapid expansion of US and Japanese military capabilities in Northeast Asia designed to confront North Korea, curb China’s growing military prowess, and enhance Washington’s strategic position in the region.
Taken together, these developments signal a dangerous escalation of tensions—a realization that may even be dawning on US national security reporters.

“The Trump administration’s shadow war with North Korea is set to intensify in the next three weeks, as Pyongyang appears to be preparing an end to its more than 18-month moratorium on testing of its nuclear program, and as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s self-imposed year-end deadline for diplomacy draws near,” CBS News’s Margaret Brennan reported <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administrations-shadow-war-with-north-korea-likely-to-intensify-in-coming-weeks/> on December 13.

That story was one in a series of alarming reports about the North’s latest testings of new rocket engines <https://www.38north.org/2019/12/vvandiepen120919/> at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, which Kim shut down in 2018 as a concession to Trump. Those tests, and a series of 15 short- and medium-range missile launches earlier this year, are universally seen as underscoring Kim’s determination to abandon the denuclearization negotiations and find a “new path <https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/03/north-korea-says-its-us-choose-christmas-gift-amid-rising-tensions.html>” in 2020 unless the United States puts forward fresh proposals that the Kim regime finds acceptable.

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“The dialogue touted by the U.S. is, in essence, nothing but a foolish trick hatched to keep the DPRK bound to dialogue and use it in favor of the political situation and election in the U.S.,” Ri Thae Song, North Korea’s vice foreign minister for US affairs, said <https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/03/north-korea-says-its-us-choose-christmas-gift-amid-rising-tensions.html> earlier this month, using the country’s official name. “What is left to be done now is the U.S. option, and it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”

In response, Trump has said that Kim could lose “everything” if he ended his self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and missile testing, and recently revived his threats of tough military action. “If we have to, we will do it,” he said <https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191203012200325> on December 3. And last week, Gen. Charles Brown, the top US Air Force commander in the Asia-Pacific region, predicted <https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/17/air-force-general-predicts-what-north-koreas-christmas-gift-us-will-be.html> that Kim’s promised gift <https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/03/north-korea-says-its-us-choose-christmas-gift-amid-rising-tensions.html> will most likely be “a long range ballistic missile.”


Many US analysts, such as Fox analyst Harry Kazianis <https://www.fox5dc.com/video/636442>, believe such a test is imminent, possibly as early as Christmas Day. They also see Kim’s latest missile and engine tests as sure signs that the North is not, in fact, getting rid of its nuclear weapons. “Reversible steps are being reversed, and North Korea is essentially ‘renuclearizing,’” Vipin Narang, an MIT security studies professor, tweeted <https://twitter.com/NarangVipin/status/1206089876623507456> after the latest Sohae test.

But, as Trump’s recent demands to expand US nuclear capabilities <https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-04/news/trump-budget-boosts-nuclear-efforts> show, so is the USA. And to those who follow the region closely, the signs of a US “shadow war” are everywhere.

The most obvious is the acceleration of US surveillance of North Korea from bases in Okinawa and Guam, thus allowing the intelligence tracking “by the hour” alluded to by Sanger. In the latest such incident, on December 19, the Pentagon dispatched a Navy EP-3E surveillance plane over the peninsula; it was preceded <https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191219008800325?section=national/defense> four days earlier by an Air Force RC-135S Cobra Ball surveillance and reconnaissance plane.

A week earlier, on December 11, the US Air Force flew an RQ-4 Global Hawk over Korea, while the Pentagon ordered a strategic B-52H Stratofortress bomber capable of nuclear strikes to patrol the adjoining seas off Japan. The Stratofortress was accompanied by a KC-135 refueling aircraft, which can keep bombers in the air for days.

In recent weeks, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports <https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191211003751325?input=tw>, the United States has also deployed the Navy’s P-3C maritime surveillance plane and an RC-135U Combat Sent (which the USAF says <https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104495/rc-135u-combat-sent/> “provides strategic electronic reconnaissance information to the president, secretary of defense [and] Department of Defense leaders”). Yonhap noted that “the B-52H, a long-range and large-payload multirole bomber, is one of the U.S. Air Force’s principal strategic assets.” In fact, the frightening sight of a B-52 over Korean skies has been a favorite US signal of its determination and destructive powers for decades.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has started testing a new series of ballistic missiles designed to counter Chinese and Iranian weapons but also perfectly capable of striking North Korea. The latest test of a land-based missile, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on December 12, was the second test of a weapon banned under the INF treaty. The first involved a Tomahawk cruise missile deployed on US warships and submarines.

“Top Pentagon officials have wanted to deploy the previously banned INF missiles to the Western Pacific to counter China’s military expansion and provocations in the South China Sea,” Fox News reported <https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-military-test-land-based-intermediate-range-missile-from-vandenberg>. “The missiles could be deployed to Guam, and within range of mainland China.” That’s also where the B-52s that regularly fly over and close to Korea are based.
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