South Korea keeps wary eye on North Korea during war games

Aside from symbolic significance, the focus on anti-submarine warfare showed the frustration over countering future submarine attacks. A South Korean military spokesman said the exercises Monday were “aimed at better detecting intrusions by an enemy’s submarines and attacking them.”

North Korea’s national defense commission, the center of power for leader Kim Jong-il, the commission chairman, greeted the war games with a blitzkrieg of invective ranging from a warning of “retaliatory sacred war” to the threat of deploying a “powerful nuclear deterrent.”

The strong language inspired derisive rejoinders from analysts mingled with concern about what it meant in terms of North Korea’s ambitions as a nascent nuclear power.

“They feel they cannot allow this [military exercise] to happen without this reaction,” says Han Sung-joo, who has served previously as South Korea’s foreign minister and ambassador to Washington. “I don’t think anything will happen in the next few days.”

Analysts see the allusion to “nuclear deterrence,” however, as indicating North Korea’s ambitions for its nuclear program. North Korea has twice conducted underground nuclear tests, first in October 2006 and again in May of last year, and is believed to have enough weapons-grade plutonium for between six and a dozen warheads.

“They might want to use this occasion as an opportunity or excuse to do something with their nuclear program,” says Mr. Han. “They can conduct another nuclear test or do something with their missiles.” North Korea has successfully built short and medium-range missiles and in April of last year test-fired a long-range missile capable of reaching the US west coast.

The China factor

In any case, China’s refusal to support the United States and South Korea in blaming North Korea for the attack on the Cheonan is assumed to have emboldened the North. China instead went along with a watered-down statement issued by the UN Security Council that noted the investigation and condemned the attack but did not hold North Korea responsible for it.

“One element here is China,” says Han Sung-joo. The North Koreans “probably think they have managed to bring China to their side. They are trying to make full use of what they consider to be China’s backing.”

Analysts say that the view that China will always back the North may also lead to another unexpected attack on the South. “They usually try to do the thing that were not expected,” says Mr. Han, but he doubts if North Korea “can do anything that will force us to take retaliatory measures.”

Mr. Kim, from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, agrees. “They cannot do anything against our exercises,” he says.

“They may plan something against South Korea, and they practice nuclear blackmail.”

Related stories:

• Why North Korea Cheonan sinking gets wrist slap from UN
• North Korea warns of 'physical response' to US-South Korea war games; Clinton shrugs
• North Korea's threats over US-South Korea war games: Another bluff?

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