THE SHELLING by North Korea yesterday of parts of disputed Yeonpyeong Island, north west of the South’s capital Seoul, represents a serious and worrying escalation of the recent intermittent clashes that have sharply raised the temperature in the fractious relationship between the two neighbours and in the region. Some 200 North Korean shells hit the island killing two southern soldiers and setting dozens of houses on fire. It was one of the heaviest attacks on the South, and most unusually on a populated area, since the Korean War ended in 1953, though never formally. Southern forces were put on the highest state of alert and responded in kind with shells.
True to form the North implausibly blamed the South for provoking the exchange, insisting the latter had fired shells into the sea inside its border. Seoul acknowledges some shells were fired during exercises but insists they did not go near violating the North’s seas. In truth Pyongyang has required no provocation to launch similar attacks in the recent past. In March, relations deteriorated after a South Korean naval vessel – the Cheonan – was sunk by what an international inquiry concluded was a Northern torpedo. Forty-six sailors died.
In August, North Korea fired 110 artillery rounds near Yeonpyeong and another South Korean island. Three weeks ago, the South Korean navy fired warning shots at a North Korean fishing boat after the vessel briefly strayed across the Northern Limit Line.
The attack yesterday also came in the wake of a series of worrying revelations about North Korea’s nuclear programme and threats from its government. Last week a US specialist reported that the North Koreans had shown him – “flaunted” is how one report put it – a new facility to enrich uranium in breach of UN Security Council resolutions. And they announced that they were building another reactor, confirming long-held US fears that North Korea has a two-track programme to make nuclear weapons. North Korean officials also hinted to American visitors that they would continue missile tests and conduct a third test of a nuclear device if the US did not resume six-way talks with Pyongyang, stalled further by the Cheonan incident.
That frustration at the talks process may have triggered the shelling, a sort of “we have not gone away” moment designed to raise tensions in the South and rattle the American cage, aimed as it has in the past at browbeating both countries into concessions. If so, it is likely to be highly counter-productive.
But assessing the motivations of the secretive Pyonyang regime is no exact science. The September promotion of leader Kim Jong-il’s son, Kim Jong-un, from obscurity into a senior military and political rank suggested that a succession process is under way which may be troubling sections of the powerful military. Provocative adventures against the South may represent a useful diversion from that succession process, or an assertion of independence from within the military. Whatever the reason, Pyongyang has done nothing but increase its isolation. Even loyal ally China will begin to lose patience.