‘Abandoned to pariah status” was how The Korea Times headlined the news that the UN Security Council has unanimously passed new sanctions following North Korea’s third nuclear test on 12 February.
The sanctions are designed to “comprehensively punish” North Korea, with South Korean President Park Geun-hye saying that no mercy should be shown. Critically, Kim Jong-un’s closest allies in China also backed the resolution, in further evidence that Beijing is growing tiresome of its neighbour’s erratic behaviour.
Local media spent the weekend of 9-10 March divulging new Resolution 2094, which requires UN member states to inspect all of North Korea’s maritime and air traffic for illicit items. Ships registered in North Korea should be inspected before docking, and refusal to comply means their boats will be denied entry to ports around the world.
Business leaders maintained that the increased provocations and war-like rhetoric would have a limited impact on the South’s economy, and political ‘experts’ – who so often have been wrong when speculating on inter-Korean relations – believe that while tensions might rise further, they are unlikely to reach “all-out nuclear” and may not be as serious as in March 2010, when the North was believed to have sunk the warship Cheonan, a tragedy that claimed the lives of 46 seamen.
However, even as I write, the situation is clearly affecting the atmosphere in Seoul. The American and South Korean armies conducted their annual ‘war game’ on Monday 11 March, according to the Yonhap News Agency. The timing is certainly less than perfect as the North always reacts strongly to these military drills, which they see as a provocation.
Early on that same day, North Korea officially cut off all communication with the South, thereby ending the armistice that ceased the fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. Media reports suggest that the North will conduct their own enormous military drill in mid-March, close to the eastern border with South Korea.
One North Korean newspaper warned that “puppet regimes in the US and South Korea will be turned into a sea of fire in the blink of an eye” if war breaks out on the peninsula. These exact words have been used before but, interestingly, the North is leading with many of its threats in the English language since the new UN resolution was passed.
Armed troops have been stationed on Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea this week. In 2010, the island – located very close to the disputed maritime border between the Koreas – gained international coverage after being shelled by the North.
It is difficult to speculate how the following weeks or even days will pan out. The general feeling is that threats will continue, and possibly increase, but without the backing of China – and remembering the North’s thinly veiled plea for aid in December – some form of climb-down is expected.
South Korea’s new president now faces arguably the biggest challenge of her political career, and it is unlikely she would have expected such a tense start to the job. Predictably, and as ever rather infuriatingly, she spent the first few days of her term lamenting Japanese colonialism in Korea. Now she needs her Japanese counterparts as allies as east Asia puts itself on high alert.
Hopefully common sense will prevail soon, or the safety of 75 million Koreans will become very precarious. Any form of attack will be akin to national suicide, as revenge will be brutal. There is too much to lose on both sides.
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
