North Korea’s escalating threats

What happened

North Korea caused growing alarm in Asia and the U.S. this week with a series of increasingly belligerent provocations, including renouncing its 1953 armistice with South Korea, announcing the reopening of a closed nuclear facility that can generate fuel for bombs, and threatening to launch a barrage of missiles at the U.S. Calling his country’s nuclear weapons program “a reliable war deterrent,” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said he would restart operations at a shuttered reactor, which could produce enough nuclear material for one bomb a year. That announcement came just days after Kim posed in front of a military wall map showing North Korean rockets raining down on Washington, Los Angeles, and Austin. State media compared the U.S. to a “boiled pumpkin” vulnerable to attack.

In a show of force, the U.S. flew B-2 bombers on practice bombing missions over South Korea, and sent F-22 stealth fighter jets, a Navy destroyer carrying missiles, and other planes and ships to the region. The U.S. also prepared to deploy an advanced missile-defense system in Guam, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying North Korea posed “a real and clear danger” to South Korea, Japan, and U.S. bases in the region. James Thurman, the top U.S. commander in South Korea, said he feared that a “miscalculation” on the North’s part would lead to war.

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What the editorials said

Is North Korea serious about going to war? asked The Washington Post. “The worrying reality is that it is virtually impossible for outsiders to know for sure.” But it’s more likely that Kim “is playing an old and familiar game,” manufacturing a crisis atmosphere in the hope that the U.S. will eventually give him more aid to buy good behavior. But President Obama should refuse to engage with the 30-year-old dictator. As previous administrations have learned, “answering provocations with diplomacy will not lead to concessions by North Korea—only to another round of provocations.”

There might be some logic behind Kim’s bizarre threats, said The Wall Street Journal. But the problem with acting crazy “is that it doesn’t rule out the possibility that Kim is crazy.” Maybe he really believes that a bloody showdown with the South will win him respect at home. And there’s always the risk that one of his “minions might get too eager to please the boss” and launch an attack, engulfing the whole Korean Peninsula in war.

What the columnists said

Kim’s not crazy, said Matt Spetalnick in Reuters.com. Following his father’s death, in 2011, the inexperienced young dictator has been trying to solidify his leadership, especially among North Korea’s powerful generals. By placing his country on a war footing, Kim is now hoping that ordinary citizens and the nation’s 1.2-million-strong army will rally around him in a show of national solidarity. He might also think “that testing South Korea’s new president is a good bet,” said Michael Auslin in The Wall Street Journal. Kim hopes the talk of war will intimidate the recently elected Park Geun-hye. Then he would have a complacent Seoul to deal with for the next six years.

But Seoul is no longer willing to be pushed around, said David Kang in ForeignPolicy.com. In the past, the South ignored even blatant provocations to maintain the peace. But after the North blew up a South Korean naval ship in 2010, killing 46 sailors, “Seoul rewrote the rules of military engagement” and promised to reply with force to any future attack. If Kim launched a similar strike today, it would quickly “escalate into a larger conflict.”

Such a clash would be disastrous, said Mark Thompson in Time.com. The North would be able to fire 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of a conflict, reducing the city to rubble and killing tens of thousands of people. But, as American officials have made clear privately for years, any attack on the South “would be suicidal”: Neither the U.S. nor South Korea would allow Kim’s regime to survive. Washington and Seoul have made this threat clear to China, North Korea’s closest ally. “The only question now is whether Kim believes it.”