Former Ambassador: Kim Jong-Un Is Making A Big Mistake
The North Korea BlogNorth Korea has been acting really wild lately, spooking the international community with its decision to close off an industrial zone shared with South Korea for the first time since 2009, stepping up its rhetoric, and warning diplomats about their safety.
At worst, one supposes the 30-year-old dictator is moving toward war.
At best — and probably more likely — he is doing this macabre charade in order to boost his power at home and around the world. The problem is, it's probably not going to work.
Former United States Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill, who led the U.S. delegation during nuclear talks with North Korea, tells Quartz's Gina Chon:
Nobody will give them a nickel. They worsened their strategic situation. And they’ve made it worse for China. We’ve now thickened up our missile defense in a way no one could’ve foreseen a couple months ago. That’s very upsetting to the Chinese. It’s also a myth that North Korean bluster gets them something. They really haven’t gotten anything.
Hill doesn't have a very high opinion of Kim either: "I’ve known a lot of world leaders, and this is really one of the more pathetic examples of a leader I’ve ever seen."
While Hill says things could get bad quickly, he also says things could turn quiet fast: "North Korea has the ability to reverse propaganda like no other country."
Read the full interview at Quartz >
So what happens next in North Korea?
A thus-far spot-on intelligence report that appeared last month in Korea's JoongAng Daily described a three-part plan to create fear of nuclear war:
The first stage is issuing war threats against the South and spreading the idea that a war is imminent, the source said.
The second stage is reportedly forcing foreigners in the North to leave the country, warning that their personal safety cannot be guaranteed in time of war. The North would also inform foreign diplomatic missions in Pyongyang to pull out their citizens.
The third step will be a terrorist attack on a public installation in the South such as an airport, or an armed attack like the sinking of the Cheonan, the source said.
This theory gibes with what many analysts have said.
Sue Mi Terry, a Columbia University professor who served as a senior analyst on North Korea at the CIA from 2001 to 2008, told Wired's Spencer Ackermann to expect "a relatively small attack that won’t leave many people dead."
While these exercises aren't impressing anyone outside of Korea, their purpose may be to consolidate power within.