North Korea: A ceaseless rise and the battle for succession
North korea: A ceaseless rise and the battle for succession
WRITTEN BY JOE VARNER
11 November 2020
Few countries in the world have suffered greater in the COVID-19 pandemic than the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea, fewer still have more interest in a new US administration (and potential US policy) than Pyongyang.
Kim Jong-un’s recent speech at the 10 October celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party gave greater insight into conditions in the North during the pandemic than all other reporting this year. While he praised his military forces and showcased the communist state’s latest technological achievements in the annual military parade, he also (uncharacteristically) showed great emotion and apologised for not being able to improve the livelihoods of ordinary North Koreans believed to be suffering heavily under UN and US-imposed sanctions. His speech placed blame on bad weather affecting agriculture and food production and COVID-19, which is believed by the West to be out of control in the North. It denies having even a single case. After three destructive typhoons this year, floods, sanctions and the global pandemic there are real fears that the North Korean people could face worse famine and food shortages than in the 1990s under Kim Jong-un’s father.
A troublesome neighbour
The United Nations World Food Program has warned that after storms, COVID-19 and sanctions, some 40 per cent of the population is undernourished. Food shortages were accompanied by other effects of the terrible storms where Typhoon Maysak reportedly saw more than 2,000 homes destroyed or badly damaged. In a further sign of the enormous concern surrounding the impact of COVID-19, in September, North Korean authorities issued shoot-to-kill orders to prevent the coronavirus from entering the country from China. Kim Jong-un ordered the border with China closed in January, and in July state media reported the Kim regime had raised its state of emergency to the maximum level. The border closure with Beijing had a further serious impact and ‘accelerated the effects’ of economic sanctions imposed on Pyongyang with imports from China plunging 71 per cent in the first two months of 2020. While social conditions in North Korea deteriorated sharply, its military program of force modernisation and the development of its strategic nuclear deterrent moved forward unabated.
Differences between the current White House and an incoming Biden administration could be thrown into sharp relief in response to an ICBM test-fire by the North, as one is charged (even in its dying days) with protecting the US, while the other is chomping at the bit to set a new course in two months time.
This year’s annual Foundation Day military parade on 10 October featured clones of Russian Armata main battle tank, the US M1128 mobile gun system, the Japanese Komatsu light armoured vehicle, and the Russian Tor air defence missile system. The North Koreans also showcased an anti-tank guided missile vehicle not seen since 2018, a new anti-ship cruise missile, the previously reported on and tested Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and the large KN-25 multiple-launch rockets system. As expected North Korea displayed a new solid-fuel submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), believed to be the Pukguksong-4, with a wound filament fuselage with an enhanced range allowing it to target South Korea and all of Japan with nuclear warheads. Lastly, and again as expected Pyongyang unveiled a new liquid-fueled ICBM, likely designated either Hwasong-16 or KN-27 and at 25 to 26 meters in length the largest road-mobile ICBM in the world.
The new ICBM also came with a new transporter erector launch (TEL) not seen before, demonstrating North Korea’s domestic capacity to grow both its nuclear-capable missile arsenal and launch vehicles to go along with them. The new Hwasong-16 or KN-27 has the potential power to deliver a 2,000–3,500 kilogram payload of three or four warheads in one multiple re-entry vehicle to any point in the continental United States. The missile, because of its huge potential payload could also be used to overwhelm US missile defences that fire a salvo of four interceptor missiles at each warhead to ensure a single kill. At the end of the day, North Korea is following a similar path in its development of a strategic nuclear deterrent just as other great powers did in their efforts to enhance their security. This also means that Pyongyang has no intentions of giving up its nuclear forces or negotiating them away any time soon — if ever.
The succession puzzle
Earlier this year the nuclear-armed North’s own succession was in the spotlight, much as November has focused on Washington DC as the United States selects its next president. It will be well remembered by North Korea watchers that Kim Jong-un disappeared from public view earlier this year amid reports of a catastrophic health condition, only to re-emerge with little explanation thus spreading further fear of what is to happen in the Hermit Kingdom and to his nuclear program should he pass away and or be incapacitated. Curiously, Kim Jong-un’s sister and believed chosen successor, Kim Yo Jong, re-appeared in early October after a prolonged absence from public view (since July) quashing rumours she had been demoted for her over the top bellicose rhetoric toward the South. Now Kim Jong-un’s wife, Ri Sol Ju, a former singer, has not been seen in public for almost nine months including the recent 10 October military parade leading to further questions of succession and regime survival.
There are reportedly three separate rumours circulating in North Korea as to why the Great Leader’s wife is missing. Speculation abounds that she is caring for Kim Jong-il’s young sister Kim Kyung Hee who is back in favour following her husband Jang Song Taek’s execution — that she is caring for a young daughter Ju-ae who might be a potential successor to Kim — and that she herself is ill. South Korean experts have suggested that she is sequestered because of the spread of COVID-19 in the North and that public figures key to regime survival are being insulated from the deadly disease. Whatever the case, the three disappearances from public view and North Korean opacity have further complicated the West’s view of what is happening in the country. This, in turn, has led many to question whether the North’s military leadership will follow the next North Korean leader should Kim meet his demise and be succeeded by his sister or a young child.
After four years of Trump is Pyongyang set for more of the same?
While succession in the North was a concern over the last year, that concern and spotlight has now moved to Washington DC. So central to the policy of containment and to deterring North Korea from military adventure at the expense of the Western world’s Asia Pacific allies, the selection of an individual to occupy the White House has never been more important at home or in Pyongyang. During the early part of his administration, US President Donald Trump had a policy of confrontation with North Korea that seemingly took us to the brink of war in threatening to ‘rain fire’ on the North. In 2019 the Trump administration then stepped back and moved forward with a more conciliatory process with Trump even meeting with Kim in a long-held US Presidential taboo in an attempt to bargain for the removal of the North’s nuclear deterrent in exchange for normalised relations.
North Korea military parade. Image credit: Uwe Brodrecht/Flickr
While many argue that Trump's policy succeeded in no new nuclear tests or ICBM flights to intimidate its neighbours over the past two years, others point to the fact North Korea has played (as it has in the past) the Trump administration to improve its nuclear forces and its ability to strike the US as now demonstrated in its recent military parade. If President Trump is somehow re-elected in this year’s controversial and increasingly contested Presidential election we could see US policy toward the North harden again given the likelihood that it will test-fire its new ICBM and SLBM in the very near future. A power struggle in a contested election would only further complicate a response to North Korean sabre-rattling.
Despite new leadership in Japan, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has continued in his predecessor Shinzo Abe’s attempts to meet with Kim and establish bilateral relations, though sadly at the expense of Japanese relations with South Korea. Differences between the current White House and an incoming Biden administration could be thrown into sharp relief in response to an ICBM test-fire by the North, as one is charged (even in its dying days) with protecting the US, while the other is chomping at the bit to set a new course in two months time.
The wild card for Kim Jong-un is what happens as President-elect Biden appears set to enter the White House in January. There is no telling how he might react to a North Korean provocation early out of the starting gate. The Biden campaign sought to distance itself from the Obama administration’s policy of containment and even offered Kim an in person meeting. Alongside this he has also called the North Korean dictator a ‘thug’. Despite his campaign’s attempt to distance Biden from Obama’s containment policy, most observers are expecting a return to tighter policy coordination within the US and with its Pacific allies including South Korea and Japan — though little else. Containment and negotiation appear to be the hallmarks of the next US administration and its dealings with North Korea with one exception. Tighter policy coordination with allies South Korea and Japan are a given but tighter coordination with North Korea’s protector and ally China may be a direct outcome of a Biden presidency with China wanting to reset the US-China relationship.
There may be no better place for Beijing to do this than with a new US administration seeking to cooperate on restraining Pyongyang’s nastier side and natural inclination toward brinksmanship with it and its allies. A reset of the US-China relationship and new Chinese pressure on the Kim regime could be a greater challenge to the North than Trump’s early days attempt to put Kim Jong-un and his nuclear arsenal back in a box — only time will tell.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Joe Varner is a former Director of Policy to Canada's Minister of Defence and an Adjunct Scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute. Image Credit: Government of Russia