Like I suspected the ROK offered the North Koreans some significant financial rewards if they apologized for the landmine attack. basically what his comes down to is that two ROK soldiers had to have their legs blown off so the ROK could pay off the North Koreans to apologize. This is another example of why the North Koreans commit provocations, because they work:
A landmark inter-Korean deal to resolve heightened cross-border tensions could give fresh momentum to bilateral economic cooperation that has been stalled due to strained relations between the archrivals, analysts said Tuesday.
The agreement, reached early Tuesday after marathon negotiations, defused the military standoff triggered by a land-mine explosion that maimed two South Korean soldiers on Aug. 4, and an artillery exchange on Thursday.
Excluding the joint industrial complex in Kaesong North Korea, inter-Korean economic projects have been in limbo since South Korea imposed a blanket ban on economic cooperation and personnel exchanges in March 2010, in retaliation for the North’s sinking of a South Korean naval vessel near the western maritime border.
Observers said the overnight breakthrough could make it possible for the two sides to restart negotiations on suspended economic cooperation projects and possibly lifting the sanctions.
The latest deal does not mention lifting Seoul’s comprehensive sanctions although it calls for high-level talks to take place as soon as possible which can touch on broader outstanding issues.
North Korea watchers speculated that Pyongyang raised the issue of lifting sanctions and the resumption of tours to the Mount Kumgang resort on its southeast coast, which were halted in July 2008 when a South Korean female tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier.
Seoul demanded Pyongyang allow a renewed on-site probe into the death of the tourist and take measures to ensure the safety of its citizens. Pyongyang, however, claimed it had done everything it could, including a verbal promise by then leader Kim Jong-il to make sure no such tragedy would happen again. [Yonhap]
Not much really since the ROK is trying to balance showing action to their domestic audience and not broadcasting things that would upset the Kim regime to where it would make it very difficult for them to deescalate. The propaganda speakers are also a bargaining chip because the ROK right now is broadcasting little propaganda, but could threaten to broadcast more if things do not deescalate:
The loudspeakers that the military is using consist of 40 or so high-output 500 watt digital speakers that are around 4m by 3m in size. During the day, the broadcasts can be heard more than 10km away in the Kaesong Industrial Complex. At night, the sound carries as far as 24km. At the moment, the messages are broadcast intermittently. North Korea also began broadcasting propaganda into South Korea on Aug. 17. Since North Korea is using antiquated analogue loudspeakers, its broadcasts are reportedly hard to even understand in South Korea. The broadcasts that the South Korean military is sending into North Korea typically are not very political, focusing more on news in North and South Korea, world affairs, and the weather. One female defector from North Korea also takes part in the broadcasts, telling the story of how she defected and talking about her life in South Korea. But the fact that South Korea could use the broadcasts to criticize the North Korean regime if it so chose appears to be putting pressure on North Korea. [Hankyoreh]
I don’t see anything surprising about North Korea pushing out its forces. The Kim regime needs its population to feel that it is in a constant state of near war with the US and only the military genius of the Kim regime is keeping the “Imperialist Yankees” at bay. Plus it is just a good training exercise to keep his military busy:
More than 50 North Korean submarines are apparently away from their bases for operations, a sign that the North is gearing up for combat while participating in high-level talks aimed at easing tension, an official here said Sunday.
“Seventy percent of North Korea’s submarines left their bases, and their locations are not confirmed,” the South Korean military official told reporters.
The North is known to have around 70 submarines.
The unpredictable communist nation has also doubled the number of its artillery troops on the border, with the command to be combat ready, according to the official.
Top government officials from the two Koreas were supposed to resume their talks at the truce village of Panmunjom at 3 p.m. Sunday. It has not been confirmed yet whether they began the meeting as scheduled. [Yonhap]
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has dropped everything on her schedule to meet and encourage the ROK military in the wake of the recent exchange of fire on the DMZ with the North Koreans:
President Park Geun-hye, Defense Minister Han Min-koo (left) and National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin visit the headquarters of the Third Army in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Friday. Cheong Wa Dae
Following the exchange of fire, Kim presided over an emergency meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission, instructing frontline units to switch to a “wartime state” and fully arm themselves starting from 5 p.m. on Thursday, state media said.
The North last made the “quasi-state of war” declaration in November 2010 when it shelled a South Korean border island in the West Sea.
“Military commanders were urgently appointed and dispatched for operations to strike the enemy’s means of psychological warfare and quell possible counteraction if it did not stop the propaganda broadcasts,” the official Korean Central Television reported.
President Park Geun-hye urged the South Korean military to stay ready to react immediately to any further provocation and blasted Pyongyang for churning out security threats during her visit to a field army command in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.
The trip, which came after she shelved her scheduled tour to southern parts of the country, was designed to examine its readiness posture and encourage soldiers, Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Min Kyung-wook said. She was briefed by commanders there on their plans to respond to potential attacks and the current movements by the North Korean military.
Presiding over a video conference with operational commanders later in the day, Defense Minister Han Min-koo also called for airtight readiness and effective situation management, saying that after the deadline the North may stage a provocation “in any way.” [Korea Herald]
The ROK has no plans to give into North Korean demands which the Kim regime assuredly knew they would not. The demand is just being made to justify a future provocation. It appears the leading theory is that they will fire missiles into the Sea of Japan or a cyberattack of some kind in the near term. It will probably be both since it appears the North Koreans are already gearing up to fire missiles:
Separately, North Korea seems to be gearing up to fire missiles, an official said, a move that could be seen as a show of force against South Korea amid escalating tensions.
“The North is showing signs of shooting off a Scud missile near Wonsan and a Rodong missile in North Pyongan Province,” the official said, citing detection results of its joint radar system with the United States. [Yonhap]
Besides launching another DMZ provocation, a naval engagement in the Yellow Sea is always a possibility, but I don’t think they would try this now because the ROK military’s guard is way up right now. However, they could try and fire an anti-ship missile from their mainland somewhere into the Yellow Sea near at ROK vessel. I don’t think they would actually try and sink a ROK ship like they did the Cheonan because it would be too easy to pin the blame on them. Remember they have never admitted to sinking the Cheonan. They have fired these anti-ship missiles into the Sea of Japan before so firing them into the congested waters of the Yellow Sea would be a pretty good provocation. Another, but unlikely provocation is to detain someone at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. They have done this before and have set conditions to do it again, but I think at this point another provocation using Kaesong would probably lead to its closure which has been a cash cow for the Kim regime:
Meanwhile, South Korea said it has measures to ensure the safety of its nationals who are temporarily staying in the North.
It said it has put a partial ban on the entry of its nationals into an inter-Korean joint factory park in the North’s western border city of Kaesong.
The factory park, the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, is home to 120 small South Korean factories producing garments, shoes, watches and other labor-intensive goods. More than 54,000 North Koreans work in the complex. [Yonhap]
I think this is all leading to the bigger provocation coming up which is when they try and do their expected October space launch. The launch would once again violate United Nations sanctions and be a major media event where once again North Korea will be dominating the headlines. The bottom line is that I don’t expect to see North Korea out of the news anytime soon; what they plan to do to dominate the headlines is still open to debate.
What does everyone else think the Kim regime will try to do in the coming weeks?
As it turns out the North Koreans did not fire artillery at the loudspeaker on the ROK side of the DMZ and instead used an anti-aircraft weapon:
The two Koreas traded fire on Thursday after the North launched artillery shells apparently targeting propaganda loudspeakers installed across the border, threatening additional military action against the broadcasts and further heightening tension on the peninsula.
The North fired a 14.5-milimeter anti-aircraft gun once at around 3:53 p.m. at a town in Yeoncheon County, Gyeonggi Province, and then a 76.2-mm direct fire weapon “several times” at 4:15 p.m. within the Demilitarized Zone, military officials here said. Shortly after detection, the Army discharged a 155-milimeter self-propelled gun at 5:04 p.m.
The Army reported no damage. Casualties in the North were not immediately known.
Coincidentally with the exchange of fire, Pyongyang sent two separate letters to the South, calling for a withdrawal of the loudspeakers and threatening military action.
In the letter sent from the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army to South Korea’s Defense Ministry through a border telephone channel at around 4:50 p.m., Pyongyang warned that it would initiate “military action” unless Seoul stops the propaganda broadcasts within 48 hours from 5 p.m.
In a separate letter by Kim Yang-gon, director of the United Front Department in charge of cross-border affairs, to National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin, Pyongyang said the broadcasts constitute a “declaration of war” but it is willing to resolve the current situation and “open a way out for the improvement of the relationship.”
Seoul said it has no plan to dismantle the speakers at this point. (………….)
The North’s anti-aircraft gun ammunition appeared to have hit an uninhabited hill located several kilometers away from a loudspeaker set, an official at Seoul’s Defense Ministry said. Yet the North did not appear to have aimed at the equipment, he noted, without elaborating.
“We detected signs that the North Korean military staged two rounds of firearm provocation in the southern part of the Military Demarcation Line, and fired dozens of rounds of a 155-millimeter self-propelled gun as warning shots,” Joint Chief of Staff spokesman Col. Jeon Ha-kyu said at a news briefing. [Korea Herald]
judging by the quick reaction by the ROK forces they were likely ready for what was a pretty predictable action by the North Koreans to try and destroy one of the propaganda loudspeakers:
South Korea fired tens of artillery rounds towards North Korea on Thursday after the North fired a projectile towards a South Korean loudspeaker that had been blaring anti-Pyongyang broadcasts, the defense ministry in Seoul said.
North Korea did not immediately respond to the South’s shots, it said, as tensions rose on the peninsula.
South Korea said its detection equipment had spotted the trajectory of a suspected North Korean projectile launched at around 3:52 pm (0252 EDT), which did not appear to have damaged the loudspeaker or caused any injuries.
“Our military has stepped up monitoring and is closely watching North Korean military movements,” South Korea’s defense ministry said in a statement.
South Korea’s military raised its alert status to the highest level.
There was no mention of the firing in North Korean state media, which does not typically make immediate comment on events.
The suspected North Korean projectile landed in an area about 60 km (35 miles) north of Seoul in the western part of the border zone, the defense ministry said. South Korean residents in the area were ordered to evacuate, according to the South’s Yonhap news agency.
Yonhap reported that the projectile appeared to have landed in a mountainous area near a South Korean military base in the town of Yeoncheon. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but this will not be the last of the tit-for-tat along the DMZ as the North Koreans have threatened more military action if the propaganda speakers are not taken down in 48 hours. In preparation for more provocations civilians along the western DMZ are being evacuated.
Via the Stars and Stripes comes this YouTube video which shows when the two ROK Army soldiers were hit by the planted North Korean landmine:
Here is what experts in the article had to say about detecting such infiltrations:
A South Korean military official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said that while South Korean troops aggressively monitor the border with advanced surveillance equipment and their naked eyes, their ability to monitor some portions of the DMZ is limited.
North and South Korean troops man outposts along the Military Demarcation Line, often in forested areas.
“It’s very difficult to keep watch there for 24 hours a day, especially if it’s rainy or foggy,” said Kim Seongmin, a defector and former North Korean military officer who now heads Free North Korea Radio. “If North Korean troops want to violate the armistice agreement, they can do it there,” he said.
An Chanil, who was stationed at the DMZ as a platoon sergeant in the North Korean army, agreed.
“Nobody can see everywhere,” said An, who defected in 1979 and is now president of the World Institute for Korea Studies, a Seoul-based think tank.
He said ordinary North Korean soldiers would have difficulty crossing the demarcation line, though specially trained reconnaissance soldiers could do so with ease.
You can read more at the link, but this is why any North Korean soldiers caught violating the armistice should be shot on site. In the past warning shots were fired when they were caught crossing the DMZ. It is now time to start attriting their operatives who are specially trained for these missions. That will be a deterrent to continuing to launch such attacks.
Sounds like another news item that Park Sang-hak and his team should send across the DMZ for North Korean citizens to read about:
Two satellite images were compared to produce the analysis on Kim Jong Un’s Residence No. 15: the first from Jan. 14 and the second from May 20 show the progress on the roof and the garden. Photo by Yonhap
An extravagant mansion for former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that cost Pyongyang tens of millions of dollars to build in 2010 has been torn down, and new construction is underway, according to satellite images from May.
The No. 15 Official Residence where Kim Jong Un‘s mother, Ko Young Hee, once lived also is the childhood home of the current North Korean leader.
Curtis Melvin of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who used the satellite imagery in his analysis, told Radio Free Asia the roof on the north side of the building has been torn down and a landscaping project has begun in a garden section of the compound, South Korean newspaper Donga Ilbo reported.
Two satellite images were compared to produce the analysis: the first from Jan. 14 and the second from May 20 show the progress on the roof and the garden.
The residence cost tens of millions of dollars to build five years ago, and roads and railways for the former leader’s exclusive use also were built. Underground tunnels for electric trains are connected to office buildings in the compound. [UPI]
You can read more at the link, but you have to love the power that Google Earth provides average citizens to note things like this.
