U.S. Sends Message of Kim Jong-Un

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright March 30 2013
All Rights Reserved.                                         

        Responding to North Korea’s 28-year-old leader Kim Jong-Un’s threats of nuclear war, the U.S. military flew B-2 Stealth Bombers over South Korea, signaling to the youngest son of the late Kim Jon-Il that the U.S. is prepared for any contingency, including war.  Kim recently rescinded the July 27, 1953 armistice, establishing the demilitarized zone along the 38th parallel, maintaining a shaky peace for the last 59 years.  When U.S. and South Korean forces began routine training exercises Feb. 25, Kim began threatening nuclear war.  While few take the pudgy diminutive North Korean leader seriously, the U.S. and South Korean can’t afford to completely ignore the endless blather out Pyongyang.  Kim referred to South Korea’s first female President Park Geun-hye as the “venomous swish of her skirt,” despite her promises to improve relations with Northern neighbor

              Since taking office on his fathers death Dec. `7, 2011, the West had high hopes with the often belligerent Kim Jong-Il’s son taking over.  It didn’t take long for the young Kim to thumb his nose at the international community detonating a small nuclear blast as recent as Feb. 12, 2013.  “The two B-2 Spirit bomber made a nonstop round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo,” reported the New York Times’s Choe Sung-Hun.  “It was the first time the U.S. military publicly confirmed a B-2 mission over the Korean Peninsula,” said Sung-Hun, confirming the flight path over South Korea’s West coast.  Threatening to wipe out Anderson Air Force base in Guam.  North Koreas state radio promised, “it would remove Anderson Air Force Base [on Guam] off Earth,” ratcheting up the rhetoric.  Kim also broke off all the military Hotline with South, insisting it was no longer needed.

Gearing up for war, North Korea once again ran footage of its Army goose-stepping, reminiscent of Hitler’s well-publicized 1933 Nuremberg rallies.  Kim claims he’s broken off all relations with South Korea to signal he’s in a state of war.  “The U.S. imperialist aggressors let their B-2 formation fly again in the sky above South Korea and announced an operation plan targeting the dignity of the DPRK supreme leadership,” read the official North Korean military communiqué.  North Korean has recently released digitally-manipulated photos highlighting an ominous hovercraft fleet ready to respond to any South Korean or U.S. military provocation.  When Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-Sung fought the U.S. and its allies to a standoff in 1953, the U.S. would practically do anything to end the three-year conflict, costing the U.S. 36,516 deaths only eight short years after the end of WWII.

Kim ‘s bluster doesn’t take into account that his grandfather’s great victory, fighting the U.S. and South Korea to loggerheads in 1953 came with aid of 1,350,000 Red Chinese troops, no longer backing the North Korean regime.  While there’s some lingering sympathies in Beijing, China voted March 7 with other members of the U.N. Security Council to implement tough new sanctions for Kim’s last illicit nuclear test.  Flying B-2 bombers over South Korean lets Kim know that he’s pushed things too far, especially threatening the U.S. and South Korea with nuclear war.  While there’s no way to know Kim’s next move, it’s conceivable he’ll recede into the background once U.S.-South Korean training exercises conclude.  Some North Korean experts like career Diplomat Christopher Hill believe that Kim’s belligerent rhetoric plays to a dicey domestic political audience.

Kim’s propaganda game involves justifying his country’s isolation and rampant poverty by blaming it on the United States.  “I think there’s a big element of domestic North Korean politics, if one can understand that concept, where clearly Kim Jong-Un is not being well received,” said Hill.  Painting the external threat posed by the U.S. and South Korea buys Kim time to justify the country’s poverty and widespread starvation.  What could be more Orwellian tham whipping the public into a lather over an expected U.S. or South Korean invasion?  Firing off missiles, Kim shows off his military chops, ready, willing and able to take on the American devil.  No matter how much Kim plays to a domestic audience, the U.S. and South Korea must be ready for a provocative action, like another torpedo attack on a South Korean patrol boat or shelling South Korea’s neighboring islands.

             Flying B-2 Stealth Bombers over neighboring South Korea, the Pentagon has fired a warning shot over North Korea.  Whatever North Korea boasts of a land army, superior U.S. air power would knock out Kim’s army very quickly if it came to repelling a North Korean ground invasion south of the 38th parallel.  “I think they are trying to kind of boost his status as some sort of war wartime leader,” said Hill, again showing that Kim plays to the North Korean street.  As Kim begins to read U.S. resolve, he’ll back down much like his father who was known to threaten the U.S. and South Korea whenever things deteriorated domestically.  With so many economic problems, Kim can no longer expect China to come to the rescue, either economically or militarily.  Gone are the days when the North Korean Stalinist state could count on Russia or its Red Chinese friends to bail it out..

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.