Kim Jong Un Hits Pause Button on Threats Against South Korea
North Korea put the brakes on a pressure campaign it began earlier this month against neighboring South Korea, declaring a suspension of military plans directed against Seoul.
The statement came after a month of belligerent rhetoric and action by Pyongyang. The regime vowed to bolster its nuclear arms, announced it had put its troops on alert and dramatically blew up an inter-Korean liaison office located on its territory.
But a terse 168-word state-media report Wednesday said a national-security body overseen by leader Kim Jong Un “took stock of the prevailing situation and suspended the military action plans against the South” at a videoconference the previous day. It didn’t say why.
North Korea watchers said Mr. Kim pushed the pause button to demonstrate he could re-engage diplomatically—and to see whether South Korea or the U.S. might offer any concessions.
“Kim Jong Un is telling South Korea and the U.S. that, ‘Hey, we’re still open for business,’” said Paul Choi, the managing director of StratWays Group, a Seoul-based geopolitical-risk consulting firm.
Mr. Kim’s officials haven’t met their American or South Korean counterparts for formal talks since last year. Negotiations with the U.S. veered off track with a disastrous February 2019 summit in Vietnam that broke off after North Korea pushed for substantial easing of sanctions while the U.S. insisted on full denuclearization as a key condition.
Pyongyang would welcome any help lifting its economy, experts said. The country’s GDP, squeezed by global sanctions, has contracted in recent years, according to the most recent data from Seoul’s central bank—a situation now worsened by the coronavirus.
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced North Korea to close much of its border with China, its largest trade partner and economic lifeline. Economic deterioration appears to have hurt the living standards of even the country’s elite, according to Daniel Sneider, a lecturer at Stanford University, who has been briefed by a person who visited the North late last year.
North Korea has tried to win an easing of sanctions since denuclearization talks with the U.S. began in 2018. President Trump and Mr. Kim have met three times, but talks remain at an impasse.
This has likely persuaded North Korea that an economic reprieve from South Korean President Moon Jae-in would be easier to win than sanctions relief from the U.S., said Woo Jung-yeop, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, a South Korean think tank.
Stanford’s Mr. Sneider said North Korea this month has primarily sought to force South Korea to break ranks with the U.S.-led sanctions regime and open up a much-needed flow of resources to the North. Mr. Moon’s government has repeatedly told the North it would seek ways to economically engage without violating U.S. sanctions—at times irking Washington.
Mr. Kim’s decision this week to tamp down tensions also appears to have been motivated by signs that Pyongyang’s heated rhetoric was backfiring, experts said. It pushed Washington and its Seoul ally closer together, rather than splitting them apart—a longstanding North Korean foreign-policy goal.
“One motivation here that North Korea has is to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul,” retired four-star U.S. Army Gen. Vincent Brooks said at an online conference last week hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Gen. Brooks commanded the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea from 2016 through 2018.
Pentagon officials have mentioned resuscitating annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that President Trump scaled down after his first summit with Mr. Kim, in 2018 in Singapore.
Last week, David Helvey, the acting assistant secretary of defense on Indo-Pacific affairs, said North Korea’s recent actions showed it still “presents an extraordinary threat” to the U.S. and its allies. He didn’t rule out resuming large-scale military exercises with South Korea.
“I don’t want to get ahead of any future decisions that would be made, but this is one of the things that we are constantly talking to our South Korean allies about,” Mr. Helvey told reporters.
Seoul’s Defense Ministry said it is closely monitoring North Korea’s military movements. It declined to comment on Mr. Helvey’s remarks.
Photo: North Korean soldiers at a guard post along the South Korean border last week. - PHOTO: KIM DO-HOON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
