SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea turned its anger on South Korea on
Friday, warning the South Koreans they could suffer “physical
countermeasures” for any enforcement of the tightened international
sanctions meant to stop its ballistic missile and
nuclear weapons activities.
Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
South Korean soldiers patrolled Friday in Paju near
the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, on a day when the North
threatened the South with “physical countermeasures.”
Pool photo by Lee Jin-man
Park Geun-hye, the incoming president of South Korea.
The North Korean warning came a day after it bluntly threatened the
United States, saying North Korea had no interest in talks on
denuclearizing itself and would forge ahead with its missile and weapons
development, with the goal of attaining the capability to hit American
territory. North Korea framed the warning, including a threat to stage a
third nuclear test, as a deterrent to what it called American hostility
and efforts to isolate the country.
While the tone of the message was not unexpected after the
United Nations Security Council’s
unanimous decision this week on North Korea sanctions, the threats
represent a new challenge to President Obama as he begins his second
term, and to the incoming conservative president of South Korea, Park
Geun-hye. She had signaled she would be more open to the North than the
current president, but since her election last month she has said she
will not tolerate the North’s
nuclear program and will deal sternly with what she has called North Korean provocations.
In a statement issued in the name of North Korea’s Committee for the
Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, which manages relations with
South Korea, the North gave no hint of what countermeasures were
envisioned against the South over enforcement of the sanctions.
Those two episodes were among the most serious in decades between the
two Koreas, dispelling Washington’s desire to engage North Korea in
serious negotiation. While calling for a vigorous enforcement of United
Nations sanctions, Glyn Davies, Washington’s special envoy on North
Korea, also appealed Thursday to the North’s new leader,
Kim Jong-un,
not to miss opportunities for a new beginning, stressing that
Washington could not improve ties with the North without progress in
inter-Korean relations.
North Korea’s outburst against South Korea on Friday was the latest
installment of a verbal barrage it started after the Security Council on
Tuesday
adopted a resolution
condemning a Dec. 12 rocket launching by the North. The resolution
called the launching a violation of earlier United Nations resolutions
banning it from testing ballistic missile technology, and called for
tightening sanctions against the country. Especially notable was that
China, the longtime North Korean protector and advocate, voted for the
resolution.
Referring to the South Koreans, North Korea said: “If the puppet group
of traitors takes a direct part in the U.N. ‘sanctions,’ the D.P.R.K.
will take strong physical countermeasures against it,” using the acronym
for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“ ‘Sanctions’ mean a war and a declaration of war against us.”
The United Nations resolution was the fifth against the North for its
rocket and nuclear programs since 1993. It calls for tightening existing
sanctions, including expanding a travel ban on North Korean officials
and broadening the means for United Nations member nations to intercept
and confiscate cargo headed for the North.
Ms. Park’s office said Friday that the president-elect would soon send a
high-level delegation to Washington for a policy consultation at which
North Korea was expected to be a focus of discussion.
The United Nations sanctions and the North’s angry reactions dissipated
early hopes that changes of leadership in the North, the South and in
the Obama administration would open the way for easing tensions. North
Korea, which has lived through American-led trade embargoes, considers
itself a small yet proud nation struggling to maintain its independence
in the face of an “imperialist” plot to erase it from the earth. It has
typically called any new round of American-inspired sanctions a
declaration of war.
For the United States, a new entanglement over North Korea could
distract from the American focus on pressuring Iran over its disputed
nuclear program, which the Iranians say is peaceful but which the West
suspects is meant to develop nuclear weapons capability. Talks aimed at
resolving that dispute are stalled.
Some strategic weapons policy analysts suggested that North Korea’s
defiant tone, and the relatively muted American response, had set an
example for Iran by demonstrating what can be achieved when an American
adversary is armed with nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders, like North
Korea’s Kim family, view America as a nuclear-armed bully that respects
only the threat of force.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies in Monterey, Calif., said he feared that North
Korea was now intent on demonstrating the ability to produce a far more
powerful nuclear weapon than the two relatively small nuclear devices it
had tested so far.
“If you think international politics is basically about power and that
power is basically about armaments, then having a small number of
fission devices is not good enough,” he said. “You want big nuclear
devices.” (American intelligence officials believe North Korea has
enough plutonium for roughly 6 to 10 weapons.)
Others dismissed the idea that Iran is taking any political cues from
North Korea. They noted that Iran remained a signatory to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and that Iranian leaders had repeatedly asserted
that they had no interest in nuclear weapons.
“They see North Korea is starving and isolated with no resources
whatsoever,” said Gary G. Sick, an American academic and Iran expert who
served on the National Security Council under the Ford, Carter and
Reagan administrations. He called the connectivity on the nuclear issue
between Iran and North Korea “a Western argument — I’ve never seen
anybody in Iran make that argument.”
