SINGAPORE: The US advance on Baghdad is gathering speed and that is bad news not only for Saddam Hussein but for Kim Jong Il. The North Korean leader fears his country will be next and has kept unusually quiet, even by his secretive standards, since the war began.
The slowdown in North Korean rhetoric blaming the threat of US attack for Pyongyang’s emphasis on the need for a nuclear deterrent underscores the nervousness of the communist government as it watches US troops roll across Iraq, analysts said.
“Iraq is nothing compared to North Korea. This is the crisis,” said Brad Glosserman, director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Hawaii-based think tank.
“This is genuinely an issue and I am unconvinced that North Korea can be dissuaded from its nuclear ambitions.”
The pace of US progress in Iraq could be crucial to what North Korea does next to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
LIVING WITH PARANOIA: “The sooner the Iraqis fold, the faster the North Koreans will move to do something,” said Glosserman.
If North Korea is indeed worried, the clearest way to see that is through its media — its voice to the world.
That voice has been rather quiet, its anti-US bombast unusually restrained since the war began, said Andrei Lankov, North Korea expert at the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University.
“I think they have decided not to attract attention to this war because if the Americans are going to win very fast this will destabilise their own domestic standing,” said Lankov, noting a move away from the usual North Korean behaviour pattern of an outburst of bombast as a prelude to talks.
The Rodong Sinmun newspaper stitched together some of North Korea’s favourite epithets for the United States, describing it as the “kingpin of state-sponsored terrorism and evil and the chieftain of aggression” in a commentary on Thursday.
Tame stuff and nothing out of the ordinary, said analysts.
FROM IMPOSSIBLE TO IMPROBABLE: “I think it depends on Iraq,” said Lankov. “You can’t rule out that the Americans could carry out a military attack. A few months ago I would have said this was impossible, but now I would say it was improbable.
“The future for North Korea will be determined by the price of the US victory in Iraq,” said Lankov.
Most analysts say a US attack on North Korea, even a surgical strike on its nuclear plant at Yongbyon, is among the least likely scenarios.
But few see how to break the current stalemate.
Pyongyang insists on bilateral talks with the United States focusing on a non-aggression pact and Washington refuses to talk until the North dismantles its nuclear capabilities — and only in a multilateral forum that involves concerned regional players including South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
A new factor appeared in the mix on Wednesday when the UN Security Council agreed to meet next week for an initial round of closed-door discussions on the crisis.
The Security Council has the power to punish nations for violating international anti-proliferation treaties. For example, it could impose economic sanctions on Pyongyang.
North Korea has warned that it would view sanctions as a “declaration of war.”
Sanctions won’t emerge from the meeting, but it does bring the possibility a step closer. That’s a step that worries some analysts.—Reuters
