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As 1994 opens, the United States and North Korea are engaged in a dangerous mind game. Their moves and countermoves could produce disastrous consequences, as did those of August 1914’s Great Powers. And nuclear weapons are a factor in 1994.
Underlying North Korea's wedge-driving, salami-slicing, hard-line tactics is its hopeless dream of reuniting the Korean Peninsula by force. This delusion of grandeur, combined with a persecution complex that sees almost all the world beyond its sealed borders as hostile, spells paranoia. The great danger is a North Korean miscalculation.
Exploiting a gifted, yet cowed and starving populace half that of the South’s, and outbuilding the South in weaponry by two or three to one, North Korea’s single- minded dictator Kim II Sung has created and arrayed in attack formations on or near his southern border a mil- lion-man, largely mechanized, standing army that is about twice the size of the defensively deployed South’s and that has more than twice the South’s tanks and artillery.
These force ratios come from data in the Institute for Strategic Studies’ 1993-94 Strategic Balance. I believe that the balance is more unfavorable to the South, that the supplies to support the North’s full force for a month or more are stored forward and underground, and that North Korea has systematically built its force to fit an operation plan that it wants to believe can take or cut off Seoul in the first phase, then drive to the peninsula’s tip in exploitation.
North Korea’s general staff must have been pleased by the 12 December Washington Post headline, “Trepidation at Root of U.S. Korea Policy,” at U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak’s quote, “I just can’t answer whether we could stop them before they get to Seoul or not,” and at Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili saying much the same thing two days later.
Fifteen years ago such statements would have caused panic in the South. Just 25 miles from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Seoul is the Republic of Korea’s (ROK’s) cultural and political center; in and around Seoul is one- third of its population and industry. But today’s South is unconcerned—the nation is prosperous; its stock market rises; and, as the United Nations presses North Korea on its nuclear weapons program, the South Koreans wonder what all the talk of war is about.
But Kim II Sung has built a force for attack and may see his window of opportunity closing. Behaving irrationally, whether “provoked” or mentally disturbed, he may read the McPeak-Shalikashvili assessment as supporting a decision to attack.
Proceedings / February
In 1976-78 I commanded, under Generals Richard Stilwell and John Vessey in turn, the ROK/U.S. force responsible for defending the western half of the DMZ. Our two nations were making real a new “forward defense
strategy” that said we would not evacuate Seoul—as w twice done in 1950-51—but would defend it.
A grave concern was that North Korea might attack successfully seize or surround Seoul, then call for neg" tiations, judging that Americans do not like long wars.
We wanted North Korea’s military to believe each day that the odds for that scheme’s success were so small and the risk so high that it would not try. Senior conv manders in public words told the North that an attack would be foolhardy and told the South that Seoul would be held. Adopting measures to ensure that we would nd be surprised, we bent all efforts so that if war came we would do what we said. U.S. officers now openly douM that capability.
This mind game calls for the United States to say to the North, “Don’t even think about attacking. If you do, vve.l will keep you out of Seoul, and your nation will be destroyed.” It means putting in place the additional means, which will be mostly air power, that will assure just that, explaining each step so that paranoia does not lead the North to conclude that it is about to be attacked.
The United States objectives in Korea should be:
► That there be no war
► That North Korea not be allowed to intimidate
► That North Korea abandon its idea of reuniting the Korean Peninsula by force, walk itself back from the nuclear brink, reconcile itself with the South, join the world community as a full partner, and eventually end its nuclear weapons program
The course of action just laid out, with its accompanying mind play, will do much to achieve the first two objectives and the first element of the third. Then comes the action and mind play to accomplish all objectives in full. Each action must be believably explained to the North.
On 11 July 1993, standing on the DMZ, President Bill Clinton told Kim II Sung that if he chose nuclear warfare it would mean the end of his country. If Kim truly believes the President, North Korea will never use the nuclear weapon; but the President can not let Kim II Sung have any doubts. Once convinced, Kim II Sung may end his nuclear weapons program as having served him usefully, yet pointless now and no longer worth its cost.
Wide-ranging talks between the United States and North Korea must continue, as must the effort of the United Nations to inspect North Korea’s nuclear sites and offers to North Korea of economic and political incentives to change its ways. Ending the annual ROK/U.S. Team Spirit military exercises can be part of the deal. The North’s leaders have sealed off their nation to maintain their control, but no measure to open that land, i,s people, and its leaders to the outside world should be ignored. China, Japan, and South Korea are key parties in the equation.
The mind game in Korea is now on. We must do it right-
In 1976-78 General Cushman commanded I Corps (ROK/U.S.) Group defending the Western Sector of the DMZ and the approaches to Seoul.
1904