If there is one thing that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un doesn’t like, it’s being ignored. He now has the world’s attention again after the country fired eight missiles, including one over Japan, in a particularly aggressive spate.
Two missiles fired at the weekend reached an altitude of 100 km, covering a range of 350 km, Japan’s State Minister of Defence Toshiro Ino said in a statement. “These actions by North Korea are a threat to the peace and security of our country, region and the international community and it absolutely cannot be tolerated,” Ino told reporters.
They were in response to hastily organised military drills between the US, South Korea and Japan, which in turn were in response to the initial missile launches in late September. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s new conservative government, elected in March, is drawing further away from the North and towards the US. North Korea scorned his “audacious” proposal of step-by-step denuclearisation released in August.
North Korean state media KCNA said: “Our missile tests are a normal, planned self-defence measure to protect our country’s security and regional peace from direct US military threats.”
The tests are the latest sign of fracturing global stability, something that Kim Jong-un has been keen to leverage. It’s a large demonstration of military power by the dictator, in a year that has seen him fire more missiles than any other since succeeding his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011.
The tests come in the right season, as the storms of the East Asian summer dissipate and only weeks after Kim Jong-un declared the country’s commitment to nuclear weapons as “irreversible”.
“As long as nuclear weapons exist on Earth, and imperialism and the anti-North Korean manoeuvres of the US and its followers remain, our road to strengthening our nuclear force will never end,” he said.
The law also enshrined, for the first time, the country’s right to use a pre-emptive nuclear strike to protect itself.
The tests came soon after Kim Jong-un’s declaration of victory over COVID in August, which some observers saw as clearing the deck for a resumption of missile testing. The pandemic pushed North Korea into even further isolation as it sealed its borders entirely, dramatically lowering its missile testing during 2020 and 2021.
In many ways it’s a rapid return to the tensions of 2017 when North Korea conducted a nuclear test and launched 23 missiles throughout the year, including two over Japan and the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Kim Jong-un’s administration has typically proven adept at taking advantage of major global powers being preoccupied elsewhere. The US is focused on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, providing US$17 billion in arms to Kyiv and most recently sending the USS George HW Bush aircraft carrier group to Crete in the Mediterranean well within striking distance of Ukraine and Russia.
Russia’s bold attack on Ukraine would have reinforced Kim Jong-un’s reasoning that the only real deterrent against attack by other powers is nuclear weapons.
In the past few years, he also cosied up to the Trump administration. (Who can forget the bromance resulting in two summits that yielded little?) And now he is now taking advantage of the recent closer relationship between Beijing and Moscow.
In May, Russia and China vetoed a US-drafted UN resolution to strengthen sanctions on North Korea for its weapons testing, which was the first time either country had blocked a sanction vote against North Korea since 2006. This is a further sign that Beijing, in particular, is trying to pervert the existing world order and its norms.
Both those powers are distracted. Russia is preoccupied with Ukraine, and China is trying to take its own advantage of Russia’s distraction with Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Central Asia, ramping up efforts to increase China’s influence in the resource-rich and strategically important “stans”.
Beijing is also completely distracted with the imminent 20th Party Congress, the Communist Party’s quinquennial summit that sets its and the nation’s leadership for the next five years. It’s due to start October 16 and all signs point to Xi Jinping gaining a third term as secretary general.
If Kim Jong-un is to take this latest round to its logical conclusion and launch a nuclear test, he will likely wait until the dust has settled on the CCP summit.
The US has also deployed the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier into waters near South Korea as part of the military drills. So tensions will likely continue to simmer as the region holds its breath for another possible nuclear test in a world growing less safe every month.
