This week’s killing and subsequent immolation of a South Korean civilian by North Korean soldiers has sparked outrage. But the incident also serves as a reminder that Pyongyang is incapable of being trusted with nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The 47-year-old civilian was reported missing on Monday after his fishing vessel was operating in the Yellow Sea near the North Korean maritime border, according to South Korean officials. Media reports suggest that Seoul believes the civilian wanted to defect. It is presumed that he jumped into the water with a life jacket, hoping to be picked up by a North Korean patrol. Unfortunately for the man, when he was discovered by a patrol boat, the soldiers donned gas masks and interrogated him as he floated in the water. Learning from intercepted North Korean military communications, South Korea says that the man is believed to have then been shot dead on higher orders and his body set on fire. The execution was apparently carried out in furtherance of Kim Jong Un’s strict quarantine orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Whatever the human tragedy here, the real takeaway is what this incident tells us about North Korea’s military functioning. I would suggest that it tells us two things: The North Korean military command and control chain is prone to erratic, impulse-driven decisions, and the natural impulse is aggression. Hence why North Korea cannot be allowed to possess both nuclear weapons and the ballistic-missile means to fire those weapons at the United States.
The civilian in question posed no threat to Kim’s regime. Yes, the coronavirus concern takes on added exigency in North Korea in light of the weak immune systems that define that undernourished population. Still, the North Koreans could easily have kept their gas masks on and then contained the civilian ashore. That they instead sought orders as to what to do and were apparently quite quickly told to kill the man and set him aflame is striking. It suggests that the command chain, for what would obviously be a national-level political concern, did not reach senior ranks. What seems most likely is that the unit commanding officer ashore or area commander for the unit the patrol boat is assigned to ordered the execution. He presumably did not order the prisoner detained in fear that doing so would breach Kim’s directive against quarantine breaches. While South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s appeasement-obsessed government is playing down the incident, what if it had reacted with fury?
Consider another hypothetical situation in light of these events. Let’s assume we’re 15 months in the future. North Korea has conducted new intercontinental ballistic missile and satellite reentry tests, which show that it has established a baseline nuclear strike competency against the U.S. Tensions between the U.S. and North Korea are now at a fever pitch. In this context, a North Korean ballistic missile commander hears a rumor that the U.S. has launched strikes across the demilitarized zone. He then receives a garbled communication order. He has previously been told by Workers’ Party propagandists that the moment the U.S. launches an attack on North Korea will be the moment he is ordered to destroy it. The situation is confused, and his communications aren’t working. The commander decides to launch his missile against the U.S. without explicit command approval. What follows? Perhaps the missile is shot down by U.S. forces, and nuclear war is averted. Perhaps not.
Near reflexively killing a man as he floated harmlessly, North Korea has shown it cannot be allowed to possess both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them against America.
