Escalating tensions

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Wed, December 6, 2023 | 00:21

Editorial

Escalating tensions

Posted : 2023-03-28 16:05

Updated : 2023-03-28 16:05

More efforts needed to stop nuclear game of chicken

Every year, two things show spring has come to the Korean Peninsula ― flowers and war games.

This year, two things are different from the past. First, the military drills imagine not a conventional but a nuclear war. Second, North Korea is hitting back during the joint South Korea-U.S. exercises and not after them as it did in previous years.

However, the North's nuclear threat appears not limited to spring or the recent military exercise. Pyongyang has conducted 11 missile tests so far this year, including seven in less than one month.

It is also experimenting with new types of vehicles and detonations.

Last Friday, the isolated regime said it had used an underwater drone to practice infiltrating enemy waters and "making a super-scale radioactive tsunami." Two days before, it announced the test launches of four cruise missiles with simulated nuclear warheads and detonated them 600 meters aboveground to "maximize killing power," as the U.S. did in Hiroshima in 1945.

On Monday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, hours before a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier staged joint drills in waters south of Jeju Island. The USS Nimitz has a flight deck three times the size of a soccer field and is as tall as a 23-story building. It carries about 6,000 crew members and 90 aircraft, including strategic nuclear bombers, equal to the entire air force of many countries.

Both Washington and Pyongyang say their maneuvers are for defense. However, North Korea has made clear that its nuclear capacity is also for attacks, including preemptive ones, at any sign of enemy strikes. The joint U.S.-South Korean exercises also include massive landing drills and "beheading operations" of the enemy leadership, as the best defense is a good offense. History shows many all-out wars began by mistakes amid escalating tensions with no exits.

In the worst-case scenario, this divided peninsula could become the first theater of a nuclear war that spreads around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would deploy strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus. However, it is to keep the West from helping Ukraine further, rather than to use them against the latter. China threatens to invade Taiwan, but Beijing won't have to use nuclear weapons against the tiny island. The likeliest user is North Korea if it thinks it has no other choice but to kill or be killed. It is unrealistic to expect Pyongyang to remain reasonable until the end.

Another proxy war may occur on this peninsula unless both Koreas stop acting like fronts in the U.S.-China hegemonic competition and their extended rival blocs, including Russia and Japan. North Korea resorted to 95 missile provocations last year, a record high, mainly since the hardline Yoon Suk Yeol administration took office in May. It has long become meaningless to question which comes first, the chicken or the egg. At stake is how to terminate the nuclear game of chicken. However, no countries or political groups will come forward to untangle complicated threads.

It would be good if Washington stopped squeezing China further, Beijing acted to suit global ― or Western ― standards, Pyongyang minded more about its starving people and Seoul stayed clear-headed. The world suffers from triple crises ― security, economy and climate. Military conflicts and arms buildups hurt peace, make people poorer and destroy the Earth.

Only 70 years have passed since the first proxy war on this peninsula killed nearly 3 million Koreans, including civilians, almost 15 percent of the population of both Koreas. If a second one breaks out, the toll will be tremendous, and the destruction will be irrecoverable. There must be no room for this possibility, no matter how small it might be.

Suppose President Yoon proposes suspending or even reducing joint exercises and freezing defense spending. In that case, he will become a historic leader in South Korea and worldwide. Sadly, such chances appear slim.

Civil society, here and overseas, must rise to call for peace and stage anti-war and Earth-saving campaigns.