- Tensions are high between North and South Korea, and it could erupt into a crisis sooner than later.
- North Korea is expected to provoke conflict before the 2024 US election in November.
- It could drag the US into a clash on the peninsula, an expert says.
Tensions are flaring between North Korea and South Korea, and it could lead to conflict sooner rather than later.
While there's no indication full-scale war is coming, a provocation from North Korea — heightened in a South Korean and US election year — could prompt retaliation from South Korea's hawkish president, an expert says.
"The real nature of any forthcoming North Korean crisis is difficult to predict," Sue Mi Terry, senior fellow for Korea studies with the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs last week. "Nonlethal provocations," like cyberattacks against government and defense institutions, should be expected at the minimum.
But on the other end of the spectrum, North Korea could conduct more testing for its Hwasong-18 solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile or even a tactical nuclear weapons test, or even go beyond "saber-rattling," as Terry described, launching "an actual, if limited, military attack against South Korea," not unlike incidents in 2010 when North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong and sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 crew members.
North Korea has many reasons to provoke. It could be to seize international attention and fear for negotiating leverage or to drive a wedge in the US-South Korea alliance; some provocations seem to be in defiance to US-South Korean military exercises, for example.
If such a clash between North Korea and South Korea occurred, it could quickly spiral into wider conflict. South Korea's current president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has taken a tougher stance on North Korea since his election two years ago, strengthening ties with the US and Japan much to Pyongyang's disapproval.
Yoon is, as Terry wrote, "an avowed hawk and has promised to respond forcefully to any North Korean attack." What that looks like remains unclear, but it sets the stage for growing pressure.
A notable shift came earlier this year, when North Korea declared South Korea "our principal enemy" and threatened to "thoroughly annihilate" it along with the US if provoked. While these may just seem like fighting words, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un conducted a major shift in the background, removing any goal of unification between the two Koreas from the government's policies.
This included the very public demolition of the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, built by Kim's father Kim Jong-il as a symbol of peaceful Korean reunification. Government offices, documents, websites, and plans for reunification also went dark. The move was alarming and likely partially influenced by the Yoon administration's harder stance against North Korea than South Korea's previous president, Moon Jae-in.
Those larger issues are at play during an especially fraught time: a major election year for the US. South Korea also held legislative elections in April, which saw Yoon's party lose seats after his domestic policies have often faced strong opposition.
On the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Capital Cable episode focusing on the future of North Korean policy, Terry talked about a potential provocation coming before the 2024 US election, referencing CSIS research from earlier this year that found that North Korea stages more than four times as many weapons tests in US election years than other years.
Commentary on the analysis by Victor Cha, the senior vice president for Asia and the Korea chair at CSIS, and Andy Lim, an associate fellow with the CSIS Korea chair, noted that "North Korea exhibits a tendency to ramp up provocations during U.S. election years. While diplomacy could stave off some of the violence, Kim Jong-un has rejected all calls from the Biden administration to meet. Instead, the regime has more than doubled the number of tests since 2021, compared to under the previous U.S. administration."
This election, shaping up for a rematch between current president Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, could be notable for North Korea, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing Kim is thinking about.
Times are quite different from four years ago. Since talks at Hanoi with Trump failed in 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic further isolated the so-called Hermit Kingdom, Kim has taken a large step back from engagement with the US, instead turning towards the country's "more traditional" allies, Russia and China.
Allison Hooker, a former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council, said on CSIS' "The Capital Cable" show that there's a lot happening on the global stage for North Korea to exploit for its own gain, from the war in Ukraine, which North Korea has contributed weapons to Russia for, to China and Taiwan.
And there's a lot going on at home, too, from goals in missile and weapons tests to North Korea's nuclear program. Kim is hard at work in those areas, and Hooker noted Kim could be looking to reengage in foreign policy with the US and South Korea down the road.
"The point is to reengage from a position of great strength," she said.