North and South Korea and Arms Sales

This photograph is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Attribution: Kremlin.ru

Referring to quite interesting article in the Washington Times of Monday Jauary 30, 2023 by scholar and author Andrew Salmon, I offer the following observations.

So this is why the DPRK government has been reacting noisily of late and trying to tell everybody it did not provide arms to the Russians. Though of all the things people complain about regarding the DPRK that has to be the least damning on everybody's "problem" list. I mean the DPRK was just selling the Russians back old weapons that the Russians had sold them a few years back and they PROB
ABLY are not intended for the front but to replace currently maintained weaponry the Russians have had to move out of the hinterland and into the front. Let's be realistic - even the NATO tanks aren't going to the front without a look over and some training.

Strange as it may seem, the DPRK may have been up on moves to get South Korea to contribute to the Ukrainian weapons and ammunition supply before they were public. The fact that DPRK has done the same thing for Russia (with or without payment and I honestly don't know on that score) puts them in a weak position to scream and throw a tantrum when South Korea, presuming it actually will do so, gears up its munitions production for reasons plausibly having nothing to do with North Korea.

This may put a kink in the lucrative if relatively modest (thanks Mr. Salmon) commerce Koreans and Russians were doing out of Busan but for all I know that might have been badly sidelined by Covid and the South's Alliance with the US in any case. If South Korea has a trade relationship that it might not want to scrap at US insistence my guess is that that would be China. Japan is in a similar boat.

I don't see how it CAN hurt DPRK - South Korean relations. The DPRK has been so parsimonious since Kim Jong Un has been in power (well at least post 2015 or so) with friendly gestures and policies there is little they can take away from the South at this point. That is sad to say, poor negotiating skills on their part.

Where are Kim Kye Gwan and Ri Yong Ho when they need them. One suspects they have shuffled off this mortal coil (one hopes naturally, peacefully and in their own beds). But the senior Kim has such a distrust of his relatives (of whom these were apparently proteges) that one suspects this is not "necessarily" the case.*

They have their nuclear weapons to be sure but with the most important Uranium mine caving in (more of a sign that they really do not know what they are doing in some respects - gung-ho only gets you so far and in mining it can get you killed without getting you any richer - and very probably down to low ore concentrations at this point) and being blocked from having lots of ready cash to throw around, how they are going to make tens and even hundreds of war heads at this stage is a head scratcher.

Oh, I know, I know, the mine is still supposed to be operational but these cave-ins are not isolated occurrences and they are occurring precisely because the DPRK is in too big of a hurry and is under too tight a set of financial constraints to do the job right and they are paying for it just as they did at Punggye ri testing site. (Or to put it in Tolkienesque terms "They delved to greedily and not deep enough.")

And who among the mine supervisors is going to go to Pyongyang and say "we need to shut the mine down, clean up some of the mess and for futher digging, which necessarily is going to be deeper and involve less effective ore concentrations - we need to make sure we a) mine at a sustainable pace and b) apply the necessary resources to secure stable cave-in free operation?" (Those cave-ins "might be in areas that the miners are through with" but we cannot from satellite pictures see the full extent of the damage - underground extent will almost always be significantly greater - AND given the trouble they were having at Punggye Ri it would be a reckless assumption to make that these are inconsequential without a lot more evidence.

My biggest worry (and heaven knows I am no expert) is that DPRK may have backed themselves into such a corner that they are beginning to panic a little. But they should not worry. If they pay attention to their intelligence they sould realize the South, whether it manufactures two or even three times the present level of munitions -for export- is not planning an invasion. Now however would one come to that conclusion? (Bear in mind that South Korea did not get into the G10 by making stupid economic policy choices) Again - Where are Kim Kye Gwan and Ri Yong Ho when they need them.

*Kim Kye Gwan was active until 2010. He last appeared apparently in 2018. He is still alive reportedly, 80 and presumably retired.

Ri Yong Ho, Kim Kye Gwan's deputy, was not so lucky apparently. Although apparently favored between 2016 and 2020, he was supposed to have been executed in 2022 - probably announced in KCNA of which he was formerly an editor.

Though both men diligently followed the DPRK party line while in office, they were well schooled in working in international situations, and relatively well regarded (so some press reports said) by western and East Asian counterparts who often do not know quite what to make of DPRK officials.

While I can understand a regime feeling cornered wanting to employ more "hard line" people, whatever that means in a DPRK context, in key positions to enhance the feeling of security, however, generally one does not go about executing those sent to the warm the bench unless they have REALLY done something bad (one never knows when they might come in handy) and one tries to make sure one has more than one ace in the hole if at all possible when the stakes are high, a concept one worries the present DPRK team may not grasp as firmly as heretofore.

I do not say that as a proponent or a critic of the DPRK but simply because when we, any of us, are cornered we all tend to react impulsively and not in our own best interests or that of others. It is simply human nature.