Hamas' Assault on Israel Highlights Risks of North Korean Assault on Republic of Korea
Defense Minister Shin calls for heightened surveillance, scrapping of Moon-era agreement with North Korea. But the comparison between Hamas and the Kim regime only goes so far.
The attack by Hamas and Hamas-aligned terrorist groups on Israel has caused the Korean government to express heightened vigilance of the risk of an attack by North Korea.
South Korea also lives next to an authoritarian terrorist state. Like Hamas, North Korea has engaged in a policy of abducting civilians and using prisoners as hostages. Although North Korea’s mass abductions of Japanese and Korean citizens mostly took place in the 1970s, there are still about 17 Japanese and some number of South Koreans reportedly held captive in North Korea. North Korea also kidnaps North Korean-born people, including those who escape and acquire citizenship in free countries.
Survey results published in the Choson Ilbo today show that approximately 60% of South Koreans believe the North could “attack at any time” and 61.3% believe the DPRK has “hostile intent.” That number is the highest in the survey’s ten-year history. The share of Koreans who support “unification” is down.
The Yoon Seok-youl administration's security officials have cited Hamas's assault on Israel as a reason to take new surveillance measures against North Korea. Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said that the Pyongyang Declaration the South and North agreed to on September 19, 2018, during the Moon Jae-in administration, must be scrapped. The agreement created a no-fly zone that limits aerial surveillance. Minister Shin suggested that the invasion of Israel by Hamas may have been made possible by failures of surveillance.
In some sense, that reflects the Yoon administration's preexisting agenda. Yoon and his advisors were already skeptical of the Moon administration's policies and had worked to change many of them.
Another concern includes that North Korea could take advantage of possible strain on U.S. military resources if more ships and assets are sent into the Mediterranean Sea and the vicinity. Korea must also balance its relationships with multiple countries with varying stances, including Arab countries like the UAE, with whom South Korea exports nuclear energy technology.
South Korea has already been pushed by events to take stronger lines against Russian imperialist violence and (to a lesser degree) China's increasing influence. They already fear Russia providing weapons to North Korea. Now speculation flies about what amount of support Iran might have provided Hamas and what responsibility by extension Russia might shoulder. Taiwan is also on the radar. The events that follow may push "middle powers"1/"pivotal states" further into one corner or another.
The comparisons between Hamas and North Korea should not be taken too far, however. The DPRK is a strong state entity that is more likely to act like other "rational" states and seek self-preservation. Compared with Hamas, it has engaged in far fewer and more isolated attacks on South Korean assets than Hamas, with its hundreds and thousands of annual rocket attacks, has set on Israel. The point is to highlight Hamas' brutality, not to downplay North Korea's. The Korean peninsula also does not have an ethnic and historical conflict embedded within the argument over sovereignty. Kim Jong-un is concerned with his own survival and that of his regime. For these and other reasons, North Korea would be less likely than Hamas and Gaza to start a war with its adversaries.
No matter how arguably misleading the “middle power” label is. (Jeffrey Robertson/Diplomatic Seoul: “South Korea and the study of middle powers.”)