Researcher Zhao Tung’s column on the think tank Tsinghua-Carnegie Center’s website, “North Korea’s nuclear strategy and its impact on global security.” [칭화카네기센터 캡처]
A warning came out from Chinese academia that North Korea will attempt to unify the Korean Peninsula led by North Korea by improving its tactical nuclear capabilities along with strategic nuclear weapons.
Jiaotong Tsinghua-Carnegie Center Researcher’s North Party Congress Analysis
North Korea strengthens military pressure with its strategic and tactical dual nuclear capabilities
“The North Korean nuclear program is stronger than during the Hanoi talks… Will try to increase the price”
Korea-Japan nuclear armament against North Korean nuclear dominoes, intensifying nuclear competition with great powers
On the 20th, a researcher at the Tsinghua University-Carnegie Center, a Chinese minority scholar Zhao Tong, argued in a column titled “North Korea’s nuclear strategy revealed above the surface and its impact on global security.” Researcher Zhao’s column, which was also published on the British Financial Times (FT) Chinese site, analyzed in depth the changes and implications of the North Korean nuclear strategy contained in a political report by Kim Jong-un at the 8th Congress of the North Korean Labor Party that ended on the 12th.
Researcher at the Tsinghua-Carnegie Center, Jiaotong.
What Zhao noted in this column is Kim Jong-un’s remarks at the party conference, “The era when the great nations were trying to bargain for the interests of our nation and nation forever.” He said, “Considering that realization of inter-Korean reunification is a core’national interest’ and North Korea’s failure to realize its core interests through US intervention, North Korea will block US military interference with its strategy and tactical dual-nuclear capability, and military pressure on South Korea. “We will try to achieve national unification in the way North Korea hopes for the North and the South by increasing our capabilities.”
He also analyzed that North Korea has entered the stage of preparing for a nuclear preemptive strike. “In the course of the future localized conventional conflict, North Korea will preemptively use tactical nuclear weapons to reverse the inferiority of the battlefield or psychologically suppress the enemy (the United States and allies).”
The prospect of North Korea-US nuclear negotiations was also pessimistic. “With two years of development, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have become stronger than that of the 2019 Hanoi summit.” I will ask for it.”
It was evaluated that the strengthening of North Korea’s nuclear strategy would have a major impact on the international security order. Zhao was concerned that the strengthening of North Korea’s dual nuclear capability would eventually lead to nuclear armament of South Korea and Japan. Furthermore, North Korea’s nuclear flight trajectory is similar to that of China and Russia, leading to the strengthening of the US’s strategic missile defense system (MD). This means that the THAAD (high-altitude missile defense system) radar and intercept system will be strengthened. Eventually, he predicted that the domino effect of the North Korean nuclear weapons would lead to nuclear competition between the US, China, and Russia.
Zhao also interpreted Kim Jong-un’s mention of the development of a reconnaissance satellite as a sign that North Korea’s rocket launch was imminent. At the beginning of the US administration’s launch, Joe Biden could recreate a confrontation over rockets that could be converted into missiles.
Zhao compared North Korea’s nuclear development strategy to’slowly living a frog’. The frog here is the international community, not North Korea. This is an explanation that he has adequately exposed his will to denuclearize and avoided the psychological shock of the international community. “The reality of North Korea’s permanent nuclear possession has already become difficult to change,” concluded the column. “However, the international community is not fully aware of its long-term impact on regional security and international peace, and there is no proper preparation.”
Zhao Tung, a small-collector scholar who received a doctorate from Georgia Tech, does not see the possibility of US-China cooperation to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. At a ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of China’s involvement in the Korean War in October, researcher Zhao told FT, “China believes that cooperating with the United States on the North Korean issue does not help to promote US-China relations.”
Meanwhile, with the closing of the North Korean Labor Party Congress, party-to-party exchanges with China were imminent according to precedent. At the time of the 7th Congress of the North Korean Labor Party in 2016, Chairman Lee Soo-yong, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Party’s Central Committee, prevented Beijing President Xi Jinping after 22 days of closing. There is no news of a high-level North Korean visit to Beijing until the 21st, the 9th day of the 8th closing. Sources from North Korea and China said that the corona 19 has blocked both the roads and routes between Beijing and Pyongyang, and they are seeking a detour.
Beijing = correspondent Shin Kyungjin [email protected]