The Last Days of Kim Jong-il: The North Korean Threat in a Changing Era

3 The Sinking of the Cheonan and the Shelling of Yeonpyeong Island: A Case Study of North Korea’s Asymmetric Northern Limit Line Strategy

57 n March 26, 2010, a North Korean mini sub snuck across the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto sea border on the west coast that separates the two Koreas, and launched what an investigation has now determined was a CHT-02D, indigenously produced, wake-homing torpedo at the ROK Navy ship Cheonan. The torpedo produced a bubble effect, causing an explosion that split the ship in half. Forty-six naval personnel (out of a crew of 104) perished in the attack.1 At the time of the attack, the Cheonan was sailing in waters south of the NLL that even North Korea recognizes as being within South Korean sovereignty (see figure 6). 3 THE SINKING OF THE CHEONAN AND THE SHELLING OF YEONPYEONG ISLAND A Case Study of North Korea’s Asymmetric Northern Limit Line Strategy O FIGURE 6: LOCATION OF CHEONAN SINKING Sources: Republic of Korea Ministry of National Defense, and Stars and Stripes. This chapter will examine the implications behind the North Korean sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan and the artillery attack that also took place within the confines of the NLL several months later. In order to do so, I will first analyze events that occurred prior to the March 26 incident . I will also explore the likely planning process and the leadership and organizational changes that happened before the incident and probably affected the way it was conducted. I will then examine (in chronological order as much as possible) the events that ensued immediately following the sinking of the South Korean corvette. Of course, I will also consider dissenting views on the evidence regarding the sinking of the Cheonan (though the evidence is overwhelming), keeping an eye on the responses of other responsible analysts as their views arose in the press and at some levels in academia. Then I will discuss the actions of South Korea and its allies as the investigation’s final results came to light and all of the information’s implications for the future. Finally, I will address the North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island on November 23, 2010, and the actions that the South Koreans (and, to a lesser extent, their American allies) took as a result of the attack. Before I begin my analysis, I must point out that the sinking of theCheonan was a provocation. While this detail might seem minor, it is relevant. As I have written in previous publications, most of North Korea’s provocations “have had four things in common: 1) they are intentionally initiated at moments when they have the likelihood of garnering the greatest attention on the regional and perhaps even the world stage; 2) they initially appear to be incidents that are relatively small, easily contained, and quickly “resolved;” 3) they involve continuously changing tactics and techniques; and 4) North Korea denies responsibility for the event.”2 Certainly these factors were present for the sinking of the Cheonan. But before going into exact details of the incident (and of the artillery attack on November 23, 2010), I believe it is important to first examine the context of the events leading up to March 26, 2010. Events Leading to the Cheonan Incident: Rhetoric and Brinkmanship North Korea has truly made the NLL a high-priority issue—and one that often involves violent acts of provocation—since 1999, when a short naval 58 The Last Days of Kim Jong-il battle resulted in the sinking of a North Korean ship.3 In 2002, North Korea was able to “exact revenge,” when in an act of cunning and wellplanned violence, one of its ships sank a South Korean patrol craft that was sailing south of the NLL and engaged in non-provocative behavior.4 The incident in 2002 raised alarm in South Korea and caused its allies, such as the United States, to speak out against the action, but it did not end North Korea’s provocative acts in the NLL. (See figure 7 for a map of the North Korean maneuvers during the 2002 provocation.) Other tensions in and around the NLL arose after the 2002 incident and leading up to the sinking of the Cheonan, but the latest spate of North Korea’s brinkmanship and building tension in the NLL began in January 2009. At that time a member of the North Korean military was displayed on Pyongyang’s state-run television “demanding” that South Korea...