Alex Jensen
02 October 2015•Update: 03 October 2015
By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
Unpredictable, authoritarian, reclusive -- the adjectives usually attached to Pyongyang’s leadership suggest that North Korea experts can at best fumble in the dark.
But for those who have studied the quasi-communist state long enough, its pattern of rotating provocations and platitudes is all too predictable -- and all indications suggest that the North is set to carry out a long-range rocket launch next month.
In fact, a failure to do so around the Workers’ Party’s 70th anniversary on Oct. 10 might even suggest a problem in Pyongyang, one leading analyst told Anadolu Agency this week.
“Were [leader] Kim Jong Un not to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) this October, it may be an indication of ‘change’ inside the regime: either Kim is willing to change his ways for the better or is in trouble,” said Lee Sung-yoon, professor of Korean Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Like the governments of South Korea, the United States and other interested parties, Lee does not entertain the possibility that a North Korean rocket would be intended for peaceful purposes as Pyongyang claims -- the launch of a satellite would conveniently exercise the same banned technology required for an ICBM to reach the U.S. mainland.
Another renowned expert told Anadolu Agency that such tests are essential for the North, which is in a decades-old state of uneasy truce with South Korea and by association Seoul’s longstanding military ally the U.S.
“The regime must launch missiles to obtain the technical data necessary to make improvements,” explained Gordon Chang, author of ‘Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World’.
But Chang also points out that Pyongyang likes to stage its provocations “when it thinks we will be surprised” for maximum impact.
Admittedly, that does not square with the North’s very public warning earlier this month that it plans to send satellites into orbit despite the stern disapproval of the United Nations.
The challenge of reining in North Korea is highlighted by the fact that even China, arguably Pyongyang’s most powerful ally, has apparently been unable to dissuade Kim Jong Un from pursuing the same belligerent course as his father Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011.
Many would argue that the younger Kim has created even more distance from the rest of the world, having so far shunned invitations to visit both China and Russia.
Whether the leader has firmly cemented his place in the family dynasty is still unclear following a purge of elites -- Kim might view a provocation as a show of strength, even without the surprise factor, as Chang claims that he “appears to be losing popular support.”
But if change does not come from within, how should the world respond to North Korea in the event of a U.N. resolution-breaking rocket launch or perhaps even a fourth ever nuclear test?
Professor Lee believes that both sanctions and propaganda warfare should be intensified – despite the latter leading to an exchange of fire at the tense inter-Korean border last month before a hasty North-South cooperation agreement.
"Hit the regime where it hurts: palace coffers and cult of personality; that is, overdependence on illicit streams of revenue and excesses in terms of repression and cult maintenance," he said.
"Washington should take the lead in strengthening and enforcing targeted financial sanctions and Seoul on cranking up the volume and revamping information transmission into the North."
If, as Lee asserts, the October 10 anniversary “calls for a punctuation mark,” it also presents an opportunity to force a major shift in Pyongyang’s foreign policy.
