It was a tale, said Shakespeare 400 years ago, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
If the playwright were alive today, he might write something like that about the opening salvo of Washington and Seoul in a war of words with Pyongyang over the sinking of a South Korean warship and the loss of 46 lives.
The South Korean government last week published a report on that sinking for which investigators compiled seemingly compelling evidence that a North Korean submarine had torpedoed the corvette Cheonan, clearly an act of war.
The sinking was the latest in a series of provocations by the North since the end of the Korean War in 1953. In response, however, the US, South Korea, Japan and the UN have taken no decisive action to force the North to back off. The fear in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo has been that assertive deeds could spiral into full-blown hostilities.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Seoul would embark on “resolute countermeasures” to get Pyongyang to “admit its wrongdoing.”
Charles Pritchard, head of the Seoul-funded Korea Economic Institute in Washington, was quoted in the Washington Post saying Seoul could cut off trade with the North, close a North-South industrial park, or ask the UN Security Council to condemn the attack.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted in The New York Times: “It is important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions have consequences. We cannot allow this attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community.”
She was on a trip to Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul to seek united action against Pyongyang but said it would be “premature” to be specific now.
Almost simultaneously, the North said, in effect: “We didn’t do it but even if we did, war will break out if you retaliate.”
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said if Seoul opted for “counteraction,” the North would react with “merciless punishment” including a freeze on inter-Korean relations and abrogation of a non-aggression agreement.
“The puppet group [referring to Seoul] has created such a grave situation on the Korean Peninsula that a war may break out right now,” KCNA said.
The bluster conjured up earlier bullying in which Pyongyang threatened to destroy Seoul “in a sea of fire.”
Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and an authority on Korea, wrote in the Financial Times that, for US President Barack Obama’s administration, “the re-establishment of deterrence in Korea should be its top near-term priority in Asia.”
However, “after a strong start in its first year, the administration’s policies towards the region are drifting,” he said.
Like Cha, the majority of other observers in the US, South Korea and Japan, counseled against military action. None of the suggested actions, however, have deterred North Korea in the past. Here then is a different view:
The greatest fear is that the North could lob hundreds of artillery rounds into Seoul and its suburbs from guns deployed north of the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, destroying those tubes and their ammunition depots, many of which are underground, would seem to be a prime target.
A surprise attack from B-1 bombers dropping conventional bombs; warships and submarines launching precision guided cruise missiles from the seas east and west of the peninsula and South Korean and US artillery firing from south of the DMZ, coordinated to land explosives simultaneously, could trap their targets underground and shock the poorly-trained Korean People’s Army into standing down.
Risky? Admittedly, yes. However, doing nothing would be to risk another violent provocation in the unknown future.
Richard Halloran is a freelance writer in Hawaii.
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