After North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, the South Korean military announced a new plan that they dubbed KMPR: Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation, which was presented on September 9, 2016 to South Korean Parliament.
This “massive” plan will be implemented “as soon as the North shows the slightest hint of a nuclear attack”, after which “Pyongyang will be reduced to ashes and removed from the world map.” For this purpose, South Korea plans to use Hyunmoo-3 missiles with a top range of up to 1 thousand km and Taurus air-to-ground cruise missiles with a range of over 500 km. Expectations are that by the end of next year, all these missiles will be put on red alert.
The main target is killing the North Korean leader, irrespective of any ‘collateral damage’ that might be incurred in the process. Each Pyongyang district (especially in the area where the North Korean leadership is located) will be completely destroyed by means of ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells. The plan provides for the complete destruction of North Korean planes and trains. In the event that Kim Jong-un shall take cover in an underground bunker, the South Korean military intend to use GBU-28 ‘bunker busting’ bombs that are designed to destroy fortified facilities including bunkers, missile pits and warehouses, as well as JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) air-to-ground missiles. “Such a destructive strike will eliminate the entire leadership of the country, and the DPRK will cease to exist as a full-fledged state, even if it manages itself to make a nuclear strike,” said a military representative in an interview with South Korean media.
And if even this does not help, special forces would be sent to the North with the aim of eliminating North Korean military leadership, starting with Kim Jong-un. As stated, this is almost the 75th Ranger Reconnaissance Special operations Regiment of US Ground Forces, for destruction of the key enemy targets, for strategic reconnaissance, for search and rescue and landing operations. This is precisely why the future elimination of Kim Jong-un is reminiscent to its authors of the US operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden in Year 2011.
As other independent media reports, the United States did not stay on the sidelines of the matter. Washington and Seoul have already carried out extensive consultations and intend to develop a ‘unified retaliation plan’ against North Korea, where the South Korean KMPR plan would be joined with the US strategic bombers B-52, B-2, nuclear submarines to be quickly deployed in case of danger.
And all would be well with the pre-emptive strike plan, which is positioned as newly developed in response to the Pyongyang threat, if there weren’t a few ‘nice details.’
Firstly, with such statements, the State, which is a signatory to all the relevant conventions and is positioning itself as ‘a responsible member of the world community’, is announcing that a non-military object with a population of approximately 2.5 million inhabitants would deliberately be taken as a target to be completely destroyed. While this does not yet resemble the Holocaust, it can be considered to already be at the level of the Rwandan genocide. Despite the fact that earlier, the essence of the ‘Kill Chain’ project on a retaliatory strike on North Korea’s missile-nuclear facilities was in taking pre-emptive strikes on missile positions and nuclear infrastructure, which would be quite enough for a ‘disarming attack’.
And by the way, the Russian Embassy is located in one of those districts that they promised to wipe off. And so is the Chinese Embassy. Has the South Korean military carefully considered the consequences of such a step?
Let us pay attention to the specific wording. While the northerners speak of ‘a pre-emptive strike in response to provocation’, meaning that there should already be a certain hot phase of the conflict; the southerners are planning a pre-emptive strike in case “the North shows any signs.” This significantly increases the possibility of an unpopular, but ‘war caused by a rabbit’, as the author frequently refers to such a situation, started because someone imagined something in an atmosphere of mutual demonization and overwrought nerves.
Secondly, speaking of the destruction of the North Korean leadership and wiping Pyongyang off the face of the Earth with a characteristic expression and the use of ‘hateful speech’, the South Korean military enforces a neutral author to ask whether such hysterical arms rattling is similar to North Korea’s statements about turning Seoul into a sea of flame. Or whether this fact indicates that the parties to the conflict are the two of a kind. No one prohibits sovereign states to behave like North Korea, but then, the attitude towards them is the same. And what’s more: if an anachronistic rhetoric by the DPRK is a tribute to tradition in many ways, then similar speech by the South Koreans sparks much more interest.
Thirdly, the author has not heard such statements from the South Korean military for at least five years. They differed only in details of the Blitzkrieg. The generation of the military that got big stars when the Conservatives were in power, which under Lee Myung-bak has found common grounds with veterans of the ‘Cold war’ being in charge for the inter-Korean policy, was absolutely sure that the suppressing technical superiority and sea and air supremacy would allow South Korea to win over the North, even without US support. I first heard the phrase “if politicians do not impede us, we will destroy North Korea as a state in 90 hours” in 2010 when a wave of widespread concern was voiced on the destruction of the corvette “Cheonan”.
The latter is rather important, because, since these plans were an open secret, the rush with the DPRK nuclear missile program was possibly connected with exactly this.
After all, if we compare both the North and the South’s military-technical potentials, the North falls behind the South in conventional weapons. If the South is to fight by bombing the northerners while minimizing the possibility of direct contact, Pyongyang would be facing quite a nasty war. However with a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead in hand, even if the probability of its use is extremely small, the enemy has to take it into account, and then the risk becomes unacceptable, even if it concerns a pre-emptive strike. This doctrine of a ‘guaranteed mutual destruction’ played a very important balancing role in the Cold War.
To sum up the results. It is all well and good that the plans that the South Koreans were for some time hiding in the closet are now being brought to public display. This at least explains Pyongyang’s fear and preparations, as well better determines the actual share of each of the parties in the Korean conflict.
Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. in History, Chief Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
