North Korea, explained.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has since apologised and pledged not to declare martial law a second time (South Korean Presidential Office via Getty Images)
Pyongyang has made plain that its attention is firmly elsewhere.
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Explaining North Korea’s silence amid South Korea’s political turmoilExplaining North Korea’s silence amid South Korea’s political turmoil
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol survived an impeachment vote on Sunday by a thin margin. The Democratic Party-led opposition hold 192 seats in the 300-seat national assembly, so needed another eight votes to meet the required two-third majority for the impeachment. Only 195 lawmakers cast ballots, while 105 lawmakers from Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted the vote. So long as Yoon remains in charge, the opposition vows to continue seeking to impeach him.
Details emerging about Yoon’s failed “self-coup” last Tuesday reveal the President’s effort to justify martial law by provoking North Korea. The former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who quit in the wake of the martial law order, had wanted to attack North Korea a week before for sending another balloon carrying rubbish across the border, but was rebuffed by the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Kim Myung-soo. A few hours before the martial law was declared, South Korean special force units were reportedly put on alert over a situation regarding North Korea and Yoon later justified his martial law by warning about “threats of North Korean communist forces” and “pro-North Korean anti-state forces”.
Yoon has since apologised and pledged not to declare martial law a second time. Such a scenario appears unlikely regardless, since the military has expressed its intention to disobey him if he tries.
But the silence from North Korea during this turmoil is just as notable. When Park Geun-hye was mired in a political scandal during her presidency and later impeached in 2016, North Korea quickly capitalised on the occasion in an effort to paint South Korea as politically unstable and corrupt. Although Pyongyang detests Yoon for his hardline stance, it no longer considers South Korea a major focus, due to the renewed alliances with Russia and China. This stands in contrast to its total isolation during Park’s era.
Moreover, North Korea shifting its focus to the war in Ukraine gives it an incentive it to maintain peace on the peninsula, and this pattern has been clear since the start of 2024.
The days of Pyongyang perceiving that the South’s political crises is a harbinger of a communist revolution in need of the North’s military intervention are over.
First came North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un’s decision to reject unification with South Korea in January, overturning a 70-year policy. North Korea subsequently sealed off the demilitarised zone by destroying roads, cutting power lines, and constructing border walls from the sole zone of cooperation in Kaesong. Pyongyang did not retaliate against South Korean leaflets with force as it had done so previously, but instead with its own balloon and loudspeakers to minimise escalation. Pyongyang rejecting unification is to communicate to Seoul that it has no intention to use force against it, and there are no indications of an impending North Korean invasion during South Korea’s ongoing political crisis.
The view from Dora Observatory, and the city of Kaesong lies in the distance, with the Kaesong Industrial Complex in sight (Khang Vu)
Pyongyang does not want to give South Korea any pretext to escalate tension on the peninsula. As North Korea began to dispatch troops to Europe, it did not publicise its troop participation in the war against Ukraine and instructed officials to maintain secrecy with respect to casualties to maintain domestic stability and minimise the international backlash. Even though North Korean munitions factories are operating at maximum capacity, Pyongyang has sold surplus to Russia in exchange for food and other necessities, which is not suggestive of preparing for a move south.
Experts mostly agree that there is little North Korean threat to justify Yoon’s martial law. If North Korea was keen to kickstart conflict, it would have used Yoon’s martial law speech as a pretext to do so.
North Korea has similarly remained silent about Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, despite Trump’s high-level summit diplomacy in his first time. Pyongyang appears to be reassessing its cost-benefit calculus. Yoon has survived impeachment, but his weakened position will hurt the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation that he helped foster during the Biden years. Such a development will only reinforce Pyongyang’s turn toward Russia and reduce its concern about escalation from the South.
International sanctions on North Korea have already been weakened, hence the benefits of talking to Washington and Seoul are reduced. North Korea will only make a turnaround if the United States and South Korea can outbid Russia’s payments for North Korean participation in the war against Ukraine.
North Korea’s emphasis on coexistence, not unification, means that it will take a hands-off approach to the South’s political crisis. Pyongyang can exploit it for domestic propaganda, but the days of Pyongyang perceiving that the South’s political crises is a harbinger of a communist revolution in need of the North’s military intervention are over.
About the author
Khang Vu
Khang Vu is a visiting scholar in the Political Science Department at Boston College.
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