On the morning of May 25, 2007, North Korea fired a short-range anti-ship cruise missile into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) from a sea-side military base in South Hamgyŏng Province, on the northern part of North Korea’s east coast, near the city of Tanch’ŏn. [1]

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the missile was either a Chinese-made CSSC-3 “Seersucker” or a KN-01, which is a North Korean enhanced version of the Seersucker with a potential range of up to 200 kilometers (km). [2] However, the South Korean press has reported that the missile was indeed a KN-01. [3] The KN-01 has been under development since the early 1990s and was first flight-tested in 1994. [4]

The missile test was conducted about five or six hours before South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, Defense Minister Kim Chang-su, and other dignitaries attended a launching ceremony for South Korea’s first Aegis destroyer. The 7,600-ton class King Sejong will be deployed in the latter half of 2008, and is the first of three Aegis destroyers Seoul plans to deploy by 2012 under the KDX-III Korean destroyer development program. The King Sejong will be able to track about 900 airborne targets simultaneously from a distance of 1,000 km, and will be able to fire at 122 targets per minute, including ballistic missiles, cruise missles, aircraft, ships, and submarines. The ship is also expected to be armed with 32 Ch’ŏnnyong [Sky Dragon] land-attack cruise missiles currently under development by South Korea’s Agency for Defense Development (ADD). [5] The Ch’ŏnnyong is estimated to have a range of 500 km and a CEP (circular error probable) of 10 meters, meaning that the missile will have a 50 percent probability of striking within 10 meters of its intended target. [6]

The South Korean press harshly criticized the Roh government for failing to inform the public about the North Korean cruise missile test until 7 p.m. local time, an hour and a half after the Japanese media reported it. [7] However, during the ceremony for the unveiling of the King Sejong, President Roh said the ship was one of the world’s best destroyers and that South Korea needed the advanced capabilities because Seoul “can not stand by doing nothing while an arms race continues in Northeast Asia.” [8] During his remarks, Roh only mentioned North Korea as a potential threat, but many analysts believe South Korea’s military build-up is also a response to growing military capabilities in China and Japan.

Second Round of North Korean Cruise Missile Launches
North Korea flight-tested two more anti-ship cruise missiles on June 7 – one in the morning and one in the afternoon – into the Yellow Sea (West Sea). According to the South Korean press, the missiles were believed to have been launched from a military base on the west coast in Chŭngsan-kun, South P’yŏng’an Province. [9] The missiles were launched during a coastal defense exercise held June 6-15, and one day before inter-Korean military talks at Panmunjŏm. [10] The talks broke down without agreement after the Korean People’s Army (KPA) delegation from the North repeated its demand to renegotiate the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea – the de facto sea boundary between the two Koreas. The NLL was drawn unilaterally by United Nations Command at the end of the Korean War and Pyongyang refuses to recognize it. [11] The area was the site of two naval clashes in 1999 and 2002, and there have been frequent skirmishes in recent years.

North Korea’s cruise missile tests were conducted in the wake of several warnings issued by Pyongyang about South Korean incursions into the North’s territorial waters. Seoul has denied the accusations. On June 21, the KPA Naval Command issued a stern warning to Seoul, declaring that “The intrusion of South Korean naval warships into the waters of the DPRK has escalated since early May. The number of cases reached 7-8 on a daily average, and 36 at maximum in mid-June.” [12] The statement threatened that the “incursions” could escalate into a third sea battle or even war. The KPA Naval Command issued similar warnings on May 10, 21, 30, and June 12. [13]

Meanwhile, North Korean leaders have been issuing statements on the need to strengthen the country’s armed forces and maintain military preparedness. On May 21, the “uriminjokkkiri” website, which is hosted in China but maintained by the Korean Workers’ Party, quoted National Defense Chairman Kim Jong-il as having said that “a strong military force is necessary to triumph and to preserve the revolution, and so that we can independently reclaim the destiny of the nation and the people [minjok].” [14]

On June 7, Kim Il-ch’ŏl, Minister of the Korean People’s Army, declared that the country must make greater efforts to strengthen the “invincible People’s Army because it is the leading force of the sŏn’gun revolution.” Kim also warned that “socialist education must be increased for party members, military personnel, and workers so that they can firmly defend the socialist fatherland and ruthlessly reject the imperialists’ psychological warfare strategies and schemes for ideological and cultural penetration.” [15]

Ch’oe T’ae-bok, Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee, also invoked the need for the DPRK to increase its military capabilities on June 3. At a ceremony in Haesan City, Yanggang Province, marking the 70th anniversary of a Kim Il Sung-led raid against a Japanese colonial police outpost at nearby Poch’ŏnbo, Ch’oe said that the country must continue to emphasize the build-up of the armed forces for self-defense and protection of the fatherland. Ch’oe said that, “The armed forces and the people under the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong-il will achieve successive victories in a life or death struggle against imperialism.” He added that “The world is well aware of our country as a dignified military power with a strong political ideology exemplified by the party, military, and people united behind the revolutionary leadership.” [16]

South Korea Launches New Attack Submarine
While tensions continued to mount between the two Koreas, Seoul launched a new attack submarine on June 13. The Chŏngji [Jeongji] is a 1,800-ton diesel-electric submarine built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in collabor-ation with Germany’s Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH (HDW). The vessel is South Korea’s second Type 214 (KSS-II) submarine, and it will be able to stay submerged for over two weeks. It is armed with cruise missiles, torpedoes, and mines. The Chŏngji is scheduled to be deployed in November 2008 after testing, and South Korea now aims to develop 3,000-ton submarines with indigenous technology for deployment between 2018 and 2021. [17] South Korea plans to arm the 3,000-ton vessels with a submarine-launched version of a 1,000-km-range ship-to-surface land-attack cruise missile that ADD successfully tested in October 2006. [18]

Conclusion
Pyongyang’s rhetoric emphasizes the need to strengthen the DPRK’s military capabilities for national defense and for achieving a number of domestic policy goals, including economic development, internal security, and ideological purity. North Korean political statements stress that “military first politics [sŏn’gun chŏngch’i]” and military strength are necessary to preserve the nation, “our style” socialist development, Korean pride, and ethnic nationalism. Kim Jong-il has had little choice but to turn to the military to deal with the overwhelming and inescapable forces of globalization that threaten the legitimacy of his regime. Despite Pyongyang’s bellicosity, North Korea will have increasing difficulty competing with the conventional military capabilities of other regional states as they acquire additional advanced weapons systems.
As North Korea has fallen behind economically and militarily, the state has focused on science and technology as the means to escape its backwardness. There have been limited pockets of success, but North Korea’s anachronistic mass mobilization campaigns have not proven to be an effective means for achieving scientific and technological advances. Significantly, if what President Roh describes as a “Northeast Asian arms race” continues, North Korea may find it difficult to abandon its weapons of mass destruction and missile capabilities. [19] Indeed, rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula can only add to uncertainties regarding Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearize under the Six-Party process (also involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States).

Daniel A. Pinkston – Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies