Re: 윤석열의 정치적 붕괴: 평양의 날을 만들다

[위종민]

미친짓이라고밖에 표현할 수 없는 윤석열의 정치적 선택으로 푸틴과 김정은이 웃음을 짓고 있다는 38north의 기사입니다. 

윤석열이 국내 문제를 덮기 위해 평양에 무인기를 보냈고, 그래도 무력도발이 일어나지 않자 쓰레기풍선 원점타격을 지시했다는 얘기도 있네요. 

한국의 친위쿠데타와 뒤이은 혼란에도 불구하고 북한은 무력도발을 일으키지 않았지만, 이번 한국의 혼란으로 북한은 중국-러시아-이란의 연합에 합류하는 길을 계속 걸어갈 것이며, 중국과의 악화된 관계 또한 어느 정도 복원될 것이고, 북한과 러시아, 중국 모두 한국의 나토/쿼드+ 등 모든 종류의 동아시아 안보 프레임워크 가입이 연기되거나 취소되는 것과 사실상 예정된 정권교체를 환영하고 감사히 여길 거란 전망입니다. 

Yoon’s Political Implosion: Making Pyongyang’s Day - 38 North: Informed Analysis of North Korea

Yoon’s Political Implosion: Making Pyongyang’s Day - 38 North: Informed Analysis of North Korea

Yoon’s Political Implosion: Making Pyongyang’s Day

• By: Glyn Ford
• December 15, 2024
• Foreign Affairs, South Korea

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Source: Office of the President of the Republic of Korea, Official Photographer: Kang Min Seok, June 10, 2024

The pantomime that has been South Korean politics for the past fortnight has brought swift smiles to the lips of both Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. For Kim, in particular, this is the perfect gift and validates the strategic choices made in his last New Year’s Address. The South may outgun the North by a factor of ten and more, but the fiasco that was an on-off martial law declaration merely made public that the South’s military leadership is ill-disciplined, insubordinate and confused, and the dithering of Seoul’s governing party was worse. What’s not to like in Pyongyang? The North’s much lauded secret weapon, ‘single minded unity,’ has never looked more powerful in the face of Seoul’s indecision and incompetence.

This did not just happen overnight. Recent reports reveal early stages of this plan have been in play for several months as Yoon tried to hide his domestic woes by raising tensions on the Peninsula. This includes the provocative use of the South’s drones to spread propaganda leaflets in Kim Il Sung Square. When that did not elicit a military response, Yoon ordered the South’s military to fire on the sites of the North’s ‘trash’ balloons launches, directions that were apparently refused.

The term ‘leaderless resistance’ is normally applied to the tactics of terrorist groups fearful of infiltration by the state. In Seoul, the term is stood on its head with a state structure inchoate and incompetent. Now with the National Assembly, at the second time of asking, voting for impeachment, the South’s decision making goes into limbo for up to 180 days as the Constitutional Court ponders the legitimacy of the vote. All this makes Kim’s day as it confirm‎s his strategic pivot while comprehensively sidelining Seoul in any future talks with Trump.

The Backstory

After the car-crash in Hanoi in 2019, Kim Jong Un abandoned the family’s forty-year-long venture to normalize relations with Washington. Across four decades—after the fall of the Soviet Union—American presidents proved immune to any deal, but in 2017, Trump seemed different. Gently coaxed by Pyongyang’s foreign affairs establishment, Ri Su Yong in the International Department of the Party and Ri Yong Ho in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kim was convinced a deal was possible that would see cross-recognition under the protective covering of punctuated progress over a decade and more of slow step-by-step initial freezing and incremental backtracking of the North’s nuclear program.

But 2017 turned out to be a false dawn. Kim viewed the failure of the 2019 Hanoi Summit as the Republican establishment encircling Trump sabotaging the process and preventing the conclusion of any deal. Concluding Washington’s willing were unable to make meaningful changes, Kim purged the doves within his regime in favor of hawks and began to change the course of the country’s external affairs.

Subsequent global events reinforced Kim’s view of the world and shifting power dynamics. The chaotic US retreat from Afghanistan demonstrated the vulnerability of American military might to the wrong warfare, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed spineless decision makers among Ukraine’s partners, and Israel’s devastation of Gaza proved that Washington’s allies could now slip the leash.

Mixed Messages for Kim

No longer the only game in town, Kim saw Washington’s loss of control and reaction to China’s challenge as the opening encounters in a second Cold War—a lens through which Kim Jong Un now views the world. The crass and chaotic failed coup d’état by President Yoon in Seoul confirm‎s his analysis and strengthens his hand. Yet there are spots on the sun. First, Kim needs to massage and spin the events in Seoul for the readers of Rodong Sinmun. Pyongyang has never been enthusiastic over advertising the world’s color revolutions; wary the North’s own citizens might be infected with similar gaudy ideas. Here and now it is possibly worse. Kim started the year designating the South as the “most hostile state”. It replaced the previous portrayal of the South Korean citizenry as misguided and misled, intimidated under the thrall of Washington and its domestic dupes with a picture of monochrome malevolence. But the fierce resistance to martial law and overwhelming outcry for impeachment over the last two weeks is clearly at odds with Kim’s propaganda created to help sell why unification should be abandoned.

As second challenge is the ouster of Assad from Syria. The Assad regime had been a Russian proxy propped up by Moscow and Tehran. Its house of cards collapse suggests a fragility to that support and an inability and/or unwillingness for Moscow to fight a two-front war, even in the long shadow of a threatened Trump-inspired ceasefire in Ukraine. It must strike Kim that were the Peninsula’s mutual provocations to turn to skirmishes and threaten escalation to war, like in 1950, Russian engagement could turn out to be coaching from the sidelines with the heavy lifting of mutual assistance sub-contracted to Beijing, which is likely to limit help to the minimum for survival, far short of the resources for victory.

Conclusion

Despite domestic disturbances, semi-insurrections and coups in South Korea, North Korea has never seized these opportunities to renew civil war. Nevertheless, Yoon’s failed attempt to consolidate power will give Kim confidence to continue on his chosen path of joining what decades ago Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski called the nightmare coalition for the US of China, Russia and Iran. The North’s chilly relations with Beijing are likely to become more tepid, while Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing will all welcome and be grateful for the postponement and cancellations in Seoul’s further integration into NATO, the Quad+ or any kind of East Asian Security framework, and the early prospects of a progressive presidency in the South.

[Minowski(김유철)]

어떻든 김정은의 푸틴 올인전략이, 적어도 이번 겨울을 지난 몇년 중에서 가장 등따습고 배부른 겨울로 만든 결정이 되었습니다. 미국의 동북아 동맹국들 중 한국이 가장 취약한 고리라는 것이 다시 증명된 상황인데 트럼프 행정부는 이 상황을 어떻게 다룰까 걱정이네요....

[위종민]

1기에 이어 2기도 이러니 트럼프는 그냥 동북아 외교전략에서 한국을 패싱하고 돈줄로만 취급하지 않을까 싶기도.

[위종민]

https://www.spacewar.com/reports/China_says_dissatisfied_with_S_Korean_presidents_spying_accusations_999.html

중국이 당연히 윤석열이 담화에서 계엄 선포 이유로 내세운 중국의 스파이 활동에 대해 불만을 표시했습니다. 이거 뒷감당은 어떻게 해야 되나..

[사처포(곽명기)]

노태우 정부가 개척한 30억불 북방정책은 이로서 끝나고.
북한은 러샤와 중국이라는 든든한 뒷배로...