Chang Luowen: Why is it a good sign that North Korea bombed the liaison office?

[Text/Observer Columnist Chang Luowen]

On June 16, 2020, around 2:50 pm in the East 9th District (GMT+9), the first blast was heard at the front post of the First Army Corps of the Korean Army, and then South Korea Army soldiers were surprised to find through visual observation that the Korean-North Korea Liaison Office building in the Kaesong Industrial Park had been completely blown down, and it was only the North Korean army that carried out the blasting.

The outside world currently believes that such drastic actions by North Korea are part of a response to South Korean private groups that violated the Panmunjom Declaration by sending insulting leaflets to North Korea through balloons. After the flyer incident, the North Korean government has made a series of responses, including the statement that it will close the inter-Korean liaison office at in the Kaesong Industrial Park of , announcing that it will cut off all communication lines between North Korea and South Korea, and that it will fully work with South Korea. Converted to "work against the enemy" and so on.

The Presidential Palace of South Korea made a voice to cool down on June 11, stating that in the future, it will strictly investigate and punish the distribution of leaflets and articles to North Korea and will continue to abide by all agreements between South Korea and North Korea.

On June 15th, South Korea ended up again. South Korean President Moon Jae-in sent a video congratulatory message at the 20th anniversary of the "June 15 Joint Declaration between Korea and North Korea". Moon Jae-in specifically pointed out: We must not let anti-objects and misunderstandings hinder our efforts for peace and coexistence. We should solve problems through communication and cooperation. Even if we face difficulties and obstacles, we should gather wisdom and overcome difficulties through dialogue. He also expressed regret and sorry for the current escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula.

Moon Jae-in said:

North Korea condemns some defector groups for distributing anti-North Korea flyers, criticizing the South Korean government, and closing the dialogue window, making South Korean citizens very worried that the peninsula will return to confrontation. According to the "Panmunjom Declaration", South Korea and North Korea should stop spreading leaflets and other hostile acts along the military demarcation line. This is an agreement that everyone who wishes for peace should abide by. I hope that the citizens can also gather strength for this.

The current situation cannot be fully opened only by the will of the two sides of South Korea and North Korea. It also needs the support of the international community, but there must be some projects that South Korea and North Korea can promote independently. The most important thing is the trust between South Korea and North Korea, and mutual trust should be accumulated through dialogue.

Recalling the past President Kim Dae-jung’s courage and wisdom in overcoming the conceptual offensive and successfully promoting the summit between South Korea and North Korea. In 2017, with the shadow of war engulfing the peninsula, the leaders of South Korea and North Korea were able to talk face-to-face with the spirit of the June 15 Declaration. Peace cannot be achieved overnight, nor can it be created by others. It requires South Korea and North Korea to work together to develop it.

​​But from the perspective of North Korea, this is another story.

The Korea-North Korea Joint Liaison Office in the Kaesong Industrial Park was established in 2005. It was originally a North-South Exchange and Cooperation Agreement Office. It was reopened on September 14, 2018 after maintenance. After the reopening, the North Korea-U.S. and North Korea-South Korea summits did not achieve the expected results, and the U.S. attitude toward North Korea became worse and worse. Kim Jong-un once said that “the liaison office is useless”.

On June 13, 2020, the first vice minister of the Workers’ Party of Korea , Kim Yo-jung (sister of Kim Jong-un, alternate member of the Political Bureau of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the first deputy minister of the Party Central Committee) made a statement saying: "It will be seen soon The tragic scene of the useless Korea-North Korea Joint Liaison Office being razed to the ground". The General Staff of the Korean People’s Army also stated through “public reports” that “the military is paying close attention to the recent deteriorating relationship between South Korea and North Korea. Our military has made all kinds of preparations. No matter what external measures the party and government intend to take, we can do it. Provide strong military backing."

The blasting is carried out today. The command chain of Kim Jong-un (head of state)-Kim Yo-jung (central)-general staff (army)-front-line forces (basic level) of the North Korean system is very clear, and the military operation in Kaesong is considered. The sensitivity of preparation can even say that North Korea’s operation was very efficient.

North Korea’s response (photo/Phoenix TV)

The evolution of diplomatic relations between North Korea and South Korea in the past 20 years

President Moon Jae-in mentioned in his good speech on June 15, 2000, when the then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung visited North Korea. Kim Jong-il, the highest leader of North Korea, signed the "June 15 Joint Declaration between South Korea and North Korea." The two leaders embraced and bid farewell at the airport, which seemed to be a half-century of opposition between South Korea and North Korea.On the rest.

In June 2000, in Pyongyang, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (front row, right) and North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong Il (front row, left) embraced and bid farewell at the airport. (Photo/Yonhap News Agency)

After the June 15th Declaration was published in 2000, the Kumgang Mountain Tourism Project and the Kaesong Industrial Park in North Korea were launched, and the relationship between the two parties has improved significantly. In October 2007, the then President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun went to Pyongyang to hold the second South-North Korea summit meeting with Kim Jong-il and signed the "14 Joint Declaration." In 2007, the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue reached the 213 Agreement, the first phase of the implementation plan of the September 19 Joint Statement.

In 2008, the Conservative Party Lee Myung-bak's government insisted on "linking economic assistance to North Korea with North Korea's abandonment of nuclear weapons," and relations between South Korea and North Korea continued to cool. In July 2008, a tourist visiting Mount Kumgang in South Korea was shot and killed by the Korean army. In April 2010, North Korea announced the confiscation or freezing of South Korean real estate in the Mount Kumgang area and expelled South Korean managers. The relationship between South Korea and North Korea fell into an ice cellar.

followed by high-intensity provocations such as North Korea's long-range rockets and nuclear tests. After the bombardment of the "Cheonan" ship in 2010, South Korea introduced the "May 24 Sanctions against North Korea" measures to interrupt all trade and personnel exchanges between South Korea and North Korea except for the Kaicheng Park. In February 2016, the Park Geun-hye government announced the complete closure of the Kaesong Park after the fourth nuclear test and long-range missile test conducted by North Korea. As a result, the relationship between the two parties fell to the bottom.

After Moon Jae-in came to power, he finally took on the disconnection of Roh Moo-hyun’s “sunshine policy” and actively extended a hand of reconciliation to North Korea. As a result, the relationship between South Korea and North Korea was quickly restored and developed. Take the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics as an example. Opportunity, the two sides broke the deadlock and strived for reconciliation. In April 2018, Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un walked and talked alone on the Panmunjom bridge. In September of the same year, Moon Jae-in gave a public speech in front of 150,000 Pyongyang citizens, fully demonstrating his determination and willingness to improve relations between South Korea and North Korea. In June 2018, U.S. President Trump and Kim Jong-un held the first historic summit between North Korea and the United States, bringing dawn to the peace process on the Peninsula.

However, as the second North Korea-U.S. summit held in Vietnam in February 2019 ended in vain, the DPRK-U.S. dialogue fell into a deadlock, and the relationship between South Korea and North Korea has repeatedly hit a wall. The blueprints outlined by the Moon Jae-in government for connecting the roads and railways between South Korea and North Korea, restarting the Kaesong Industrial Park and Mount Kumgang tourism have also made no progress due to the international community’s sanctions against North Korea. The rapid and fierce interaction surrounding the flyer incident seems to have pulled the situation on the peninsula back into an endless loop.

But if you observe more from the perspective of the peninsula's personality, you will find that the situation is not so sparkling on the surface, it can even be said to be an unprecedented good situation.

Behind the Korean flyer

Let me talk about the fuse of this incident, the flyer. The first distribution of flyers by

itself is a provocative act that violates the "Panmunjom Declaration" and the "Truce Agreement", and both South Korea and North Korea recognize this. But "You have Zhang Liangji, I have a wall ladder", both sides have explored an exclusive strategy for frantically testing on the edge. North Korea’s approach is to make the flyers very small, like cards, and mainly use cartoons and slogans. Because there are few words, most of them have only one sentence, it is difficult to define them as flyers.

In 2016, during the Park Geun-hye administration, North Korea threw leaflets to Seoul and Gyeonggi Province in South Korea. The above meant that “the United States should immediately abandon the untimely hostile policy toward North Korea”, and the bottom meant that “we will restart the broadcast of psychological warfare against North Korea and destroy North Korea. Park Geun-hye in Yugoslavia’s defeat was defeated like a dog!"

South Korea has inherited the "fine" tradition of the United Nations in distributing flyers for psychological warfare, from the early beauties who recruited and surrendered to later attacking leaders and fabricating politics. "Secrets", revealing the "evil" of the system, and then attacking North Korean leaders (in North Korean culture, leaders represent "the highest dignity of the republic" and must not be offended).

Korea’s early flyers feature photos of beautiful women and slogans such as “Who can save you?” “For happiness and freedom, free Korea”.

And South Korea distributes and disseminates flyers using balloons, not "North Korean defectors' civil organizations" and "human rights non-profit organizations" with powered aircraft. These organizations do not represent the government. They are in the background of Korean democracy and freedom of speech. Naturally, the official has no right to ask more questions. At most, the police are sent to persuade the return and disperse based on public security reasons.

When I was a reporter, I went to Paju on the border many times to interview, I have encountered small pickup trucks that hand out flyers almost every time, and I have been invited to drink coffee by South Korean police on several occasions. The local police can be said to have taken offense and are familiar with the process. During his stay in the opposition, South Korean President Moon Jae-in once called for the introduction of a law prohibiting private organizations from throwing leaflets to North Korea as the leader of the New Democratic Coalition Party, but it was finally nothing. Is it because the South Korean government feels that throwing away waste paper by private groups is not worth making a fuss?

A truck carrying a large number of flyers to the border (Photo/Yonhap News Agency)

In fact, the background of these "civil organizations" in South Korea is not simple, and even they themselves do not hide it.

The picture above is a promotional photo of a flyer distribution in 2016. The lady in the picture is Suzanne Scholte, a famous "North Korean human rights activist" who has won numerous awards in South Korea and the United States. Its main responsible institution is an NGO called "Defense Forum Foundation", which has been "dedicated to promoting the freedom and human rights of the Korean people". The members of the council have deep qualifications, including:

Chairman: J. William Middendorf II, former US ambassador to the European Community, former US Secretary of the Navy. President of

: Suzanne Scholte, chief of staff of former Texas congressman Mac Sweeney, honorary citizen of Seoul, and winner of the Seoul Peace Prize.

Vice Chairman: Tidal W. McCoy, Acting Secretary of the Air Force of the Reagan Administration, and a Vietnam War veteran.

Director: R. James Woolsey, director of the US Energy Commission, served as the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 1995.

Director: James L. Holloway III, U.S. Navy Admiral, former U.S. Secretary of Naval Operations.

Director: Chadwick R. Gore, Senior Policy Advisor and Human Rights Advisor of the US State Department, Vietnam War veteran. In such an organization that has no contacts, several key figures have close contacts with Free Korea, dailyNK and other heart-warming media. It must be said that it is a very interesting phenomenon. There are many other organizations similar to

, all operating in South Korea in an open and legal manner. Whenever there is a political need, they use various controlled organizations to create incidents in the borders, media, and non-governmental exchanges. They are targeted and quantitative. To provoke both sides, South Korea and North Korea fell into a vicious circle of "have to fight back against each other", hijacked the dialogue process between South Korea and North Korea in disguise, and made the communication between South Korea and North Korea enter a dead end where there is "forever hope and no result".

During the pro-U.S. Conservative Party’s administration, the pro-U.S. Conservative Party had a considerable understanding of these NGOs: on the eve of the election, NGOs were responsible for creating troubles, making the border situation tense, making the people more inclined to a tough North Korean policy, and safeguarding the conservative party’s election. Love and political power; after the Conservative Party came to power, the Conservative Party gave money to NGOs and rewards, gave NGO leaders various social recognition, and gave them more room for discourse. In the future, they will jointly run commercial companies and realize social resources. In this way, a legitimate and reasonable interest exchange cycle has become more and more unbreakable. It seems that the fate of the people on the peninsula has been nailed to a place that is one step away from peace. The emergence of Moon Jae-in broke the deadlock of using the future of his nation for his own self-interest. Internally, he reformed the U.S.-controlled prosecutor’s office system and greatly strengthened the president’s power. Externally, he communicated directly with Kim Jong-un, established a direct hotline and The exchange of visits mechanism directly removes the obstacles in the middle. It was precisely because Moon Jae-in touched the core interests of South Korea's strongest behind-the-scenes power that the approval rate fell all the way, and his cronies were sniped down one after another, and rumors of political instability were once heard.

is good for both North and South Korea

In the same period, Kim Jong-un's life was not easy.

The suspicion of the young country has just stabilized. Although Li Yinghao and Zhang Sungze have been cut off in China, the party members are still in the dark. The close elders such as Jin Gezhi and Jin Yongchun are old, and they are either dead or ignored. In the Mesozoic era, which was originally the focus of training, Huang Bing swears and Cui Longhai went up and down several times, each with their own thoughts, and the disappointed Kim Jong-un cleared the core of power in disguise.

The line of domestic nuclear weapons and economic progress is not progressing well, and the external sanctions of the US government have not been loosened. The Trump administration’sThe degree of repetition is more than that of North Korea. There is no way to communicate. Kim Jong-un desperately needs a trusted supporter to share the two corners of a play with him. Against this background, Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jung, quickly moved to the center of power and was quickly promoted to the alternate Central Committee of the Labor Party, sharing part of the task of communicating with Moon Jae-in.

However, this shock to North Korea's vested interests is no less than Moon Jae-in's domestic reform of South Korea.

North Korea has inherited the hierarchical system of Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism of orderly age, distinction between men and women, and different paths of superiority and inferiority. The degree of strictness is difficult for the Chinese to imagine. Even with the "Baektou Mountain Revolutionary Blood", it is difficult for a female stream to convince the military leaders who "rewarded with years of service", not to mention that Xiao Nizi is only in her twenties. Kim Yoo Jong needs to establish his own authority in order to break away from the shadow of Kim Jong Un in the Central Committee of the Workers' Party and truly gain a foothold.

Before Kim Jong-un came to power, he personally commanded the frontline troops to bombard Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea with the rank of general, establishing his prestige in the army. The bombing of the liaison office this time was Kim Yoo-jung’s version of the "Yonpyeong Island Artillery Battle." Through resolute implementation of Kim Jong-un’s instructions and rapid actions in the border areas, the Korean party, government, and military systems will continue No one has the ability to challenge the authority of the Golden Two. Externally, this building is a North Korean building on North Korean land, which did not cause actual losses to South Korea, and did not leave any truth to South Korea. Moreover, the building was first completed 15 years ago to ease the situation on the grounds of "re-expansion" in the future. Leave room. The most important thing is to raise the alert level of both sides while venting the tension and preventing man-made gunfire.

For Moon Jae-in, this is an excellent opportunity.

Because the new crown epidemic in South Korea was mainly spread in the southern Conservative Party sites in religious places and nightclubs, the South Korean government quickly controlled the situation, and because of its effective anti-epidemic, it was supported by the public. The support rate rebounded and won the parliament. The majority of seats. In addition to verbally criticizing non-governmental organizations, Moon Jae-in is the first time he is truly capable of turning "restricting NGOs" into legislation to be passed in Congress. At present, 25 parliamentarians in Gyeonggi Province have co-signed. They are promoting related legislative procedures. The sound of a gunshot from Kaesong is likely to help Moon Jae-in destroy the venomous snake entrenched in the concept of "unification" by foreign NGOs.

Looking at the north and the south, this is the period when the external forces affecting the peninsula were the weakest in the 70 years after the war. It was the period when the control and willingness to communicate between the north and the south were the highest. The two sides are communicating information through Eastern communication. Under the tense surface, they are cautiously seeking what they need through special communication and exchange methods.

No matter how the wheels of history progress, the game set by Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un will profoundly change the direction of the peninsula.

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