North Korean soldiers conduct an anti-landing drill March 25.
This photograph shows North Korea soldiers firing anti-ship rockets off the Korean coast several days ago. It’s one of several the state-run Korean Central News Agency has issued over the past week. You can’t help but think it would appear more historically accurate if it were published, if not in black-and-white, than in sepia.
That’s better.
The KCNA’s photographs of guns and landing craft resemble weapons used in the Korean War 60 years ago. But new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un knows how to brandish rhetoric, and Pyongyang has been cranking it out ever since South Korea and the United States have been pushing for tighter UN sanctions on North Korea since it conducted a third nuclear test Feb. 12.
The White House said Monday that North Korea doesn’t seem to be backing up its words with action. “We are not seeing changes to the North Korean military posture such as large-scale mobilizations or positioning of forces,” Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said. “What that disconnect between rhetoric and action means, I’ll leave to the analysts to judge.”
The USS John S. McCain fires a missile.
Kim’s rhetoric cooled in a speech delivered Sunday but only published by KNCA Tuesday, where he cited nuclear arms as a shield under which North Korean prosperity could bloom, and not a sword to smite its foes. “Our nuclear strength is a reliable war deterrent and a guarantee to protect our sovereignty,” he said. “It is on the basis of a strong nuclear strength that peace and prosperity can exist and so can the happiness of people’s lives.”
Nonetheless, the war talk is likely to drag on awhile longer: April 15 marks the 101st birthday of Kim’s late grandfather, Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first dictator. And Foal Eagle – the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise that has upset North Korea – continues until the end of the month.
Just in case North Korea hasn’t gotten the message yet, the Navy said Monday it has dispatched the USS John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer, off the Korean coast, in case its Aegis missile-defense system might be needed to shoot down any North Korean missile launch deemed hostile.