NK`s threats meant to divert attention away from failed launch

North Korea`s unusually strong threats against South Korea is escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang seems to have shifted the focus of its external friction from its ties with the U.S. to those with Seoul after the North`s failed rocket launch on April 13.

North Korea had remained quiet until the April 15 festival marking the centennial birthday of the Stalinist country`s founder Kim Il Sung, but resumed its slander versus South Korea last Wednesday. Pyongyang grew harsher in its rhetoric from denouncing Seoul`s Lee Myung-bak administration as "responsible for ruining inter-Korean relations" and being a "war fanatic" to threats to "blow up the center of Seoul" and "beating (Seoul) into five million pieces." The North is considered to be speaking in an unusually harsh tone in labeling President Lee as a "rat" and targeting certain South Korean media outlets, including The Dong-A Ilbo.

Experts say the North`s shift of its external strategy resulted from its failed launch of a long-range rocket. "The failed rocket launch has drastically undermined the North`s negotiating power with the U.S. and made it concerned over internal relaxation of its regime due to doubts over its young leader," Cho Min, a senior analyst at Seoul`s state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification, said. "Due to these concerns, the North has launched an offensive against the South under the pretext of Seoul`s defamation of the dignity of (Pyongyang`s) supreme leader."

Cho said the North`s large-scale offensive and nationwide rallies against the Lee administration are part of Pyongyang`s attempt to erase the memory of the failed launch from the minds of the North Korean people by diverting criticism of their leader to the South.

Experts predict that the North will likely focus on solidifying internal unity through threats of provocation against the South instead of conducting its third nuclear test, which would be both costly and incur additional sanctions from around the world. Without long-range missile capability, they said, a successful nuclear test would not be enough to draw U.S. concessions.

shcho@donga.com