Why North Korea wants a war (sooner than you think) | Mapped Out

Kim Jong Un threatens the world. ...with endless missile tests.  You may be

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ing: what's new? We are used to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un being portrayed as a supervillain or being laughed at with dictator jokes (0.15). But now some North Korea watchers are sounding the alarm, saying Kim might REALLY want a war. How big? When? Don't know. Kim seems to be tired of trying to make peace. And things are working in her favor. These days Kim is very emboldened. That's a threat, especially to South Korea. (0.40) Which has the support of the United States. So is the frozen conflict between North and South Korea heating up again?

And Kim is more dangerous than ever? These days, Kim Jong Un seems to really like maps, and when dictators start focusing a lot on borders, that's always a little worrying. Here he is inspecting a model of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and warning that his country is prepared to "completely annihilate" its southern neighbor if provoked. Whatever that means. And this is the frontier she especially has her eye on. The disputed maritime border between North Korea and South Korea, known as the Northern Limit Line or NLL. Instead of simply extending the land border out to sea, look at how the border is drawn here, curving upward over these islands.

They have remained under de facto South Korean control. But North Korea claims these waters. So it is not surprising that they do not appreciate the US and South Korean naval exercises here. In 2010, North Korea attacked one of the islands and killed several people there.  Now North Korea has repeatedly fired artillery into the waters AROUND the islands as a threat.   North Korea has been unhappy with this border for decades.  Now Kim seems tired of tolerating it: she called it illegal. “It seems to me that he

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that clash for some reason. “He

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that to happen and he is preparing for it.” This is Robert Carlin.

He has been working in North Korea for more than 50 years and has been there at least 30 times, including as a US intelligence officer. Carlin believes Kim Jong Un's speech on illegal borders could be just the first step toward broader military action. Another worrying fact:   Kim recently declared that South Korea is now the North's main enemy.  Before, the official goal was peaceful reunification. "Kim was effectively saying that South Korea is no longer part of the traditional core of the Korean people and the implication is that it is therefore a target." And Kim has the military power to back up his rhetoric.  He has nuclear weapons.

And he is in charge of one of the largest armies in the world. Tensions between both sides extend from the sea to the land. In the DMZ. It is the most militarized demilitarized zone in the world.  And it's where the war between North and South Korea has been frozen for 70 years. And where the Korean peninsula is still basically divided along Cold War lines. How do we get here? Well, at the end of World War II, the Korean Peninsula was liberated from Japanese occupation. The winners of the war, the Soviet Union and the United States, decided that they would each occupy half of the peninsula.

They agreed on this latitude as the dividing line. In 1950, North Korean troops invaded the South, and the South pushed back.  It was a brutal war. At least two and a half million people died. The North was backed by the Soviet Union and later also by China, both communist states. The South was supported by UN troops, led by the United States.  And you see: the superpowers of the Cold War never disappeared. In 1953, an armistice agreement was signed that froze the front line of the war, roughly back on the same line. The fight ended. And it created the buffer zone that we already saw, the DMZ.  But it left many things unresolved.

Like the maritime border.  That was not in the agreement.  The U.N., led by the United States, drew it later, without asking North Korea for permission.  And it wasn't a peace treaty, so the war between North and South Korea never officially ended. The same family that started the war is still in charge.   The Kim family is currently the only communist dynasty (5.17). Kim Jong Un rules like his father and his grandfather before him: with a totalitarian cult of personality and an iron fist, using intimidation and violence. North Koreans have no access to the outside world.  Leaving the country is illegal without permission.

Then came the pandemic. North Korea had some of the strictest border controls in the world. And Kim began building hundreds of miles of fences and walls along North Korea's border with Russia and China.  Like here: Satellite images show a double fence (6.01) appearing after the pandemic closure.  North Korea even introduced a "shoot to kill" order along the Chinese border. So Kim has practically closed down his country and locked down his people, but he is open to doing business with his authoritarian neighbors. North Korea shares an area of ​​1,400 kilometers. A long border with China without its

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ern neighbor, the country would not survive.

Almost all of its limited trade is with China, which brings us to Rason, a region of North Korea right on the border with China and Russia. a Special Economic Zone, meaning this is where the communist country has been allowing a bit of capitalism to happen since the 1990s. Now, something new is happening here, just look at how close Tumangang Station is to Korea of the North and the Russian station of Khasan. An October 2023 image analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows an UNPRECEDENTED number of carriages at a North Korean train station. Some of these carriages appear to end up in Russia.

The boxes are covered, so no one really knows what's inside.   But CSIS experts say it's likely North Korean munitions for Russia... two years into its full-scale war against Ukraine.  Ukraine says it has found North Korean artillery shells and missiles on the battlefield. The   UN has confirmed the use of missiles. North Korea and Russia deny the claims. What does Kim Jong Un gain from this? Well, apparently a lot of money. And Putin could be giving Kim oil, as well as raw materials and parts to make more weapons, including POTENTIALLY banned missile technology.  Kim has had a hard time getting some of these things until now.

North Korea is under international sanctions for building and testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.  Oil deliveries, for example, violate those sanctions. We will prioritize the relationship between North Korea and Russia and make it the number one priority of our foreign policy from now on. I

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Kim is very emboldened these days. Jenny Town is director of a program dedicated to analyzing North Korea at the Stimson Center think tank. She has been working in North Korea for almost 20 years. This is a big victory for Kim Jong-Un. She bet on Putin. She opted for war. And so far, that bet is paying off.

This Russian-made luxury limousine is an example of this. It was an elegant gift from Putin to Kim on his recent trip to Russia. Luxury items are also sanctioned. So this gift is Putin showing how little he cares about all that. Because both Kim and Putin are under sanctions. Cheers to a growing friendship. The two also share a passion for showing off their weapons.  And it's more than just showing off. Now North Korea is gaining field experience for its missiles.   There has been evidence of them on Ukrainian battlefields. And if they improve the quality, it could be a cheap option for others in the future.

What this means: Improved North Korean weapons on the illegal market. Potential buyers include Syria and Iran. On his trip to Russia, Kim Jong Un also toured a spaceport in the country's Far East.  South Korean intelligence has said it was likely Russian help that allowed North Korea to put its first spy satellite into orbit. Right now, what North Korea gets from Russia is a level of military cooperation that it hasn't had since the Cold War, since the Soviet Union, right? That's a huge victory for Kim Jong Un. It could also be a victory for Kim's nuclear weapons, although no one knows for sure whether Russia is helping him develop them.

What we do know is that Kim has carried out an unprecedented number of missile launches since 2022. People call them provocations, as if they were just meant to annoy us. They are not. They are testing new systems.  And surprisingly, almost all of them seem to work. These missile launches used to serve a different purpose. The idea that they were always so dangerous was wrong. The North Koreans did not want to go to war earlier. The sole purpose of his policy was to confront the Americans, not to go to war with them. In other words, weapons tests were part of their diplomatic policy.

A way to ensure that South Korea (and, more importantly, its sponsoring superpower, the United States) would continue talking to them. That brings us back to the DMZ. It seemed pretty good when these meetings were held there a few years ago. South Korean President Moon Yae-in and Kim Jong Un were taking steps to try to finally end the war.  Because remember: the two Koreas never officially made peace. And US President Donald Trump made a surprise appearance.  He also came to visit the DMZ. And, in fact, he was the first US president to set foot on North Korean territory.  Many did not take the meetings between the two seriously.

But actually... There were clear signs that Kim Jong Un was really willing to do something about his nuclear weapons program. That's what experts say: Kim was willing to give up a lot in exchange for sanctions relief.  But at the Hanoi summit the talks failed. Hanoi was a tremendous failure. A personal failure for Kim Jong Un. And from that moment he began to think about how politics was going to change. They don't think they can get anything from the United States. I think right now they've abandoned the idea that sanctions will or could be lifted if they did the right thing, right?

Kim appears to have given up hope for peace. And all of this is not happening in a vacuum.  We see China, Russia and North Korea working more closely. And Iran is also in the mix. You know, Kim Jong Un was one of the first world leaders to speak out and embrace the idea of ​​a new Cold War. They are politically aligned with Russia and China against the West. Kim's allies, Russia and China, have returned to thinking about spheres of influence and territorial ambitions.  Russia is trying to take over Ukraine and China is eyeing Taiwan. That is the context of Kim's speech on the maritime border.  It could just be rhetoric or he could be planning to take over one of these small islands.

Will a war start then? This could be a long fuse and a long-term plan. As he prepares his own people, as he gathers the equipment he needs, as he convinces his allies that they need to support him. I don't know where he thinks he is in this and, therefore, how close he is to pulling the trigger. So there is definitely a cause for concern and a reason why we should try to rebuild diplomacy with the North Koreans to (...) attract them back into the international community. As we've seen, at the moment Kim doesn't seem really interested in that.  Instead, she began to look elsewhere for support.  Is that enough to give him what he wants?

Or do you have more dangerous options?