As war in Ukraine grinds toward its third year and fighting in Gaza inflames a broader crisis across the Middle East, global security observers are keeping a close watch on another part of the world – North Korea, where Kim Jong Un’s latest provocations are raising questions about his military intentions.
In recent weeks, the leader has brushed aside decades of his country’s policy toward South Korea – now proclaiming that North Korea would no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with the South and calling for it to be classified as their “permanent enemy.”
North Korea “does not want war, but will not avoid it,” Kim declared at a political gathering last month, according to state outlet KCNA.
If war came, the country’s goal would be “occupying, suppressing and reclaiming the Republic of Korea and subjugating it into the territory of the republic,” he said, referring to South Korea by its official name.
The sweeping policy shift in the nuclear-capable country has come alongside a volley of weapons tests, the shelling of a maritime buffer zone, and calls from Kim for North Korea to accelerate war preparations in response to “confrontation moves” by the US.
Together the developments are drawing international concern – and debate among seasoned observers – about the intentions of the leader at the heart of the country’s secretive regime.
“We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations,’” prominent experts Robert Carlin and Siegfred Heckler wrote in North Korea-focused publication 38 North last month. Kim, they suggest, has “made a strategic decision to go to war.”
Many other observers disagree – arguing that the 40-year-old leader knows well that any major military move against South Korea and its ally the United States could hasten the demise of his own regime.
But those observers too are bracing for a year of ramped up aggression – and express concern about the risk of North Korea’s escalated hostilities leading to some kind of military engagement on the Korean Peninsula, raising the risk, however remote, of nuclear conflict.
Accounting Jobs in Pakistan Banking Jobs in Pakistan Engineering Jobs in Pakistan Jobs in Pakistan Marketing Jobs in Pakistan Jobs in Karachi Jobs in Lahore Jobs in Islamabad Jobs in Peshawar Jobs in Quetta Government Jobs in United Arab Emirate Government Jobs in Saudi Arabia Government Jobs in Canada Government Jobs in Australia