Mattis’ visit highlights threat to Seoul
S. Korean official notes Pyongyang’s retaliatory powers.
PANMUNJOM, KOREA — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ visit to the Korean Peninsula’s extremely militarized Demilitarized Zone on Friday was meant to show U.S. solidarity with South Korea against a muscular North, which Mattis accused of building nuclear weapons to “threaten others with catastrophe.”
But the trip also highlighted the central contradiction in the Trump administration’s rhetoric on North Korea: For all the talk of military options, there really aren’t any — at least, none that wouldn’t put the sprawling city of Seoul, South Korea, with its population of 10 million, in the cross hairs of thousands of Pyongyang’s artillery installations.
Standing side by side with Mattis atop an observation post to gaze at the North, South Korea’s defense minister, Song Young-moo, seemed at times
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Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day as part of their current subscription. Dates and prices are subject to change without notice. to be giving his U.S. counterpart a guided tour of how a strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities would quickly trigger retaliation.
“There are 21 battalions” stationed over the border, Song told Mattis, gesturing toward the hills of North Korea in the distance. “Defending against this many LRAs is unfeasible, in my opinion,” he said, alluding to the bristling array of long-range artillery pointed at his country.
Song said that the United States and South Korea would have to destroy the North Korean artillery “the moment the war starts.”
But even if the United States and South Korea were able to do so, U.S. defense officials acknowledge that North Korea would still have a significant retaliatory capability, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as conventional forces. It would be virtually impossible, the officials said, to destroy all of North Korea’s offensive capabilities before it could strike Seoul.
The last thing Seoul wants is for the United States to make good on all of President Donald Trump’s threats about military options — South Koreans know that they would be the first to feel the repercussions.
But at the same time, both South Korea and the United States want Pyongyang to think that Washington might launch a strike, in the hope that fears of such action might force North Korea to the bargaining table.
“Our goal is not war,” Mattis said, “but rather the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
He called North Korea an “oppressive regime that shackles its people, denying their freedom, their welfare and their human dignity,” and said Pyongyang’s “provocations continue to threaten regional and global security.”