In early March, after North Korea had launched missiles, the UN Security Council toughened sanctions against Pyongyang, which require import barriers on some metals of value from the DPRK. They also require that all countries have to check all cargos to the DPRK to prevent transportation of forbidden goods and technologies. Georgy Toloraya, Executive Director of the NKI BRICS, director of the Center for Russian Strategy in Asia of the Institute of Economics, thinks that the adoption by the UN Security Council of the sanctions package, primarily due to the fact that China and Russia have joined the hard and really painful sanctions, has created a new situation on the Korean peninsula: “The North Koreans have appeared in severe isolation, and now they play the cards that they have. And the cards that they have are declarations inciting, we can say, a confrontation on the Korean peninsula, declarations and statements, which draw attention to North Korea as a highly dangerous subject, in order to score points in this political competition with their opponents.”
According to the expert, the North Koreans are quite consistent in their policy, firstly, to show that the aggression against them and any violent actions are unacceptable, and the second, to strengthen the authority of Kim Jong-un, to strengthen his support by the people on the eve of the 7th Congress of the Party, which is scheduled for May.
Georgy Toloraya thinks that traditional spring exacerbations, which always occur during the US-South Korean maneuvers, have reached unprecedented limits this time: “The North Koreans have gone too far. Their test of the hydrogen bomb, the experimental hydrogen bomb, as it was written in the report, and the launch of a satellite in January and February have caused an unprecedented severe reaction, which the North Koreans had not expected.”
The expert is sure that on the Korean peninsula no one is willing and able to fight, but the danger of the situation is that sometimes wars begin by mistake, by accident, when it seems that no one is going to start them: “In South Korea, 300,000 Korean soldiers and 17 thousand Americans work out strikes on the missile sites in the north, action on the physical destruction of the North Korean leadership, landings in the north. South Korea's strategy to accelerate the unification of the country under their control, I think that the South Koreans are trying to strengthen their response as much as possible to make it appropriate to the threats. There is a difficult situation now, which will last at least until May, by the end of the maneuvers in South Korea, and at this point we can expect some surprises.”
