Photo credit, Kcna via reuters
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- Author, Jean Mackenzie
- Role, Corresponding to Seoul
When the new North Korean warship capsized at sea when it was launched last month, the event made the headlines of international newspapers. The media followed each stage, from its successful bailiff until its new launch last Friday.
But why such an interest, when there was no victim and the damage caused to the hull seemed relatively minor?
The interest aroused by this event is less due to the failure itself than to the reaction of Kim Jong one.
Kim immediately denounced this failure as a “criminal act” which “could not be tolerated”, saying that he had affected the “dignity” of the country. He ordered that the ship is immediately rehabilitated and that those responsible are punished. Four party officials were then arrested.
This explosion of anger, followed by the rapid repair of the ship, teaches us a lot about the North Korean regime, whose actions are often so difficult to decipher.
First of all, it reveals how determined North Korea is to have a nuclear navy.
Despite an increasingly important and sophisticated nuclear arsenal and a gigantic permanent army, the North Korean navy is considered to be far below those of its enemies – South Korea, Japan and the United States – which have some of the most powerful naval fleets in the world.
“Kim Jong-Un believes that nuclear weapons are the only way to protect his country, but all that he has at sea is an old submarine and some small support ships,” said Choi Il, Captain of South Korean retired.
This is why, almost since the start of his reign, Kim has given priority to the construction of a modern and powerful navy, equipped with nuclear weapons.
This warship is a first key step towards this objective. This is one of the two destroyers built by North Korea during the past year, the first having been successfully launched in April. Weighing 5,000 tonnes, it is by far the largest warships available to North Korea and they are theoretically capable of pulling short -range nuclear missiles.
Photo credit, Maxar Technologies via Getty Images
According to Mr. Choi, who today heads the South Korea Research Institute, it is extremely rare that a destroyer of this class capsized during its construction and launch, given the cutting-edge technology necessary for its construction.
It would therefore have been “a very embarrassing incident” for Kim Jong Un, he said, because that “highlights the limits of North Korean naval construction”.
Worse, this flagship project failed before his eyes. Kim attended the launching ceremony of the ship, in the company of his daughter and a host of spectators.
“North Korea is obsessed with ostentation. I imagine that they had planned a whole series of performance, so of course, Kim could not help being furious,” added Mr. Choi.
But experts in North Korean propaganda believe that anger and humiliation are not the only reasons which explain the brilliance of Kim Jong one.
According to them, having chosen to make the sinking public in this way was a deliberate political strategy, which shows that Kim is moving away from the tendency of the regime to hide unpleasant truths.
Rachel Minyoung Lee, from the Stims Center based in Washington, which has analyzed North Korean propaganda for decades, explained how it has become a central pillar of Kim’s propaganda strategy.
Before Kim Jong-un, and even at the start of his reign, the regime hid everything that was negative in order to control the speech.
But since the information has been circulating more freely in North Korea, it has become more difficult to hide such important incidents.
“The leaders decided that it was almost ridiculous to try to hide what people already knew, and that it was much more effective to show them that they were dealing with the problems,” said Lee.
“Now, when there is a problem, you make it public, you designate those responsible and show the population that if you are not doing your job, you will be held responsible. In doing so, you let everyone know that the government and the leaders do their job well.”
In the case of the War Ship, this strategy seems to have worked remarkably effectively. The repairs were completed before the scheduled date, in just over three weeks, defying the expectations of naval experts.
“Return to fast service shows how even a failure can be transformed into political success,” said Kim Dong-Yup, assistant professor at the North Korean University of Seoul.
Photo credit, Kcna via reuters
But he and others say that Kim used this incident not only to highlight his success, but also to strengthen the loyalty of the people to the regime and their ideology – another constant characteristic of their reign.
The ship capsized while it was put in the water laterally from the platform – a complex maritime maneuver – and part of the bow stuck on the launch ramp. But rather than presenting this as a technical failure, Kim Jong one said that the incident was due to “absolute negligence and irresponsibility”.
On the other hand, he congratulated a deceased worker during the construction of the ship for having “given his blood and sweat” to the project.
“They transformed his death into a symbol of dedication in order to strengthen the loyalty of the people,” revealed Professor Kim Dong-Yup.
Rather than presenting Kim Jong-un as an infallible god, as was the case for his father and grandfather, they raised this loyal worker to the rank of hero, he added. “This is a major change in the governance technique of North Korea, which demonstrates Kim Jong-un’s astonishing ability to adapt and control discourse”.
For Ms. Lee, an expert in propaganda, the main teaching to be drawn is that “the North Koreans achieve all the objectives they set”.
“They have set themselves the objective of having a navy with nuclear weapons, and they demonstrate today that they are in the process of achieving it.”
No one thought they could build destroyers in just over a year, nor repair these damage in less than a month, but they did, added Ms. Lee, just as they did with their nuclear and ballistic program despite the initial skepticism around the world.
Mr. Choi, retired naval captain, shares this opinion. “People can watch this episode and laugh at it, thinking ‘Oh, North Korea is so late’, but they make significant progress,” he said.
The most worrying, according to him and others, is that Kim Jong one intends to transform his navy, who is currently limited to patrol his own waters, into a navy capable of navigating the oceans around the world and launching preventive nuclear strikes.
“We have to be vigilant and prepare accordingly,” he said.
