Austin Bay: Behind North Korea’s bluster
Propaganda
campaigns inevitably experience the equivalent of a Freudian slip, a moment so blatantly extreme their ostensibly crafted spiels of fear, hate and threat backfire and reveal an inconvenient truth or two about the propagandists.
North Korea’s latest round of saber-rattling theatrics provides several textbook examples, but the Kim dictatorship’s targeting of Austin for nuclear destruction is particularly demonstrative.
Last week, Pyongyang’s Korean Workers Party propaganda organ, Rodong, published several photos of tyrant Kim Jong Un allegedly chairing an emergency meeting in a top secret command bunker. One photo shows a map with missile trajectories. According to NKnews.org, the map displays a missile strike plan, with the likely targets being Honolulu, Los Angeles, Washington and Austin.
Propagandists always prefer to have proximate causes for unleashing a diatribe. Kim’s alleged proximate cause for his emergency meeting was the participation of two U.S. B-2 strategic stealth bombers in South Korean-U.S. military exercises.
The annual South KoreanU.S. exercises are an opportunity to train soldiers, but they also send the message that Seoul and Washington are prepared to defend South Korea and the allies possess an overwhelming offensive capability should North Korea repeat the mistake it made in June 1950. That’s when the sire of the Kim hereditary dictatorship, Un’s grand-daddy tyrant, Kim University of Texas professor Patricia Maclachlan, a specialist in politics and security of East Asia, discusses the future implications of the North Korean threats. Il-Sung, completely underestimated U.S. resolve and launched the Korean War.
It is highly improbable that missile attack plan was something slapped together last month. Odds are good the cities are genuine, calculated targets. Honolulu makes immediate sense. The North’s missiles can already hit it, and it is President Barack Obama’s hometown. L.A. is a huge target area, ideal for missiles of questionable accuracy. Though not yet within range, it could be shortly. Washington is a no-brainer, though North Korea can’t hit D.C. But why Austin? The literal answer, and literal target, is South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Company’s Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS) manufacturing facility. However, pinpointing the hometown of this facility is agitprop excess, for it tells us that the North Korean regime is aware of its own immense and tragic failure. Moreover, the thugs are ashamed.
North Korea’s real target, which the literal target represents, is South Korea’s demonstrable success. Samsung and a hundred other South Korean enterprises with global reputations and reach demonstrate South Korea’s economic power and organizational strength. North Korea, a Communist Workers Paradise, is a starving prison state, and its leaders are profoundly embarrassed.
This week, after North Korea declared that combat could begin within hours, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that Pyongyang is “on a collision course with the international community.” The secretarygeneral himself is a source of North Korean embarrassment. He is a South Korean, emblematic of South Korean political influence.
Are the theatrics dangerous? Only if the world treats them as pure theatrics, for North Korea possesses truly destructive capabilities that miscalculation or mistake could unleash. A rash North Korean general could punch a button or launch a ground attack.
The U.S. has deployed an anti-ballistic missile system that provides the U.S., South Korea and Japan with a defensive shield against the rash launch of a single missile. Unfortunately, the system is very limited. This is a mistake that must be quickly corrected.
The conventional ground attack that escalates is another matter. What is the intelligence indicator that will tell us when Washington and Seoul believe the propaganda campaign is over and war is likely? South Korea hosts thousands of U.S. military dependents. When they start to leave, pay close attention. The latest Statesman Watch article looked at what happened to a barn full of property mistakenly seized during foreclosure of property next door. A lawyer said his clients’s property ended up in a landfill after it was wrongly seized.
Lisa Crider: A landfill? That’s just criminal.
Jose Orta: I still believe the company should be prosecuted for theft. Can’t believe no one will prosecute them.
Mickey Warnock: Very sad that all those people’s things equaled trash to that company. No respect at all...
William Dieterich: Does anyone really think the com- pany throws the stuff away? They are hired to clean out a place, if things of value are found then that is extra money.
Robert Martinez: Sue the company for all it’s worth!
Larry Schuler: LAWSUIT! Put the “stupid” company out of business!!!
Mark Farley: IMHO it amounts to felony theft, as well as burglary. So, why is no one being prosecuted???
Tim McMullen: How awful!