Smart manipulations are better than honest war

By Andrei Lankov

People learn on the job. When Lee Myung-bak was elected President, he had a reputation of a good manager who was inept in handling public relations. However, the chain of recent events which followed the Cheonan disaster demonstrates that President Lee is quite capable of learning.

This time we could witness a brilliant exercise in public relations management. The South Korean navy frigate Cheonan was sunk by a powerful explosion on March 26, and it seems that from the very beginning the Seoul government either knew or strongly suspected that North Korea was responsible for the disaster.

For a while, the government took necessary precautions, preparing for an outbreak of hostilities, but by the next afternoon it became clear that a war was by no means imminent. Instead, the government found itself facing a public relations problem of immense proportions.

President Lee knew perfectly well that he could not retaliate. To start with, a large-scale military campaign was out of the question. Considering the military superiority of the South, it is all but certain that such a war would be eventually won by Seoul, but at a prohibitively high cost.

In the first days of the campaign large parts of Seoul would be obliterated by North Korean artillery, located just 30 km away from the downtown area of the city. The subsequent advance to Pyongyang would be costly as well. This is not the price any sane South Korean, even of the most jingoist inclinations, is ready to pay for revenge.

Limited strikes against the North Korean military installations would be politically useless as well. North Korea is a hereditary dictatorship, and death of a few hundred soldiers, none of whom is a scion of the top 100 families, would have no impact on the North Korean leadership. They have already sacrificed hundreds of thousands, after all.

The scale of military disasters also could be easily hidden in a country where the press is under the complete control of the government. Concurrently international markets would certainly interpret limited strikes as a sign that ``war is ready to erupt on the Korean Peninsula."

The result would be a serious deterioration of South Korea's economic situation, and voters would blame the government for these avoidable economic woes.

The Cheonan incident isn't unique. In the past the South did not retaliate for far more outrageous North Korean provocations. It did not do anything when in 1987 Pyongyang agents blew up a civilian airliner. It did not retaliate when in 1983 they killed half of the South Korean Cabinet. Nor in 1968 when North Korean commandos attacked the Blue House ― retaliation was briefly considered but never carried out.

At the same time, President Lee understood that he cannot show Seoul's powerlessness. He did not want to appear weak and spineless in front of the public.

In April when emotions were running high, an open admission of the North Korean responsibility for the Cheonan disaster would have made popular demands for revenge irresistible, and President Lee knew that anything he could do would only end badly.

So, at that time, the government did everything to discourage suspicion of North Korea. In early April the Ministry of National Defense stated that a floating mine was the most likely cause, while President Lee kept repeating that people should stay calm until the results of investigation are made public.

Only in May when emotions calmed down, then the North Koreans' role was discussed more frequently. The final report, published on May 20, made clear what had been obvious: the Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo.

The opposition now loudly claims that the government delayed the report until late May in order to influence the elections.

Certainly, there must be a kernel of truth to such accusations, but opposition politicians tend to overestimate their own significance: the upcoming elections are not that important, and their outcome would not change the political landscape anyway (and polls indicated that the government parties were going to fare reasonably well, regardless of the Cheonan incident).

President Lee's major problem is not opposition, but rather his own supporters whose anger he wants to manage.

Seoul still faces the same dilemma: it does not want to look weak even while knowing that no retaliation is possible. So, the President's address on May 24 started the second stage of the public relations campaign.

The address was charged with hard-line rhetoric. However, the actual measures taken by the South were very moderate.

First, Seoul banned North Korean ships from using Southern sea lanes ― but such a measure will hardly have any impact on a country which has almost no shipping and whose moderate foreign trade is conducted via sea routes.

Second, Seoul stopped inter-Korean trade and economic cooperation projects, making an exception for Gaeseong Industrial Park. However, Gaeseong is the only joint project still in operation, since nearly all other activities of this kind stopped between 2008 and 2009.

Finally, the military said it would resume psychological warfare by switching on the loudspeakers located on the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and by launching some balloons with leaflets. The latter plans seem to have been suspended now, but at any rate it is worth remembering that these loudspeakers worked for half a century, until 2004, without producing any noticeable effect on North Korea.

In other words, Seoul combines tough rhetoric with cautious, almost symbolic actions. Obviously, rhetoric should show the domestic audience that the government is tough and strong while actual measures are designed not to provoke a war or major confrontation.

What will come next? It seems that stage three of the government strategy will make use of diplomatic activity. Seoul is determined to bring the issue to the U.N. Security Council, so in the next few weeks envoys and ambassadors will spend a lot of their travel allowances, and newspaper reports will talk about an uncertain and intense diplomatic game.

Frankly, there is nothing uncertain in this game ― its outcome is quite predictable. China will never support the further increase of pressure on North Korea, so it will either prevent the Security Council from passing a resolution on the issue or will make this resolution toothless.

In all probability, Russia will join Chinese efforts. All this seems to be well understood in Seoul. However, the diplomatic activity ― doomed to fail eventually ― will help produce the desirable impression for the public which wants the government to ``do something" in a situation where nothing can really be done.

Is this game Machiavellian? Probably. But this author not merely enjoys the spectacle, but also approves of the government actions. For a while it appeared as if the North Korea policy of President Lee had been hijacked by the hard-line ideologues.

The recent events have shown that this is not the case. Calculating politicians are in command, and this is good. Smart manipulation are better than an honest war which seems to be the alternative to avert.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.

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