This year is an election year in the United States, and Biden is still hoping to be re-elected against the backdrop of falling behind Trump in the polls, in addition to making efforts in domestic affairs, he also urgently needs the support of allies in diplomacy, so as to create a good electoral environment for him. Against this backdrop, action has already been made in all three hot spots. On the Ukraine issue, the 15 NATO countries have agreed that Kyiv will use Western weapons to strike at the Russian mainland and recover its disadvantages as soon as possible. On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Israel has accepted the US ceasefire plan, and Gaza is expected to usher in a long-awaited peace. And on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea, the Asia-Pacific ally of the United States, has also made its latest moves.
According to CCTV News, on June 4, South Korea's State Council passed a resolution on suspending the full effectiveness of the "919 Military Agreement". Yonhap News Agency noted that after the suspension of the agreement, South Korea will no longer be prohibited from conducting exercises in the border areas between the two Koreas. In addition, the South Korean side will also restart the "Kim Jong-un is most afraid of tactics" and use loudspeakers to shout at the DPRK on the border to carry out psychological warfare propaganda. In this regard, we will talk about three topics.
The first, the suspension of the inter-Korean military agreement, is nothing more than a unilateral show by South Korea.
According to the data, the "919 Military Agreement" was signed by the two Koreas in 2018. At that time, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in issued the Panmunjom Declaration after a border meeting between the two countries, reaching an agreement on promoting the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and building the Peninsula into a zone of permanent peace. Half a year later, when Moon Jae-in visited North Korea, the leaders of the two countries formally signed the "919 Military Agreement," which included the cessation of all hostilities in the border areas and the establishment of a no-fly zone.
In other words, the "919 Military Agreement" is actually a "38th line" set up by the DPRK and the ROK in the political field, which is intended to prevent military confrontation between the two sides and eliminate the threat of war. However, after Moon Jae-in left office, Yoon Suk-yeol, the new president of South Korea, did not inherit his moderate north-south policy, but listed North Korea as the "main enemy" in the new version of the white paper, and hoped to regain the initiative on the Korean Peninsula issue with the help of US military intervention.
Against this backdrop, the United States and South Korea have stepped up military exercises against North Korea, which at the most recently came just 46 kilometers from the North Korean border. Moreover, at the request of South Korea, the United States has also deployed nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and other nuclear-related equipment to the peninsula from time to time. Of course, the DPRK could not tolerate this, and in addition to demonstrating toughness through missile test launches, it also launched its first military reconnaissance satellite. Subsequently, South Korea used this as an excuse to announce the suspension of some provisions of the "919 Military Agreement" and the resumption of aerial reconnaissance in the border area.
Yoon Suk-yeol's two speeches directly revealed South Korea's internal situation. First, he bluntly stated that "between the north and the south, there is no longer a military buffer zone"; The other is that he ordered that "when the border troops encounter a provocation, they can counterattack first and then report". In other words, when something happens, fight first and then talk about it. In this regard, Pyongyang naturally did not show weakness, and then announced two measures.
The first is to list South Korea as the "number one enemy country", explicitly prohibit the use of words that mislead the DPRK and the ROK as the same ethnic group, such as "3,000 miles of splendid rivers and mountains" and "80 million compatriots", and delete the words "independence, peaceful reunification, and great national unity" in the Constitution. The second is to abolish the three official institutions of "peaceful reunification between the North and the South," write "nuclear counterattack" into the constitution, and call out the United States, saying that "war will completely destroy South Korea and bring unexpected disasters to the United States."
As a result, South Korea once again demonstrated its tough retaliation against Pyongyang and helped Biden's election in an election year, completely suspending the 919 military agreement. In this way, the two sides of the peninsula have entered a complete "state of naked running," and under the current situation, any disturbance may lead to a military accident. It should be said that South Korea's move is a major escalation of tension on the peninsula.
Second, is the South Korean side's loud voice shouting really Pyongyang's "most feared tactic"?
For many years, all kinds of psychological warfare on both sides of the peninsula have basically never stopped, and in particular, some so-called "non-governmental organizations" in South Korea have used large balloons to deliver propaganda leaflets to the DPRK from time to time, the contents of which are of course negative propaganda against the DPRK regime. Recently, due to the sharp escalation of tension on the peninsula under the impetus of the United States, the South Korean side has flown more "propaganda balloons" to the DPRK.
Unable to bear it any longer, North Korea made an unexpected counterattack - flying "fecal balloons" into South Korea, and dropping balloons filled with filth into Gangwon-do, Gyeonggi-do, Gyeongsang-do, Jeolla-do, Chungcheong-do, and other places in South Korea. It is said that the DPRK has flown more than 3,500 such "balloons" in the air, distributing 15 tons of waste paper and dirt to the border areas of the ROK and the capital area.
Later, the State Council of South Korea positioned this as "psychological warfare" and decided to respond with psychological warfare as well. South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo believes that broadcasting to the DPRK is "one of Kim Jong-un's most feared psychological warfare tools" that can be used to "shake the North Korean regime" and that South Korea should restart it. However, in the 919 Military Agreement, such acts are explicitly prohibited. Perhaps, South Korea's complete suspension of the "919 Military Agreement" is also aimed at clearing the policy obstacles to "broadcasting to the DPRK."
According to the data, South Korea's broadcast psychological warfare against North Korea first began in 1963 and was briefly terminated in 2004 during the administration of the late former President Roh Moo-hyun through the military agreement between the two Koreas. After that, South Korea deemed it a "North Korean provocation" and briefly resumed broadcasting in 2010, 2015, and 2016. In 2015, Pyongyang took the initiative to negotiate and demanded that South Korea stop broadcasting. In 2018, after Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un held a "rare meeting" at Panmunjom, South Korea stopped its cross-border tweeter propaganda.
Third, the situation on the peninsula is escalating, can it really add points to Biden's election?
I am afraid that this is also wishful thinking on the part of South Korea, or the United States, whose greatest desire at the moment is not to want politicians to impose war on the United States. However, the Biden administration is not only fighting a "proxy war" with Russia, but also unconditionally supporting Israel in the Middle East, killing innocents in Gaza in the name of "eliminating Hamas". This is not enough, and it has challenged China, another military power in the "P5", in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, and deployed strategic weapons to China's periphery by pushing up the situation on the peninsula.
At that time, the United States did not participate in the war on the peninsula, and was finally driven south of the "38th parallel" by the Sino-North Korean coalition forces, and now South Korea's actions will only remind more Americans of this unbearable history, and for Biden, I am afraid it is not a plus, but a minus.