South Korea worries about a North Korean strike a la Hamas

 South Korea worries about a North Korean strike a la Hamas

When US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was invited to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's house for dinner on Sunday, the former cautioned the latter to be on guard against any kind of strike from North Korea, particularly surprise attacks "that resemble Hamas-style tactics."

Politicians and defense ministers in South Korea have drawn parallels between what Pyongyang may do to the country and the vicious cross-border strike that Hamas unleashed on October 7.

The head of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said last month that there was evidence to indicate Pyongyang's future attack on the South "may follow a similar pattern to the Hamas invasion."

Is South Korea really in danger of facing an identical assault, or has the crisis just served as an excuse to strengthen its defenses and adopt a more assertive stance towards North Korea?

Similar to Israel, South Korea shares a neighbor with an adversary that has often threatened to wipe it out.

One of the best examples of hybrid warfare is the attack on Israel by Hamas, in which guerrilla forces penetrated the country and launched rockets into its borders. Research fellow Ryu Sung-yeop of the 21st Century Military Studies Institute pointed out that North Korea has a history of being adept at this and said that Seoul will suffer in the event of a hybrid conflict.

Early on October 7, Hamas launched 5,000 rockets into Israel, while Pyongyang's artillery was capable of launching an estimated 16,000 rounds per hour. Seoul is creating a missile defense system akin to Israel's Iron Dome in order to counter the danger.

Additionally, similar to what Hamas has done in Gaza, it is believed that the North has constructed a system of subterranean tunnels, some of which cross the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). These tunnels may be equipped with armaments and used in the event of an invasion.

How serious is the North's threat?

For many years, the South has lived under constant danger from North Korea, and tensions between the two Koreas are particularly high right now.

But thirteen years ago, troops bombarded a South Korean island, killing two civilians and two marines in the process. That was its last major assault.

Since then, according to security analysts, North Korea's policy has changed, and its objective in a fight would now be to destroy Seoul, the country's capital, rather than to cross the border.

"North Korea possesses much more varied and long-range artillery than Hamas, which only used short-range rockets. The Korea Institute for National Unification's Coordinator of North Korean Research, Hong Min, said that "its strike capability is dozens of times that of Hamas."

Pyongyang has reportedly built short-range ballistic missiles that may carry tactical nuclear warheads, and it has concentrated on enhancing and expanding its nuclear arsenal in recent years. Cho Seong Ryul, a former government defense counselor, claims that this implies North Korea has no incentive to do Hamas-style actions. "North Korea is a sovereign country, possessing its own army and nuclear weapons."

Mr. Cho further contended that because North Korea already had an independent state, there was "no incentive to go to war right now." Mr. Cho is now a professor of military coursework at Kyungnam University.

Furthermore, Kim Jong Un's primary objective has always been maintaining the survival of his dictatorship, since both South Korea and the US have made plain that any strike on the South will result in the death of the Kim regime.

Still, the South Korean administration, which leans conservative, is questioning whether border security is as strict as it needs to be in light of the assault on Israel. With regard to North Korea, the administration has adopted a tough stance, placing more emphasis on military might and the prospect of reprisals than on communication and interaction.

It has specifically criticized a military pact that was meant to stop cross-border conflicts and assaults and was signed by the North and South in 2018 under the former government of the nation.

By establishing a no-fly zone, the agreement forbade either party from using military aircraft or surveillance tools in close proximity to the boundary. Shin Won-sik, the freshly appointed defense minister of South Korea, has now suggested abandoning the agreement in order to use drones for surveillance over the North.

Following the Hamas assault, Mr. Shin said, "The 2018 military cooperation has greatly limited our surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities." He continued by saying that Israel might have lowered the death toll if it had maintained closer watch on its border with Gaza.

While North Korea has violated the agreement several times since 2018, the quantity of skirmishes has decreased, leading some analysts to argue that eliminating it would escalate tensions and increase the likelihood of an attack. According to Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification, "scrapping a contract may slightly improve real-time monitoring close toward the border, but not in a significant way".

According to Mr. Hong, the priority ought to be on stopping the North from striking in the first place."At this point there is not anything any country can do to fully safeguard against all of North Korea's arsenal if, like Hamas, it choose to launch everything all at once."