By Oh Young-jin
.jpg/dims/resize/740/optimize "Didn't North Korea know of B1-B flight? (1)")
The United States tried to validate its insistence on having a military option in dealing with North Korea last month by flying two B1-B strategic bombers along the East Coast of North Korea.
These bombers had flown farthest to the north of the inter-Korean border by any allied aircraft in the 21st century, the Trump administration said, although their nocturnal flight path was far from the North's airpace.
A couple of days later, the National Assembly Intelligence Committee reportedly said that the North was kept in the dark, its radar snoozed off with none of its fighter jets scrambling to challenge the American planes.
If that is true, the North's military is nothing but a paper tiger. Or can there be other explanations?
Bear in mind that the North shot down an American EC-31 reconnaissance aircraft with 31 servicemen on board in April 1969. A year earlier, the USS Pueblo with 83 sailors on board was seized by the North while on a spying mission.
True, then the North was the darling of its two mentors _ the Soviet Union and China _ with equipment well before the end of its shelf life. So did their military in a decrepit state explain their failure to respond visibly?
Could there have been, perhaps, another explanation such as a disruption in the chain of command that deprived North Korea's air defense system of a chance to challenge the Bones (nickname for B1-B) with their escort formation of F-15 Eagles?
The possibility is that, at a crucial moment, Kim Jong-un, the young dictator, may have fallen asleep, not responding to an urgent request for instructions on how to deal with the American aircraft. Kim rules by terror _ killing his uncle with anti-aircraft fire and purging his closest aides just for falling asleep during meetings he presides over.
Would anybody in their right mind venture to wake him up?
But there is a precedent.
On May 5, 1983, a civilian airliner belonging to China Civil Airlines was hijacked by six armed persons together with 96 passengers. The plane took off from Shenyang and was flying to Shanghai. It veered off course, crossed the Yalu River and entered North Korean airspace. Instantly, the North put the plane under its watch but decided to see how it would fly instead of using a more forceful approach because it was a national carrier of its ally China.
The pilot was clever enough to dupe the hijackers and tried to land at Sunan Airport in Pyongyang. It is not clear whether this diversion to Pyongyang was made by the pilot alone or in consultation with North Korean flight controllers. It is quite possible that it was the latter, considering the North didn't even send its fighters to challenge the airplane.
Then, one of the hijackers detected something amiss when he saw a North Korean sign _ a big portrait of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North and its then leader _ as the plane was approaching Pyongyang airport. The hijackers threatened the pilot at gunpoint, forcing him to abort the landing and head to the South. It landed at U.S. Camp Page in Chunchun, in the South's Gangwon Province. Now, it took about 20 minutes for the the British-made HS121Trident aircraft to fly from Pyongyang to Chunchon with the North Korean air defense all but paralyzed.
The North Korean air defense commander was reprimanded for his failure to respond according to the manual for such an emergency. But he was spared from a firing squad because he tried without success to locate Kim Il-sung to gain his clearance to go after the aircraft as the regulations stipulated. Kim was out of touch and nobody except for him could make a decision about such a situation.
Three months before this incident, a North Korean Air Force pilot, Capt. Lee Ung-pyong, defected to the South with a MiG-19 fighter. It might be indicative of the general lapse in the North's air defense. But allowing a stout, slow-flying airliner to fly through its airspace and cross into its enemy's territory was simply disgraceful. The six hijackers were allowed to go to Taiwan, while Capt. Lee got $2.5 million for the MiG he flew to South Korea.
There was a lesser-known case that showed the North's military tendency.
It was in the early 1980s when a guard on duty at the North's equivalent of the South's Cheong Wa Dae fired a shot at an officer and hit him in the buttocks.
The guard was in trouble because no shot was allowed to be fired in Pyongyang apparently as part of a measure to prevent any coup attempt and to detect one if it took place in its early stages. Firing the shot in the dead of night alerted the residents and the garrison units.
The probe showed that the officer who was on a trip to the capital from a provincial unit, teased the guard and dared him to fire his AK-47 rifle at him, if his gun was even loaded with ammunition. The guard tried to dismiss him but the officer's teasing didn't stop. Push came to shove and the officer ran away and the guard ordered him to stop. When the officer refused, the guard fired a shot at him. So what happened to the guard who violated his given instructions not to discharge his weapon? He was commended for an act that could have protected the life of the Kim family in an emergency. The commendation recognized the North Korean version of independent thinking.
What do these two cases say about the North's lack of response to the provocative Sept. 23 B1-B flight?
Maybe Kim Jong-un was asleep. If so, it is fortunate there was no independent-thinking subordinate of Kim's, who could have gone after them and tried to shoot them down. Oh Young-jin (foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com) is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer.
