No lack of 'resolve' on the Korean Peninsula

After the deep chill of winter finally thaws, the sure sign that spring has sprung comes when Korea's famous cherry blossom starts to appear.  Trees bloom in a wave which rolls up the country from south to north, city by city, over a period of about 2 weeks. 

Cherry Blossom : winter finally over

This is not only a sure sign that March is upon us, but perhaps more ominously that the marching season has also returned. With tedious inevitability the North Korean govt is preparing another round of huge military parades to be staged in Pyongyang. April 15th marks the 105th birthday of Kim Il-Sung, founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or perhaps more meaningfully, the start of the Kim dynasty's rise to power. Meanwhile April 25th marks the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Army.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/north-korea-hints-massive-military-parade-mark-two-big-anniversaries-amid-nuclear-threats-1615074

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/16/north-korea-kim-jong-il-birthday

Pyongyang's parades feature vast formations of people, arguably surpassing any US presidential inaugurations - and with nobody daring to dispute the official figures given to the media.

If past events are anything to go by, this is when Kim Jong-Un, the salad-dodging sabre-rattler with delusions of deity, will show the world the size of his weapons. Meanwhile intelligence analysts will use the same opportunity to comb through every pixel to see if the missiles on display are The Real Thing or just convincing cardboard models. If they are real, then what could be their likely range and payload capacity ?

"My hands are clean !"

"My hands are clean !" - obviously Kim Jong-Un's answer to awkward questions about February's assassination of his half brother Kim Jong-Nam with nerve agent VX in Kuala Lumpur airport. This conveniently eliminated any rivalry to the title of Super Supreme Leader, a post held by Kim Jong-Un since late 2011. At the same time, this incident confirmed that as well as wielding absolute power at home, feisty young Kim has a long reach and will not let his guard down, or indeed his hair down, with respect to adversaries at home or abroad. 

Simmer down
The last year saw simmering North-South tensions rise close to boiling point on several occasions with each short-sighted judgment by one side being compounded by another by the other side. Contributing factors (in no specific order) include;

• South Korea's (newly indicted, former) president Park abruptly curtailing all regular dialogue with counterparts in the north. Euphemistically this technique was described as; '...taking a tough line with the leadership in Pyongyang...'

• North Korea's resumption of processing nuclear fuel
  http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160817001026&ntn=0
  
  
• NK openly broadcasting code decryption numbers to secret agents stationed in South Korea
  http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=215656

• NK hacking SK's cyber military command centre
  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38219009

• NK's 5th nuclear detonation in January 2016 - claimed to be its first hydrogen bomb

• NK's 6th nuclear detonation in September 2016 - claimed to be its first nuclear payload which can be delivered by ballistic missile.

• NK's mostly successful launches of short and medium range ballistic missiles in February, March and April 2017

• SK's annual joint military exercises with the US in March 2017 under the guise of the Combined Forces Command to test battle readiness.

War Games

The annual Foal Eagle exercises of the Combined Forces Command
Jeux sans frontiers - "Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes at the seaside "

North Korea's often-cited justification for its nuclear weapons program is the need to be able to stave off an invasion by 'US imperialist forces and their allies' (= South Korea, Japan). NK claims that the evidence for this malicious intent is clear from the south's annual Foal Eagle joint military exercises. These were last held in March 2017 and typically involve 300,000 South Korean combat soldiers coordinating with a further 17,000 US troops to rehearse tactics and manoeuvres to repel an invasion by North Korea.  So while the south annually holds one of the world's largest military rehearsals to show its 'resolve' to deter aggression, the north develops weapons of mass destruction to, er, show its 'resolve' to deter aggression.

Kung Fu Panda
2016 saw the waters muddied further with proposals to install a US-supplied high-altitude missile-interception system (THAAD) in South Korea to destroy missiles fired by North Korea .  

THAAD: officially 'Terminal High Altitude Area Defence
Promoted as a gentlemen's missile interception system

This proposal soon pricked up the ears of the mighty Chinese Panda, which traditionally prefers to snooze through the tiffs and spats of other nations. Rightly or wrongly China believes that the THAAD radar system can see deep into Chinese territory and monitor China's own military operations. This is strongly denied by the US but China seems very certain of its information, suggesting that China may know more details about THAAD than the US thinks China knows.

In any event, the THAAD debacle has spurred the mighty Chinese Panda to demonstrate a little 'resolve' of its own, with a quietly understated reminder to Seoul just how much the South Korean economy depends on Chinese good will. Seoul's decision to accept THAAD was met with an immediate boycott of Korean stores in mainland China, with South Korea's Lotte department stores being forced to close almost all branches due to lack of custom. Simultaneously Chinese tour groups canceled visits to South Korea en mass while Chinese cruise ships decided to either bypass Korean ports or else the Chinese tourists simply declined to disembark after dropping anchor.        

http://shanghaiist.com/2017/03/13/chinese_tourists_refuse_jeju.php

The Chinese cruise ship Costa Serena docked in South Korea's holiday hot spot Jeju Island.
3,400 Chinese passengers on board, not one of which disembarked.
Lesson to South Korean govt: - don't poke The Panda 

What the Korean peninsula requires right now is a finely crafted mix of diplomacy, intelligence, experience and foresight. 
What is coming is an armada.