Flash Point North Korea by Richard A Mobley

Author:Richard A Mobley [Mobley, Richard A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612513560
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

North Korea Responds

After the incident, North Korean forces, especially those with air defense missions, assumed a high state of alert. NKAF aircraft that had been near the west coast moved inland. The North’s overall posture was defensive, just as it had been after the Pueblo incident; it did not appear to be preparing for more provocations.52 The British also discerned no evidence that the North intended further provocative action.53

North Korea broadcast its version of events quite quickly—about two hours after the incident.54 North Korean media coverage (for both domestic and international audiences) remained unwaveringly hostile and unrepentant throughout the crisis. (To this day, the North Korean media lauds both the seizure of Pueblo and the EC-121 shootdown as major accomplishments!) Had there been confusion in the hierarchy, as might be expected after an accidental downing, the North might not have issued a press release so quickly or been so consistent in its story. Instead, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and Pyongyang Home Service repeatedly made the following points:

•With a “single shot,” the KPA downed a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft flying at “a high altitude” and “deep” into DPRK airspace. As if to leave no doubt about the certainty of Pyongyang’s cause, virtually every press comment claimed that the aircraft had been “deep” in North Korean airspace.55

•The United States had engaged in an extensive aerial reconnaissance program against North Korea for years. The press claimed that in 1965, RB-47 and L-19 aircraft had penetrated DPRK airspace. North Korea also claimed that after the Pueblo seizure, RB-47s, RB-57s, EC-121s, and RC-130s had conducted “aerial espionage” several hundred times against the North.56

•Defense Minister “Order Number 24” commended the KPA’s “896 Unit” for conducting the shootdown. The citation warned that the “situation remains tense” and exhorted the unit to “step up military and political training.”57

•Even before the shootdown, the United States had been intensifying provocations along the DMZ and had been conducting exercises such as Focus Retina. The very first English-language KCNA report on the shootdown devoted its first paragraph to saying that Washington was “intensifying the war provocation maneuvers” against North Korea and flying the reconnaissance mission “while perpetrating grave provocations along the Military Demarcation Line.”58

•Most commentary warned that North Korea would retaliate if there were further provocations. For example, the Pyongyang Home Service stated, “our people and the KPA will return retaliation for the retaliation of the U.S. imperialists and all-out war for all-out war.”59

At the height of the crisis, during the last week of April 1969, the North Korean government issued a lengthy statement encapsulating its position. Broadcast to both domestic and international audiences, the statement incorporated the above themes and added other familiar North Korean foreign policy constructs. The following quotes from its text summarize the DPRK’s public posture throughout the EC-121 crisis:

The U.S. imperialists’ reconnaissance planes have in recent months flown about the territorial air of our Republic to commit acts of espionage on several occasions and the [EC-121] had intruded deep into the territorial air of the Republic to conduct hostile acts of espionage.

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