American Presidents Trained North Korea to Ignore Our Threats

North Korea calls threats by President Trump “the sound of a dog barking.” Here is why.

This archival report was originally published in 2017. It preserves the original analysis and references from that time.

For decades Pyongyang has threatened, attacked, captured and killed Americans (and our South Korean allies) without paying any real military price. Instead, America’s reaction has been words, military exercises and, in recent years, cyber attacks and economic sanctions. The last two have caused pain, and President Trump has finally increased sanctions enough to get Beijing’s attention. But none of this seems likely to convince Kim Jong Un that his most prized military assets, or his life, are finally in danger.

How has Kim reacted to recent threats from the U.S.? President-elect Trump tweeted: “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!” It did.

In August, the President warned: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” Kim remained on path.

Days ago, the President promised to “totally destroy” North Korea. Kim’s Foreign Secretary responded: “Our rocket's visit to the entire U.S. mainland [is] inevitable…” and later threatened to shoot down U.S. military aircraft in international airspace.

That threat to an American plane has special significance. Unlike most Americans, Pyongyang’s leaders remember how they once shot down a U.S. military aircraft in international airspace and got away with it, along with other outrages. Let’s hope President Trump and his advisors know this history.

Start with the “Second Korean War,” waged by Pyongyang against the U.S. and South Korea from 1966–69. More than 150 Americans were killed and wounded, along with an estimated 800 of our Korean comrades-in-arms. Fought on orders of Kim Il Sung, grandfather and dumpy doppelganger of the current despot, the conflict started with increased attacks on American patrols and installations along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the Koreas.

In early 1968 Pyongyang launched a suicide squad into South Korea with orders to chop off the head of the South’s president, then seized the American reconnaissance ship USS Pueblo in international waters. One American crewman was killed and the other 82 imprisoned and tortured for almost a year. President Johnson called the capture an “aggressive act” that “cannot be accepted.” The president of South Korea, who’d come uncomfortably close to losing his head, urged the U.S. to launch a punitive strike against the North. Instead, Washington issued a groveling apology to Pyongyang in return for the Pueblo crewmen.

During the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon promised: “There isn’t going to be another Pueblo…We are not going to let that happen.” Not long after his election, North Korean fighters blasted a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane out of international airspace, killing 31 Americans. Nixon asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a military response. But after dithering over the risk of a broader conflict, Nixon opted to respond with a symbolic show of force. The North Koreans were not impressed.

“The Americans don’t want to continue this fight,” Kim Il Sung boasted to another communist leader in 1971 about the responses to the Pueblo and EC-121. More on recent revelations concerning North Korean history can be found at the indispensable Wilson Center North Korea International Documentation Project.

If the U.S. had no appetite for a fight, Kim and his progeny still did. In following years, North Korea murdered two Americans during an ax attack, shot others during DMZ skirmishes and downed U.S. helicopters. Attacks against South Korea claimed even more casualties, from the 1980s bombing of a South Korean airliner to a massive blast that missed the South Korean president but killed 21 others. During the 1990s, North Korean commandos infiltrated the U.S. with orders to attack nuclear power plants in the case of war, according to a recently declassified U.S. intelligence report. In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean Navy vessel, slaughtering dozens, and shelled a South Korean island, claiming several lives. Two years ago, a North Korean mine crippled two South Koreans.

Meanwhile, North Korea moved to obtain nuclear weapons. U.S. presidents declared this would never happen. Military action was ruled out, due to the risk of a North Korean response against South Korea. So Presidents Clinton and Bush tried negotiations, bribery, threats and sanctions, all to no avail. By 2006 North Korea was testing nuclear weapons and accelerating its missile program. It even rented out experts to build a nuclear plant in Syria, which Israel destroyed after the U.S. refused to do so. Pyongyang grew confident enough to strike America itself in 2014 with a major hack against Sony Pictures, plus threaten a “11th of September”-type attack against U.S. movie theaters.

“They caused a lot of damage, and we will respond,” promised President Obama in 2014. “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.” Aside from limited financial sanctions, that response remains shrouded in secrecy, but it clearly didn’t stop the North.

Before leaving office last year, Obama declared the U.S. would “never accept” North Korea as a nuclear state and promised “to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.” Kept classified: just how close the Koreans were to a nuclear strike capability against America.

Now President Trump has inherited a situation once unthinkable, perhaps especially among U.S. servicemembers who’ve faced North Korea. America’s leaders have allowed a homicidal, America-hating dictator to obtain the power not just to threaten our military, civilians and allies in Asia, but to kill huge numbers of Americans in the homeland.

President Trump must now make tough decisions his predecessors ducked, including whether the risk to Seoul of military action today outweighs the risk to San Francisco of a nuclear blast tomorrow. He may wish to consider the regrets of President Nixon, who years later concluded this about North Korea’s strategy: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw. I had feared in our handling of the EC-121 incident in 1969 the Communists may have thought they encountered mush.”

As the Korean proverb goes: “A barking dog never bites.”

Mark Sauter @TerrorSentinel is a long-time North Korea watcher who blogs at www.dmzwar.com. He served as an Army officer in the DMZ between North and South Korea and has conducted research in North Korea.