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The South and North Korean national football teams greet each other in Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Stadium for a 2022 World Cup qualifier on Oct. 15. (provided by the KFA)

As he arrived at Incheon International Airport early in the morning on Oct. 17 following the third inter-Korean soccer match in Group H of the second qualification round for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Son Heung-min, captain of the South Korean national team, was asked by a reporter whether the athletes had done a uniform exchange with the North Koreans. After thinking for a moment, Son replied, “I’m not sure if you could call it that. . . .”

Soccer players often take off and exchange their sweat-soaked jerseys as a gesture of mutual encouragement, respect, and affection after giving it their all for 90 minutes on the field. The mood at the match in Pyongyang on Oct. 15, however, was too harsh and hostile for the South and North Korean athletes to trade jerseys.

But the two sides might not have been able to trade jerseys even if the mood at the match had been positive. Ahead of their departure for Pyongyang, the South Korea Football Association (KFA) advised the athletes they should not exchange jerseys with North Korean athletes after the match – citing the potential violation of sanctions against North Korea. The KFA reportedly instructed the players beforehand to “bring back everything you take with you” and “not trade uniforms.” The matter apparently received even more attention because the national team’s uniform sponsor was the US brand Nike.

Taking place in a stadium with no spectators, no live coverage, no press coverage, and no cheering squads, the Pyongyang match provided an unvarnished look at how frosty inter-Korean relations have become. Despite hopes on the South Korean side that the Pyongyang match might go some small way in mending inter-Korean relations, North Korea approached it a different way. With its actions, the North showed it was no mere rhetoric when a Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country said in an Aug. 16 statement that the authorities in Pyongyang “have nothing to talk any more with the South Korean authorities nor have any idea to sit with them again.”

Many things are now being said about North Korea’s chilly and hardened stance, but what stands out is the analysis of Cheong Wook-sik, director of Peace Network, who said, “The essential reason has mostly to do with North Korea viewing Chairman Kim Jong-un’s ‘recommendations’ as having been ignored.”

While directing a missile launch on July 25, Kim shared a message of disgruntlement with the South Korean authorities for their “duplicitous behavior in staging ‘handshakes of peace’ in front of the people of the world and talking about ‘joint declarations’ and ‘agreements,’ and then turning around and doing bizarre things like introducing state-of-the-art offense weapons and forcing ahead joint military exercises.”

Indeed, the South Korean government announced large-scale military buildup plans after Kim’s remarks were made. The Moon Jae-in administration has increased defense spending beyond those of the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, which both emphasized “security.” A look back at the rate of increase in defense spending for past administrations shows averages of 8.9% over the five years of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, 5.2% for the five years of the Lee administration, and 4.1% for the five years of the Park administration. Under Moon’s administration, the rates have been 7.6% in 2018, 8.2% in 2019, and an anticipated 7.4% in 2020. At an Armed Forces Day event on Oct. 1, the administration unveiled a state-of-the-art F-35A fighter aircraft. It also recently announced plans to build a light aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine.

“At an inter-Korean summit last year, [Moon and Kim] agreed to pursue phased-in arms reductions for the first time in history, and now the South has embarked on what amounts to a historic military buildup,” said Cheong Wook-sik. “It’s no surprise that Kim Jong-un is disconcerted.”

In the wake of a collapse in North Korea-US working-level negotiations in Stockholm on Oct. 5, Kim Myong-gil, roving ambassador for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, released a statement expressing strong displeasure with South Korea-US joint military exercises and the introduction of state-of-the-art weaponry around the Korean Peninsula, which it characterized as a policy of hostility toward the North. North Korea has also cited the South Korea-US joint exercises in its justifications for conducting missile and multiple rocket launcher tests since May.

The South Korean government has explained that its joint command post exercise with the US this past August and its acquisition of F-35A stealth fighters and spy satellites are preliminary measures needed for regaining wartime operational control, or OPCON, of its military from the US. According to the government, the OPCON transfer is an essential step in building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, and the acquisition of cutting-edge weaponry is aimed to counter the military power not only of North Korea but also of the neighboring powers of China and Japan.

How should South and North Korea go about addressing that issue? “If maintaining South Korea-US joint military exercises and acquiring state-of-the-art weapons for the South Korean military are unavoidable for the time being, we need to think about the appropriate level of North Korean military power, the level that South Korea and the US are willing to tolerate after the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” argues Cho Sung-ryul, a research consultant for the Institute for National Security Strategy.

This is part of a presentation titled “Methods of Promoting Arms Control on the Korean Peninsula” that Cho is planning to deliver at the Forum for Seeking a Transformation of the South Korea-US alliance, which is being jointly organized by the Civil Peace Forum, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, and the Hankyoreh Unification and Culture Foundation at Cheongam Hall on the 3rd floor of the Hankyoreh office in Seoul on the afternoon of Oct. 22.

Cho’s advocacy of arms control is based on his belief that South and North Korea should take meaningful steps to eliminate mutual threats in order to mitigate mutual military tensions.

In his paper, Cho identifies “the handover of wartime operational control and the reorganization of the Combined Forces Command as issues impinging on the security of the Korean Peninsula” and argues that “arms controls aimed at easing military tensions between South Korea and the US on the one hand and North Korea on the other are necessary for building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.” The resolutions that the UN Security Council has adopted against North Korea demand that the North eliminate all its nuclear weapons and its ongoing nuclear programs, as well as all its ballistic missiles and biological and chemical weapons, through complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID).

But Cho has concluded that it’s not realistic to make such demands of North Korea, which has been forced to enter denuclearization talks by sanctions that were made as tough as possible for that very purpose. He believes that the power to counterattack against preemptive strikes by its neighbors would be an appropriate military capability for North Korea to possess after the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. More specifically, Cho argues that biological and chemical weapons, medium-range missiles from the Hwasong-12 line and below, and short-range ballistic missiles are appropriate weaponry for Pyongyang to retain considering the risk they would take by denuclearizing.

Cho says that North Korea will have to maintain an appropriate level of military power and receive an assurance of non-aggression in order for it to give up all its nuclear weapons, ongoing nuclear programs, and intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles as promised in its denuclearization talks with the US. Cho’s suggestions are as follows: for South Korea and the US to gradually reduce their joint military exercises to a minimum, for North Korea to accept the South Korean military’s arms buildup as unavoidable, for South Korea to guarantee corresponding transparency during that buildup, for the US to promise not to launch a military attack on North Korea during the denuclearization talks and to ban any threats of such an attack, and for the US to pledge not to attack the North once denuclearization is complete. He also proposed promoting arms control on the Korean Peninsula by bundling these military pledges together into a legally binding military agreement between the three parties.

By Kwon Hyuk-chul, director of the Hankyoreh Peace Research Institute

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