N. Korea Eyes Neighbors, Focuses on U.S.

When Pyongyang casts its eyes around the neighborhood, it sees a relatively malleable South Korea and a reasonably sympathetic China and Russia that both share its hard-line communist heritage.

Confident that the three neighbors may be annoyed by this week’s missile tests but not threatened enough to react strongly, the North Korean regime can concentrate on its real objectives.

The main focus of Pyongyang’s rattle-the-world strategy is the United States, analysts and diplomats say, because it is the only global power with the financial clout, military muscle and possible will to unseat the regime. And regime preservation is North Korea’s first and foremost objective.

By creating a crisis, analysts say, North Korea hopes to be taken seriously and viewed as a credible threat, with an eye to leveraging that fear into political and economic concessions. It’s concerned that Iran’s nuclear standoff may be stealing its limelight.

And it may want to clean the slate on several rounds of negotiations, aimed at curtailing its weapons program, among the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.

In particular, analysts say, the regime appears intent on backing away from a loose conceptual agreement worked out last fall before it decided to boycott the talks. With only one real card to play -- the nuclear card -- hard-liners want the best possible deal and may fear that greater global integration, even on a modest scale, could loosen their grip on power.

But Washington is far over the horizon, distracted by other conflicts and beyond the apparent range of North Korean missiles. By aiming its missiles in the direction of Japan, which it views as a U.S. proxy state, North Korea hopes Tokyo will also serve its aims by putting more pressure on Washington.

North Korea has taken a calculated risk that Tokyo has almost no stomach for tough unilateral retaliation itself -- for various reasons that include its move away from militarism after World War II -- and will prefer instead to let the U.S. or United Nations take the lead.

Indeed, after warning of dire consequences, including strong economic sanctions in the lead-up to the launch, Japanese officials have issued a measured response. “We’ll implement new sanctions depending on North Korea’s attitude and the international community’s will,” said chief Cabinet spokesman Shinzo Abe.

“North Korea is public enemy No. 1 in Japan,” said Peter Beck, based in Seoul with the International Crisis Group. “But other than causing some annoyance to Pyongyang, any economic sanctions Japan undertakes on its own won’t be bringing them to their knees.”

Even North Korea’s closest ally, China, privately acknowledges that its leverage with the isolated Stalinist state is limited.

Hand in hand with North Korea’s worldview is a finely honed understanding of divide-and-conquer tactics. But bad telemetry put a modest kink in its bid to drive a wedge between its marginally sympathetic neighbors -- China, Russia and South Korea -- and the U.S. and Japan.

Analysts say that having a missile apparently land close to Russian shores was not part of the plan-- nor perhaps was South Korea’s early support for economic sanctions.

“The missile launches carried out by [North Korea] were damaging to peace and stability in the region,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “In addition, according to reports received, which are now being rechecked, fragments of a missile launched by [North Korea] fell in direct proximity to Russian shores.”

Russian state-run Channel One television reported that one of the missiles fell within a few dozen miles of the Russian Far East city of Nakhodka, causing “real alarm among the city’s population.”

“From early morning, people were besieging the offices of local officials with one and the same question: How dangerous was this incident?” correspondent Mariya Shubina reported. “Some people tried to force their way into the North Korean consulate to get an explanation.”

North Korea’s neutral-to-friendly neighbors, China, Russia and South Korea, could issue statements of condemnation or promise relatively modest steps against the regime.

At the end of the day, however, North Korea remains reasonably confident that the three do not feel threatened enough to take serious action.

Not only are Beijing, Seoul and Moscow unlikely to support a possible Washington military strike against Pyongyang, North Korea also remains reasonably confident that U.N. Security Council veto-holders China and Russia will maintain their opposition to economic sanctions tied to their respective self-interests.

These include historical loyalty to Pyongyang, fear of further regional instability and a reluctance to see U.S. influence expand further in the neighborhood.

“Conducting missile tests is of course not a good thing,” said Zhang Liangui, an analyst at the Central Party School in Beijing. “But it’s not so serious that it will cross China’s red line.”

In Zhang’s view, the red line that would truly threaten Beijing would be a nuclear test.

China, Pyongyang’s closest ally and as such the key to any punitive action, would rather have a hobbled but marginally stable ally on its doorstep than face the prospect of millions of economic refugees storming across its border, threatening its internal stability.

“Western countries think nuclear nonproliferation is China’s only interest,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor at People’s University in Beijing. “But China must consider several interests, including China-North Korea relations and instability threats.”

China’s one-party state is not particularly bothered by strong-arm rule at home or abroad. And it shares with Pyongyang an inordinate willingness to do what it takes to keep its top leaders in power.

In a sign of China’s bid to underplay the crisis, news of the missile launch had disappeared by Thursday from Sina and Sohu, China’s top two Internet portals.

Straining relations with allies and earning global condemnation doesn’t particularly worry Pyongyang. In fact, it has made a near-religion out of going it alone with its juche, or self-reliance, philosophy as it has become increasingly impoverished and isolated.

Now that North Korea has the world’s attention, what will it do with it? Probably cause more uncertainty, analysts say, adding that they see little immediate chance for constructive negotiations.

Neither the U.S. nor North Korea has “adhered to past agreements very well,” said the Central Party School’s Zhang. “Now North Korea openly says it’s not bound by any agreements. So even if we later reach 100 agreements, what’s the use?”

Times staff writers Bruce Wallace in Tokyo and David Holley in Moscow, and Yin Lijin of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.