POHANG, South Korea (AP) — The Associated Press spoke with dozens of South Koreans for a detailed look at the nation’s stark division in views about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear-tipped missiles targeting the South and its major ally and protector, the United States.
How South Korea sees its northern rival is a famously complicated subject, split along deep societal fault lines: Age, wealth, politics, status, history, sex.
The result is that some see little danger in North Korea’s threatening rhetoric, weapons tests and aggressive military maneuvers — and some are stocking bunkers with goods meant to get them through a nuclear strike.
Here are some key takeaways from the AP examination of South Korea’s unique, fragmented perception of its biggest enemy and closest neighbor, North Korea.
North Korea is fast becoming a nuclear power
The exact details of the North’s secretive nuclear program are difficult for outsiders to determine.
But a consensus has formed that the country, one of the world’s poorest, is making steady — occasionally dramatic — progress in its drive for an arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles. That progress was underlined Thursday when North Korea test-fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles just days after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to make his nuclear force fully ready for battle.
The end of the three-year Korean War in 1953 resulted in an uneasy cease-fire, which means that the Korean Peninsula, separated by the world’s most heavily armed border, is technically still at war. Those tensions are palpable in South Korea, where every able-bodied man must serve in the military.
North Korea has been working on its nuclear program for decades, but it started in earnest in the 1990s. Its regular missile and nuclear tests are meant to build an arsenal that can accurately hit targets on the American mainland. There are still technical issues Pyongyang must master, but the development of such weapons may only be a matter of time.
Experts estimate that Pyongyang has as many as 60 warheads.
Some South Koreans are very worried
“Kim Jong Un might really use a nuke,” Kim Jaehyun, a 22-year-old undergraduate law student, told AP. “North Korea could really attack us out of the blue.”
Kim Jaehyun stockpiles a bulletproof vest and other military gear in the event of a war. He also regularly attends North Korea security seminars and reads articles on war scenarios.
“There needs to be at least one person like me who can raise how dangerous” North Korea is, Kim said. “People just take the looming threats too lightly. It’s like they see the knife coming closer to them but never think the knife could stab them.”
Anxiety in South Korea is partly linked to former U.S. President Donald Trump, who repeatedly questioned the decades-long Seoul-Washington alliance. This, along with the North’s rapid nuclear progress, has raised serious questions in Seoul about whether Washington would fulfill its oft-stated pledge to respond with its own nuclear weapons if the North attacked South Korea.
Shin Nari can quickly quantify her worry about nuclear war.
“Number-wise, from 1 to 10, I would say 8. … I take it very seriously,” said Shin, 34, a master’s student at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. She says a war could happen anytime. “In a few seconds, we could just blow up here.”
On the outskirts of Seoul, Jung Myungja, 73, was so worried about a nuclear attack that she commissioned the building of a bunker, about the size of a medium-sized walk-in closet, below the courtyard of her house.
“You never know what the future holds,” Jung said. “These days you get local news and (expert) opinions that say there is likely to be another war in this country. I personally think that can really happen again.”
Two longtime North Korea experts — Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker, both of whom have regularly visited the North — argued at the beginning of 2024 that Kim Jong Un had “made a strategic decision to go to war,” creating a situation on the Korean Peninsula that’s “more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950.”
Others, not so much
“If a fish lives in water, it doesn’t think about the water.”
That’s how the Rev. Chung Joon-hee, a pastor at Youngnak Presbyterian Church in Seoul, one of South Korea’s biggest and most influential churches, explains why many South Koreans ignore the constant North Korean threat.
“This is our world,” he said. “There is nowhere to hide or go. … If there is a provocation or anything that happens, we have to accept that as context in our life.”
Many of the people in South Korea who don’t worry tend to have an abiding faith in Washington’s rhetoric about its “ironclad alliance” with Seoul — and the nearly 30,000 American troops stationed in the South as a deterrent.
Many in South Korea, regardless of age or economic background, also discount the nuclear threat as hollow because of a simple truth: Aside from occasional deadly skirmishes, the North hasn’t backed up its regular threats to use its weapons in a full-scale attack on the South.
“I hope he won’t get injured,” said Yeon Soo Lee, 55, a business owner from Gangneung, said of his son who is becoming a third-generation marine. “But I have no concern that he will be involved in a possible war that North Korea has been implying will happen these days.”
Kwon Young-il, a 28-year-old car salesperson who completed his active military duty in 2021 and is now in the reserves, says almost all the experienced soldiers he knows don’t think war is coming. That includes him.
What does he worry about? “Whether I should get a lunch box provided by the army or buy my own lunch at the post exchange,” he said of his reserve training. “None of my friends seriously think I will have to fight against North Korea.”
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The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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