North Korea’s daring military provocations against the South in 2010 have left many wondering what the reclusive state sought to gain from them and whether there will be further attacks.

Ostensibly, the artillery shootings on Yeonpyeong Island on November 23 and the torpedoing of the naval ship Cheonan on March 26 stem from the North’s reluctance to accept the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border drawn by the United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

But many experts here say that the shaky succession process from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to his youngest son is most accountable for the country’s military adventurism.

Three months have passed since Pyongyang made Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, a four-star general and vice chairman of the central military committee of the North Korean Workers’ Party.
 
“Kim Jong-un will be given additional key posts in the party and the military in 2011 to speed up the substantial power transfer,” said Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow of the inter-Korean relations studies programme at Sejong Institute.

The young successor is also expected to visit China next year.

Chinese President Hu Jintao invited “North Korea’s new leadership” to Beijing in a message delivered by Zhou Yongkang, a senior official of the Communist Party of China, during his meeting with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang last October.

But this doesn’t mean Jong-un’s takeover will be without bumps.

Whereas Kim Jong-il took three decades to garner the party’s support and build on his political clout before succeeding his father Kim Il-sung in 1994, Jong-un was rushed into the position of heir apparent due to his father’s failing health.

The general North Korean people reportedly have little confidence in the junior Kim because of his young age and lack of experience.

Many North Koreans believe that Kim Jong-un masterminded the November 23 artillery attack, despite Pyongyang’s propaganda that the South provoked it, and blame him for the rising price of rice and foreign exchange rates, US-based Radio Free Asia said last month, citing sources in the North.

Mid-level government officials and intellectuals see Kim Jong-un as a child and have no faith in his future, the sources said.

North Korea watchers here believe that Pyongyang is escalating military tensions in an attempt to seek national unity and stabilise the third-generation power shift amid public unrest over deepening economic woes.

“Discontent and criticism of the undemocratic and regressive manner of the North’s third-generation succession are prevalent not only among the North Korean power elite but also the general public,” Korea University professor Yu Ho-yeol of North Korean studies said in a recent seminar.

“Pyongyang chose extreme military provocation against the South in a bid to solidify the father-to-son succession framework and seek internal unity.”

Lim Jae-chun, another professor at Korea University, noted that the current circumstances are much more disadvantageous for the power transfer to Kim Jong-un compared to when Kim Jong-il was taking steps to take over his father.

The North has lost much of its income from arms sales and other illegal trade under tightened international sanctions and the country’s currency reform in late 2009, believed to be the work of Jong-un, resulted in inflation and more poverty.

“North Korea’s latest belligerence has to do with Kim Jong-il’s anxiety to turn the tables before he dies to lessen the burden on his son,” Lim said.

“It is likely to show greater hostility with increased frequency as it demands economic assistance and a peace treaty with the US.”

Seoul’s state-funded think tanks project that the North will continue with local provocations, including a possible invasion of the five islands near the western sea border in addition to a third nuclear test in the coming year.

The Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), an offshoot of the National Intelligence Service, said in an annual report last weekend that the North may strike anywhere, by surprise, from submarines to frontline outposts.

The Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) said the North could conduct its third atomic test as it wants “to seek improvement in its nuclear weapons production capability” and “keep military tension high” while promoting the status of Kim Jong-un as its next leader.

Both the IFANS and the INSS said that while ramping up attacks on the South, the North will try to resume the stalled six-nation talks in pursuit of outside aid.

Cha Doo-hyun, chief of North Korean military research at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses, said Pyongyang could try a “new type of provocation” around March.

“There is a possibility of the North provoking again around March in a way that makes it hard for us to take self-defensive measures, stirring controversy over our right to preventive self-defence,” Cha said in another recent seminar.

He said the North is likely to attack from an area that is difficult to locate or strike back.