World: BEHIND NORTH KOREA'S BELLIGERENCE

• Share

(4 of 4)

Red Guard Insults. Despite this help, North Korea is anything but a Soviet satellite. Kim has refused to dispatch a delegation to Moscow's conference of the world's Communist parties this June. He remains equally cold to the Chinese, neglecting to send even a routine message of greetings to Mao's Ninth Party Congress, currently in progress in Peking. He has a good excuse: the Chinese barely acknowledged North Korea's 20th-anniversary celebrations last year, and during the carefree days of Red Guard rioting Kim was assailed as a "disciple of Khrushchev" and a "fat revisionist." Until late last week, in fact, the Peking press had failed to report a single detail of North Korea's latest anti-American escapade.

That was scarcely likely to disturb Kim, who unswervingly believes that if he keeps on humiliating the U.S.—and pointing up its reluctance to retaliate—the ties between Seoul and Washington will melt away. Indeed, South Korea was angry and unhappy last week over Nixon's mild response to North Korea's latest act of aggression. Kim also hopes that the steady flow of infiltrators he sends south will eventually damage Seoul's fast-growing economy by frightening away potential foreign investors and force the government to put more money into armaments.

It seems doubtful that Kim will order his army to march over the 38th parallel in the next several months. However tempting the prospect of a quick success might be, such a decision would be folly without full Soviet backing. North Korea's army is almost wholly dependent on the Soviet Union for supplies, ammunition and replacement parts and, by joining in the search for possible U.S. survivors, Moscow has demonstrated its disapproval of Kim's adventurism. So Kim will likely be confined to a continuation of the tactics that have worked so well in recent months: steady harassment of U.S. and R.O.K. troops along the cease-fire line, sporadic attempts to slip infiltrators into South Korea in the hope of stirring up peasant insurrection and, above all, humiliating the U.S. by pouncing on the occasional American aircraft or ship that strays unescorted or weakly armed within range of his guns.