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Korea
Communist infiltration of South Korea
2003-11-21
Put the surprise meters away, you won’t need them. From Bill Gertz at Wash. Times.
North Korea’s communist government is successfully exploiting the openness and democracy in the South by infiltrating spies and saboteurs. Both Koreas remain technically at war with only a truce holding back conflict. As a result, the infiltration of South Korea by North Korean agents has continued apace since the 1950s. The official said the North Koreans initially sent teams of commandos in groups of up to 60 to land at night on South Korean shores and then enter society. South Korean military counterintelligence had a fair track record in hunting down and killing the commandos. Then in the 1980s the North Koreans favored using small submarines to conduct infiltration operations in the South.
And some of them got clobbered, too.
But when South Korean society loosened up in the 1990s, the North began using different methods. "Now they’re using agents with fake passports made in Pakistan who are posing as diners tourists," the officer said. The agents are sent for intelligence-gathering work and also for assassination and sabotage missions in the event conflict starts up. Army Gen. Leon LaPorte, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, said earlier this week in an interview that North Korea’s 120,000 special-operations commando force is the largest in the world and is the key element in Pyongyang’s "insanity" "asymmetric" warfare strategy.
I’d surround each US installation with those aroma-makers Disney uses in the Magic Kingdom, the ones that blow out the smell of fresh-baked bread. That’ll stop the commandos in their tracks.
Another major security problem is a result of the South’s pro-North "sunshine" policy of taking a foolish conciliatory approach toward Pyongyang. South Korean counterintelligence efforts against North Korean agents have decreased sharply. Fewer North Korean agents are being uncovered and those that are often get freed by the foolish government. "We call it catch and release," a second senior officer said. This officer said some spies have been caught in the last few years but many are being missed.
How many American soldiers would die because of this if a shooting war started?
North Korean propaganda also has been given a huge boost by the sunshine policies. Once unthinkable, South Korean media now regularly feature pro-North Korean propaganda on both electronic and print outlets. "We’ll see reports from KCNA [the official North Korean news agency] replayed on South Korean media shortly after they come out," the senior officer said.
Increasingly difficult for us to defend a people who don’t want to defend themselves.
Posted by:Steve White

#1  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2003-11-21 3:24:09 PM  

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