Blitzkrieg: North Korea could send waves of troops across the DMZ
If they were images of anywhere else in the world, the photographs would suggest something quite benign: columns of black smoke swirling harmlessly out of a tall chimney across a snowy landscape. But the shots taken earlier this month by U.S. spy satellites were of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, ground zero for the North Korean nuclear threat—and where there's smoke, there's fire. Analysts say the photos indicate North Korea has taken yet another step toward building multiple atomic weapons. The smoke is rising from a coal-fired steam plant. It produces energy for a reprocessing facility capable of turning 8,000 spent-fuel rods possessed by the North into bomb-ready fissile material. "Any reactivation of the reprocessing plant is very serious," says a South Korean defense analyst. "If they do reprocessing at full speed, it won't take them more than three months to produce plutonium."
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, lauded by his lackeys as a "military genius" and "Great General," appears to have concluded that his country can't win a war without the ultimate weapon. Purely from the viewpoint of a military strategist, that conclusion may be inescapable. With 1.1 million men under arms, North Korea boasts the world's fourth-largest military. It has a formidable conventional arsenal, short- and long-range missiles, chemical weapons and one of the biggest "special operations" forces trained to go behind enemy lines. Last week, Americans learned how big the North Korean threat has become when CIA chief George Tenet testified to Congress that Korea's latest missile could probably carry a nuclear warhead to California. Says Victor Cha, a Korea expert at Georgetown University in Washington: "North Korea is not just a peninsula-security problem for the U.S. anymore. It is a homeland-security issue."
Kim may be capable of terrorist-style strikes. But he needs an equalizer like the Bomb because his military almost certainly lacks the capacity to win a prolonged ground conflict involving conventional forces—the most likely scenario should a conflict erupt across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, where 560,000 South Korean soldiers stand guard with the support of 37,000 U.S. troops. The North gets its military clout from sheer size—almost a third of its GDP goes into military spending. But the isolated, impoverished country equips its troops with outmoded hardware, some of it dating back to the cold war.
The majority of its tanks, for example, were acquired from the now defunct Soviet Union. Visitors to the country say jeeps and other military vehicles are commonly seen broken down by the side of the road. A senior officer who defected from the Korean People's Army says there isn't enough fuel for military exercises and soldiers are told not to waste bullets during training. Food is also in short supply. Troops eat better than the country's starving citizens, but some units raise cabbages and pigs to keep from going hungry.
North Korea's navy is small and its air force is dysfunctional. Because of chronic fuel shortages, pilots are limited to less than 10 hours of flight training a year, compared with the 200 to 300 hours that U.S. air-force pilots receive. High-tech warfare? Pyongyang has upgraded communications equipment in recent years to make it harder for opponents to eavesdrop. But North Korea's generals lack high-tech tools for reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting, which are crucial to a modern fighting force.
Pyongyang's inability to win a war may be comforting only to war-games theorists, however. The desperate nation—or at least its military élite—would probably fight to the death. Defense experts say North Korea's countryside is virtually a fortress, honeycombed with hardened bunkers and tunnel complexes shielding troops and supplies. Kim is known to admire the blitzkrieg tactics used by Nazi Germany in the early stages of World War II to swiftly overrun and overwhelm opponents. At the outset of a ground war, the North could blanket South Korea and U.S. troops with chemical weapons. It could use up to 300 artillery pieces that are within striking distance of Seoul to pound the capital's population. More than half of the North's soldiers are deployed within 150 kilometers of the DMZ, so generals can concentrate forces quickly and avoid long supply lines, mitigating U.S. air power. Scuds and longer-range Nodong missiles could be hurled toward U.S. bases in Japan. Even if the North would eventually be defeated, the U.S. estimates a North Korean attack on Seoul could result in up to 1 million casualties. Says a U.S. military official: any war with the North "is going to be bloody." All the more reason to seek a diplomatic solution for what the U.S. still insists is not a crisis.
PHILIPPINES
Terrorist Refuge
Mindanao's Islamic separatists are back to harboring and training the region's terrorists
MONGOLIA
Under a Broken Sky
Mongolia's nomads travel a wintry land of hypnotic beauty. But as Phil Zabriskie discovers, their way of life is under threat
SRI LANKA
Waiting to Exhale
The cease-fire in Sri Lanka has lasted a year. So where is the peace dividend?
