Home  >  NK Military

Category: NK Military

May 28, 2012

Really? A U.S. General Said Our Special Forces “Have Been Parachuting into North Korea?” (Update: No, Not Really)

What could possibly go wrong with this? US and South Korean special forces have been parachuting into North Korea to gather intelligence about underground military installations, a US officer has said in comments carried in US media. Army Brigadier General Neil Tolley, commander of US special forces in South Korea, told a conference held in Florida last week that Pyongyang had built thousands of tunnels since the Korean war, The Diplomat reported. “The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our...
Categories NK Military/U.S. Military
May 11, 2012

Border Guard Fragging Incident

I’m not sure how I missed this one, but the Daily NK reports that two North Korean border guards shot roughly half a dozen of their colleagues, crossed the border, and went up to the hills to hide. The Chinese caught them and repatriated them back to North Korea, where they’re enduring the sort of treatment I wouldn’t even want to imagine, if they’re still alive. (Hat tip.) This isn’t the first example of defections we’ve seen at the North’s...
Categories NK Military/Resistance
June 27, 2011

Clandestine Footage Shows Starving Soldiers in N. Korea

This comes to us via the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. There’s no embed link, but you can watch it here. It’s consistent with other recent reports from North Korea, some of which suggest that even elite units are underfed. Note that when the soldiers get hungry, they head straight for the markets to expropriate food from the traders. This helps explain why the regime tolerates markets, and it also adds to our suspicion that whatever food aid we distribute will be...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military
January 25, 2011

Kim Jong Il Can’t Feed His Army this Winter

The last 12 months have been unusual, even for North Korea, on several levels. There has been the rise in aggression against the South, the accelerating loss of economic control by the regime, an unusually cold winter, unusually severe electricity shortages, and now, an apparent erosion of control over the military. I’ve read a lot of stories about this being a hard year for North Korean soldiers, and for the most part, this is something new. In the past, the...
Categories NK Military
December 13, 2010

From Cradle to Grave, So Goes the Expression

There is no food emergency in the country now and things can only get better. — Alejandro Cao de Benos Theresa forwards confirmation, via the Daily NK, of my worst fears for a 23 year-old woman who all but recited her own obituary for the guerrilla cameras of Rimjingang: “It was discovered that, without a home, she had been wandering in the market and on the streets, before dying in a corn field,” the Asia Press spokesperson explained, “Since then...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/NK Military
December 8, 2010

If You Must Bomb, Bomb Their Palaces

Now that Victor Cha has written that another Korean War is a very real possibility, that risk has become a matter of accepted conventional wisdom. Some in South Korea seem to be waiting for an excuse to restore deterrence through bombing. This is probably a mix of bluff and bluster, but there’s no arguing with South Korea’s right to self-defense and its need to restore deterrence. A lot of unthinkable things have already happened this year, and I certainly hope...
Categories Korean War II/NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
November 26, 2010

Before We Start Bombing North Korea, Let’s Try Turning It into Afghanistan

I don’t know about you, but when North Korea decided to shell South Korean homes and kill South Korean civilians in South Korean territory, my balance of risks shifted. We’ve always known that if U.S. and South Korean forces attack North Korea, North Korea would respond by trying to kill as many American and South Korean civilians as possible. Estimates that this would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties are probably worst-case scenarios, but a toll of several thousand...
Categories China & Korea/NK Military/Regime Change/Yeonpyeong Attack
November 12, 2010

Get Your Goose Step PѲяn Here

Via a reader — thanks — I get this very nicely filmed clip of that big, expensive parade in Pyongyang a month or so ago to celebrate the ascension of Kim Jong Eun, who looks even fatter when filmed from an angle below his chins. At 1:29, you’ll get a good look at the Pokpung-Ho (Storm), North Korea’s latest modification of the Soviet T-62 main battle tank. At 1:56, you’ll see the new Musudan medium-range missile, a weapon so deadly...
Categories NK Military
October 29, 2010

Shots Fired at the Border

“Two shots were fired from a North Korean military guard post (GP) toward our GP around 5:26 p.m., and we immediately returned fire with three shots as under the rules of engagement,” the official said. “There was no damage from the North Korean shots.” The GPs are 1.3 kilometers away from each other. The official said after returning fire, South Korea twice issued warnings that the North had breached the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. [Yonhap] Right. Because...
Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military/Uncategorized
August 18, 2010

North Korean Fighter Pilot Dies in Possible Defection Attempt

A fighter plane from North Korea has crashed in China, killing its pilot. The pilot may have been trying to flee North Korea. Yonhap has a photograph of the aircraft, which has a delta wing characteristic of a Soviet MiG-21 or an early-model ChiCom F-7. [Yonhap photo] China may seem an unlikely destination for a defector who must have known that he’d be repatriated and killed if caught, but Yonhap, quoting South Korean government sources, claims that the pilot was...
Categories China & Korea/NK Military
August 13, 2010

Rumor: North Korea Planning Biological Attack on the G-20 Summit

North Korea is trying to launch a biochemical attack against the South prior to the G20 Summit in Seoul in November, a conservative activist claimed Thursday citing a North Korean source. Choi Sung-yong of the group Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea said the North is preparing to send 20 different deadly biochemical weapons attached to balloons and parachutes across the border. He said the campaign is led by Gen. Kim Kyok-sik, who commands the North’s frontline fourth corps, at...
Categories NK Military/Terrorism (NK)
August 1, 2010

North Korean Land Mine Kills One South Korean, Injures Another

A North Korean mine which drifted along a river into the neighbouring South killed a man and badly injured another when it exploded, military officials said Sunday.  Several wooden box mines have been retrieved by South Korean soldiers and police, but it was not immediately clear how the mines ended up drifting into the South.  The explosion was reported shortly before midnight Saturday in a restricted border area in Yeoncheon, 60 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Seoul, the defence ministry...
Categories NK Military/North-South
July 14, 2010

Embrace the Chaos: A New Report of Desertions in the N. Korean Military

The London Daily Telegraph is reporting an upsurge in the number of North Korean soldiers “defecting” to China this year. The report, unfortunately, adds little detail to the headline’s claim, aside from saying that “on one stretch of the border, Chinese troops apprehended five North Korean soldiers in May alone.” Despite the breathless headline, the text offers no evidence that a “military clash” is “imminent.” Perhaps the word “desert” more accurately describes these soldiers’ actions than “defect,” which implies a...
Categories NK Military
July 13, 2010

Götterdämmerung Watch

Open News reports that banditry by hungry North Korean soldiers is turning the population against the army: According to our source, this kind of situation, where soldiers clean out cattle pens, steal pickled cabbages, take everything from people walking in the streets, and rape women in broad day, has been going on for a long time ““ ever since Kim il-sung’s death. The source revealed, that North Korean residents looking at rice bags with American flags say, “They once said...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military/Propaganda
July 10, 2010

If there was ever any cognizable justice in holding Gomes in a prison cell for peacefully presenting a petition to North Korean border guards, it ended months ago. North Korea says an American man being held for illegally crossing its border has tried to kill himself. A statement issued by the regime’s official Korean Central News Agency says Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ suicide attempt was “driven by his strong guilty conscience,” plus disappointment and despair that the U.S. government “has not...
Categories Aijalon Gomes/Anju Links/Deprogramming/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/NK Military/Propaganda/Reconstruction/Refugees
April 27, 2010

New North Korean War Plan: Grab Seoul, Negotiate

Via the Joongang Ilbo, North Korea’s on-the-shelf invasion oplan no longer calls for invading all of South Korea, but in recognition of stronger U.S. and South Korean military capabilities, now calls for quickly occupying Seoul and then negotiating favorable terms. With the new plan, the North would concentrate its early fire on Seoul and neighboring areas, where most of South Korea’s social and economic infrastructure is located. “North Korea would try to occupy Seoul early,” the source said. “And from...
Categories NK Military/ROK Military
March 26, 2010

ROK Navy Ship Sinks Near NLL; Updates: 46 Sailors Missing, ROK Gov’t Downplays Initial Reports of North Korean Attack

Original Post, 26 March 2010, ~0800: This from Yonhap. It’s not clear if the ship is sinking or has already sunk: A South Korean Navy ship with 104 crew members on board was sinking off the Seoul-controlled island of Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea, near North Korea, Navy officials said Friday. The 1,500-ton ship sank between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. near the island, but the cause of the accident was unknown, the officials said. A rescue operation was underway,...
Categories Cheonan Incident/NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
March 4, 2010

North Korean Soldier Defects Via Kumgang Crossing (Updated: He Wasn’t Alone)

Update, 4 Mar 2010: According to this article (link in Korean), he didn’t come alone. There were originally four. Of the other three, one was killed while trying to escape, and two more are still missing. The greatest significance is the personal tragedy for the three who didn’t make it, and for the families of all four of the soldiers, who will almost certainly become objects of the regime’s collective retribution. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers. [Satellite images...
Categories Appeasement/Defectors/NK Military