Defector Describes Construction of DMZ Weapons Bunkers
The defector, who goes by the alias Kim Ju Song, is visiting Washington and attending closed-door sessions with congressional members and staffers, but he found time to tell Radio Free Asia about the construction of hundreds of weapons-storage bunkers along the DMZ at the height of the Sunshine Policy:
Pyongyang built at least 800 bunkers, including an unknown number of decoys, to prepare for a possible invasion of South Korea while the late South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun was in office, he said.
“Each bunker contains military equipment that can fully arm 1,500 to 2,000 soldiers,” the defector told RFA’s Korean service, adding that construction began in 2004–the second year of the Roh government.
“If a soldier carried all his military equipment, which weighs 32 kilos, and came to the DMZ in full gear, he would already be exhausted before infiltrating into the South. So they built bunkers at the DMZ and put all their operations equipment there,” he said. [….]
“In the bunkers, there are South Korean military uniforms and name tags, so that they can disguise themselves as South Korean troops. Also reserved are…60-mm mortar shells, condensed high explosives, and all sorts of bullets.
The bunkers are not linked to a series of underground passages built in the past to attack South Korea, he said. About 70 percent of the roughly 800 bunkers are fakes, he said, decoys “to confuse the South.
“The North was trying to finish constructing bunkers by early 2008 with the target number of 1,000 to 1,200,” Kim said. [Radio Free Asia]
Just when I’m convinced that the people running North Korea are coolly rational psychopaths, I see some wacky scheme like this revealed. It’s difficult to believe that even the North Koreans thought they could successfully invade the South, especially when their Fifth Column was enjoying such success at influencing government, labor, academia, and media circles through less strenuous methods. It may be that the real purpose of the project was to keep the soldiers and civilians occupied and exhausted with yet more labor for the defense of the fatherland from the brigandish hordes.
I don’t know…Juche’s emphasis on “self-reliance” and near complete isolation is part of the foundation of the society (and the government’s control system), and it is so fundamental to the society, it should have been clear to the powers that be outside of Korea that any and all of the “advancements” during the Sunshine years were drops in a bucket full of holes…That they meant nothing in the end, because the system could not ultimately reform because the reforms were the opposite of what they saw holding the society together.
I think you can entertain the argument that “victory” and unification of South Korea and the expelling of the Americans is also part of the bedrock of North Korean society. So much so after these decades that even the top people can’t let go of it without a fundamental psychological break with the whole foundation.
In short, I think it is easier to picture that they do this kind of planning and preparation because they still believe because to not believe would require a near total rejection of the society — and to not believe and still come up with and implement plans like this would require a type mentality I think is too rare to believe can be found in the ranks of most of North Korea’s elites.
Also in short, even when it comes to Kim Jong Il, I can more easily picture him being dominated by self-delusion than by hyper-Machiavellianism.
usinkorea:
I concur with your analysi 100%. Juche is the only thing holding the DPRK together – it is a cult. The people are brain-washed to an extent unfathomable to anyone not used to working with deprogramming people who have been indoctrinated in religious cults.
Juche, not the USFK is what is standing in the way of reunification. And Juche is crumbling from the inside out which is also a dreadful notion to most Norks.