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Category: ROK Military

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
April 6, 2010

Government Bungling Feeds Cheonan Conspiracy Theories and Frustrates National Unity (Updated)

More than a week after the mysterious sinking of the corvette Cheonan, the only certainties for the families of the missing are loss, tragedy, and confusion. In the last several days, the body of just one missing sailor was found. Divers have searched much of the sunken stern section of the ship, but did not find any bodies there. In addition to the diver who was lost trying to save the crew, nine more crew members of a fishing boat...

Categories Cheonan Incident/ROK Military
April 5, 2010

Will South Korea Go Nuclear Next?

For more than a year, the Lee Administration has been talking about “closing the nuclear fuel cycle” with respect to the uranium it currently uses to produce electricity. Denials notwithstanding, I had concluded that President Lee had given up on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program, and worried that the limitations of America’s will weakened the sufficiency, in his mind, of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over which South Korea frets so much. But now, calls for South Korea to go nuclear...

Categories Proliferation/ROK Military/WMD
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 8, 2010

North Korea Re-Re-Declares War, Threatens “Merciless Physical Force,” Demands Peace Treaty

So Operations Key Resolve and Foal Eagle have started again. I boldly predict that this year, as has been the case for each year for the many decades we’ve had troops stationed in South Korea, the exercise will not end with an American invasion of North Korea. Just as predictably, North Korea is threatening the United States and/or South Korea. The challenge for North Korean propagandists is always how to make each year’s threat stand out from such previous-year classics...

Categories Diplomacy/ROK Military/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military/Useful Idiocy
February 8, 2010

North Korean Gulag Survivors Tell Their Survival Stories to Bored South Korean Soldiers

As it turns out, inviting a North Korean gulag survivor to speak to South Korean troops is a lot like inviting Elie Wiesel to speak at a Pat Buchanan rally: After speaking recently to a group of young South Korean soldiers about North Korea’s harsh labor camps, former prisoner Jung Gyoung Il — himself once a soldier in North Korea’s massive army — was stunned by the questions from the audience. One soldier asked how many days of leave North...

Categories Human Rights/Korean Society/ROK Military/The Camps
February 2, 2010

Rand: South Korea Still a Military Parasite

Years ago, I quoted extensively from a Rand report on then-President Roh Moo Hyun’s plans to cut the ROK military budget and settle into a cozy military and economic parasitism on the country Roh’s supporters loved to hate. But now that Roh is a fading bad memory, the alliance stands on firm ground again, right? Wrong: The ROK has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with a strong economy. Yet despite this economic strength, the ROK still...

Categories An Alliance?/Reconstruction/ROK Military
January 27, 2010

Bang Bang, Splash Splash

When I first heard that North Korea had declared a no-sail zone off its West Coast, I really wanted to believe that it was because they read this, but I suspected that they’d actually launch some anti-ship missiles from Cho-Do. Instead, we have this: North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire near their disputed sea border on Wednesday, highlighting instability along a heavily armed frontier for the second time in three months. North Korea warned the South that more rounds...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
December 21, 2009

South Korea Clears Mines from the DMZ (and Why I Think That’s a Shrewd Decision)

You say you want reunification? Fine, then. Dig up the mines along the DMZ and open the border. No, I’m not kidding: The South Korean military said Monday it has removed some 1,300 land mines this year from the country’s rural areas bordering North Korea, a reminder of the tense 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce. In the operations that lasted from April to November, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) mobilized 3,300 personnel to remove mines from...

Categories NK Military/North-South/Refugees/ROK Military/Subversion
December 10, 2009

Picture of the Day: ROK Defense Minister Decorates Sailors After Battle with North Korean Ship

The crew of the Chamsuri 325, who fought off a North Korean incursion across the Northern Limit Line, are decorated by the Defense Minister for courage under fire. Here is the vessel’s skipper, Lieutenant Kim Sang-Hun: “I could literally see the shells flying at us. Some skidded off the water and slammed into the side of our boat,” he said, speaking aboard the Chamsuri 325, the very boat that engaged with the North Korean Navy a decade ago. No South...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
November 17, 2009

If He Has to Deny It, It Must Be True

While we still aren’t sure whether our Blood Allies © paid the Taliban $2 million or $20 million in ransom, or how many American soldiers or Afghan civilians the Taliban used that money to kill, the South Korean government wants you to know that despite its refusal thus far to do more good than harm there, it did not promise the Taliban that it would keep its troops out of Afghanistan: South Korea did not offer to refrain from redeploying...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
November 13, 2009

North Korea Accuses South of Provoking Naval Clash

As predicted, North Korea’s account of this week’s Yellow Sea battle is jarringly at odds with what the South reports: When the [North Korean] patrol boat was sailing back after confirming the object at about 11: 20 a group of warships of the south Korean forces chased it and perpetrated such a grave provocation as firing at it. The patrol boat of the north side, which has been always combat-ready, lost no time to deal a prompt retaliatory blow at...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
November 10, 2009

North Korean Ship “Wrapped in Flames” After Battle; No South Korean Sailors Hurt

The North Korean navy appears to have gotten the worst of it after an apparently calculated provocation along the Northern Limit Line, the Koreas’ maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea: According to Joint Chiefs of Staff officials in Seoul, a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL at 11:27 a.m. and attacked a South Korean one after ignoring several warning shots. The South Korean side suffered no casualties in the clash that erupted shortly after the crossing and lasted about...

Categories NK Military/North-South/ROK Military
June 24, 2009

Issue of U.S. Troop Withdrawal from ROK Resurfaces in Opinion Piece

Interesting. I remember hearing many people (American and South Korean alike) call for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the ROK during the Roh Moo-hyun years. Some of the calls coming from South Korea in particular were clearly based off anti-American sentiments while other people simply felt the absence of the U.S. military in Korea (or at least a reduced presence) would help the ROK become more self-sufficient militarily. At the time, I remember having conversations with people who...

Categories ROK Military/U.S. Military
May 5, 2009

South Korea: Always There When They Need Us

South Korea, whose main contribution to the war in Afghanistan so far has been to pay the Taliban a $20 million ransom, has ruled out sending troops there to help fight them. Who still thinks that the unsound fundamentals of the US-ROK alliance have suddenly renewed under President Lee, or doubts that Lee’s decision was an acknowledgement of the anti-American sentiments of South Korean voters, sentiments that can only remain latent for so long?  Who still thinks that Obama’s election...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea
January 17, 2009

Hostile Policy: N. Korea Threatens ‘Confrontration’ Along Sea Boundary

It looks like Joe Biden was right about at least one thing: Military tension escalated sharply along the inter-Korean border on Saturday as North Korea vowed to take an “all-out confrontational posture” against South Korea, just hours after it said it would hold onto its nuclear arms. South Korea put its military on heightened alert, warning that armed clashes might take place in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea …. “Now that traitor (South Korean President) Lee Myung-bak and his...

Categories NK Military/ROK Military/Terrorism (NK)
January 17, 2009

South Korean Officer Gets 3 1/2 Years in North Korea Spy Scandal

Somehow, the spirit of the June 15th declaration hasn’t reached all levels of the North Korean government: A South Korean army officer has been sentenced to three and a half years in military prison for aiding a North Korean spy in a sex-for-secrets scandal last year, an official said Friday. The 27-year-old first lieutenant, identified only by his last name Hwang, was arrested in July on charges of supplying classified information to North Korean spy Won Jeong-hwa while being aware...

Categories Korean Law/ROK Military/The Fifth Column
November 19, 2008

Can we finally dispense with the whole “no gay in Korea” myth … ?

… now that the Korean Supreme Court is considering the case of a certain “Sergeant A?” A sergeant identified only as “A” was initially booked on a charge of making a sexual attack on a private in a platoon that he led, but the suit against him was dropped with the victim’s consent. However, the sergeant has been newly charged for violation of Clause 92 of military criminal law.  [Joongang Ilbo] In the American system, cases very rarely become “test...

Categories Korean Law/Korean Society/ROK Military