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.