SKorea: NKorea builds up special forces

[Akoto]

Source: Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea has faster, more powerful tanks prowling the world's most heavily armed border and 200,000 special forces poised to carry out assassinations and cause havoc in South Korea, a major military review said Thursday.

Seoul's Defense Ministry report, released every two years, signals that the North's military threat has expanded. It comes as President Lee Myung-bak's administration scrambles to respond to criticism that it was unprepared for a Nov. 23 North Korean artillery attack on a front-line island that killed four people.

That attack, along with an alleged North Korean torpedoing of a warship in March, has prompted South Korea to define the North in the defense document as its "enemy," a stronger description - and one that will likely be noticed by Pyongyang - than in 2008, when the North was only called a "direct and serious threat."

The new document says the North intends to rely on its nuclear program, special forces, long-range artillery, submarines and cyber warfare forces as a counterweight to South Korea's high-tech conventional military.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_KOREAS_CLASH?SITE=RIPRJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[PufPuf23]

1. I worry about nukes, South Korea, China and Russia.

To poke the stick in the hornet's nest and groom the international media is creepy.

I am all about peace and good relations and prosperity,

Sabre rattling or worse in a net loss-loss regardless.

[provis99]

2. oh, good grief.

Like South Korea is the beacon of truth for what North Korea is up to. Next they'll say North Korea is planning to use secret ninja sharks with laser beams on their heads.

[OnlinePoker]

3. Maybe not...

...but they have discovered several "Invasion" tunnels from the north over the years under the DMZ. I imagine there are more out there undiscovered. That would make for a bad day to have enemy divisions pouring in behind your lines, cutting off resupply and means of escape.

[sofa king]

4. Yep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Tunnel_of_Aggression

Although the tunnels seem at first blush to be overdoing it, part of the North Korean plan is to turn everything between their border and Seoul into a moonscape by sending 20,000 artillery shells a minute downrange, so their plan of invasion has to account for there being no navigable roads within 10-12 miles of the border. Better for the supply line to literally pop up out of nowhere than for the NKs to have to build a new road for it.

But if we do know where they all are, or find out, then we'll wait for the tunnels to fill up and then cave in both ends of each one with a few well-placed JDAMs.

And they really do have the most special forces units in the world--as many as 200,000 troops. I would guess most of them are mountain troops and extremely light infiltration forces--just the sort of fellows you don't want to have to root out of 10,000 square miles of craters.