NKorea Doubts US Military Strength
January 2nd, 2009 From
>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 09:12:27 -0700
>From: Mike Potter
>Organization: Artecon, Inc.
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>Subject: NKorea Doubts US Military Strength
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>NKorea Doubts US Military Strength
>
>By Robert Burns
>Associated Press Writer
>Tuesday, October 21, 1997; 3:40 p.m. EDT
>
>WASHINGTON (AP) — North Korea believes the United States would abandon
>the Korean Peninsula in less than a month if an opening rocket and
>artillery barrage could inflict at least 20,000 U.S. casualties, a North
>Korean defector said Tuesday.
>
>Choi Joo-Hwai, who was a colonel in the Korean People’s Army when he
>defected to the South in 1995, told a congressional panel that North
>Korea’s leaders do not view America’s superior military strength as an
>assurance the South would prevail in a war.
>
>”If a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, the North’s main target
>will be the U.S. forces based in the South and in Japan,” Choi said
>through an interpreter. “That is the reason that the North has been
>working furiously on its missile programs.
>
>”Kim Jong Il believes that if North Korea creates more than 20,000
>American casualties in the region, the U.S. would roll back and North
>Korea will win the war.”
>
>There are about 37,000 American troops in South Korea, and an additional
>45,000 in Japan. The United States is committed to defending South Korea
>against the communist North; American forces fought alongside the South
>in its war against the North in 1950-53, and a sizable American force
>has remained on the peninsula ever since.
>
>U.S. estimates of likely wartime casualties in Korea vary widely. Army
>Gen. Gary Luck told Congress in 1995 while he was commander of U.S.
>forces in Korea that a war with the North could cost 80,000 to 100,000
>American lives and a million overall on both sides.
>
>Choi said the North’s leader, Kim Jong Il, who has held command of the
>military since 1991, figures his forces would prevail over the South if
>American reinforcements could be held at bay for 20 to 30 days. Central
>to this strategy is the North’s development of ballistic missiles
>capable of reaching Japan and Okinawa, he said.
>
>Choi testified before the international security subcommittee of the
>Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, along with Ko Young-Hwan, a
>Foreign Ministry official who defected from his post at the North Korean
>Embassy in the Congo in 1991.
>
>The two defectors spelled out in detail the evolution of North Korea’s
>ballistic missile development, which Ko said dates to 1965 when Kim Il
>Sung, the communist nation’s founder, declared it “imperative” to have
>missiles that could reach Japan.
>
>The United States has engaged North Korea in negotiations aimed at
>curbing its missile buildup, including its exports of missiles to Egypt
>and other Middle Eastern nations. North Korea broke off the talks in
>late August after a high-level defection by a diplomat believed to have
>extensive knowledge of North Korea’s missile exports.
>
>Ko said his brother, Ko Bang-nam, was a missile engine designer who
>shared sensitive information with him before he lost contact when he
>defected in 1991. Ko said he feared that his public testimony before
>Congress might lead to further retribution against his brother, who was
>made a political prisoner after Ko’s defection.
>
>Ko said his brother had told him North Korea managed to obtain
>French-made Exocet anti-ship missiles and American Stinger air defense
>missiles, which it then reverse-engineered to produce copies of its own.
>He said he did not know who sold the missiles to the North.
>
>Choi said North Korea has developed longer-range surface-to-surface
>missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometers (about 620 miles), and is in
>the “final stage” of developing a missile, dubbed the Taepodong, with a
>range of 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles). That would, in theory, put the
>western edge of Alaska within North Korea’s range.
>
>Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., chairman of the subcommittee, said of the
>testimony: “This is more than a wake-up call. This ought to be a call to
>general quarters.”
>
>Adm. Joseph Prueher, commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific,
>said last month the United States has seen no evidence that North Korea
>has deployed the new missiles with a range of 620 miles.
>
>© Copyright 1997 The Associated Press