Seoul keeps watchful eye on North Korea

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 16

Seoul keeps watchful eye on North Korea

By

NAYLOR HILLARY

who recently

visited South Korea as a guest of the Korean Government.

Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is a thriving city of more than seven million people. In its centre high rise buildings abound; the streets are crowded with traffic; the suburbs have expanded for miles among the steep hills which ring the city. But Seoul is also a hostage to any military threats from North Korea. The military armistice line, which has divided Korea into a communist North and a noncommunist South for 25 years, is only 30 miles away. Seoul is a jittery city, even in the midst of its prosperity. Civil defence exercises are held once a month and are taken very seriously. Photography is forbidden from high vantage points overlooking the city. Even the prostitutes generally respect the curfew between midnight and 4 a.m. The closest military airfields in North Korea, at Taetan and Koksan, are .only three minutes’ flying time away. With so little warning it would be virtually impossible to protect Seoul from air attack. South Korea’s strategy, instead, is to ensure that the country’s capability to retaliate is so great that the North will never attempt to reunite the peninsula through a surprise attack. Part .of South Korea’s ability to retaliate rests at present with the American forces based in the country. Americans in Korea say, without undue modesty, that they have “nukes in theatre.” That is, an attack on South Korea might be met with nuclear retaliation. The proposal to withdraw American forces from South Korea aroused anger and deep alarm in the South Korean Government and among many South Koreans. However, recent reassurances that the United States has no intention of abandoning South Korea have gone some way to allaying the fears. Even if American ground forces were withdrawn, the "nukes,” and the will to use them, would probably remain. The United States Fifth Air Force, with its headquarters at Yokota, near Tokyo, in Japan, is targeted against North Korea. The Fifth has four squadrons based inside South Korea, two at Osan just south of Seoul, and two more further south at Kunsan.

The Americans say their greatest worry at present is the unpredictable nature of the North Koreans regime. Rumours of a power struggle

in the Northern capital of Pyongyang make it difficult to be sure that the North will continue to behave as it has in the past. American forces in South Korea have also been unsettled by the proposals for major force reductions in the next five years. American Forces Radio Korea is broadcasting messages telling servicemen to "ignore rumours of your withdrawal” and that American forces in South Korea remain “an important part of the defence of the Free World.” South Koreans resent deeply any suggestion that all foreign troops should be withdrawn from the country, especially when the suggestion comes from N.orth Korea which claims to have no foreign troops on its soil. “The North has common borders with its two great allies — China and the Soviet Union,” said Mr Shin , Chan, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defence. “They can be reinforced within hours. Our ally, the United States, is thousands of miles away.” Surprise attack from the air is not the only threat felt by South Koreans. Because the country’s capital, and much of its wealth and population, lie so - close to the border they, fear that a surprise ground attack might reach Seoul before it could be stopped. They are reluctant to discuss whether they would risk the destruction of their capital in the process of defending it. In 1950 North Korea overran Seoul in three days. Now the South Koreans evolved a strategy which depends on stopping an invasion in the 30 miles between Seoul and the Demilitarised Zone (D.M.Z.). This area, between the Han River which flows through Seoul and the Imjin River just south of the D.M.Z., is a mixture of rugged hills and rolling farmlands. Fine new roads run as far as the Imjin. But the roads pass through line after line of tank traps and defensive positions which stretch to the horizon on either side. Giant concrete blocks on slim pillars straddle the roads, waiting to be brought crashin gdown as road blocks if an attack ever comes. In the peaceful villages on either side of the roads people use the concrete “dragons’ teeth” of the tank traps as convenient places to spread washing to dry. At the Imjin River the flourishing South Korean

countryside virtually stops. Most of the bridges across the river were destroyed between 1950 and 1953 during the Korean War when the river was captured and recaptured several times. They have not been rebuilt. One new road ends at an old railway bridge where planks have been laid to make one-way motor traffic possible. On both sides of the river are heavily fortified United States Army positions. Most of the 32,000 American ground troops in South Korea are concentrated in this vital area between Seoul and its enemies.' “Welcome to Manchu Country” reads a sign just north of the Imjin where units of the United States Second Division, who call themselves “The Manchus,” are dug in. The strategic planners say that the troops north of the river are no more than a “trip wire,” a screen to give defenders to the south time to prepare. They would withdraw across the remaining Imjin bridge before it was blown up. Not all the troops see their task in this light. “Hell man,” a black sergeant from Georgia told me, “we been wait-

ing for the commies for 20 years. We sure as hell aren’t going to run if they appear now.” To a visitor, the prospect of an invasion from North Korea seems unlikely in the face of South Korea’s defences, at least as long as the United States continues to offer its protection. But the South Koreans believe they are threatened in two other directions. They are alarmed that the North Koreans, through direct approaches to the United States, appear to be attempting to manipulate President Carter and American public opinion to encourage the withdrawal of American support. And the South believes that the North continues to attempt to infiltrate the South, by sea and, perhaps, through tunnels under the D.M.Z., which is 4000 metres wide. A spokesman for the South Korean Ministry of National Defence said that two tunnels had been found; as many as 10 more might exist. Tunnels could be used to infiltrate terrorists and agitators into South Korea; they might also be important in allowing North Korean units to emerge behind the first line

of the South’s defences in the event of a major attack. The South Koreans say that the two tunnels found so far would each be big enough for a battalion of 800 men to pass through in less than an hour. “The tunnels, the attempts by North Korean boats to land infiltrators, the use of the monsoon to send propaganda balloons into the South —all these things are being done to test the resolve of the United States and the R.O.K. (Republic of Korea) Army,” the spokesman said. “Attempts to infiltrate spies increase at this time of the year—the early summer when there is more foliage on the hills and when infiltrators can survive more easily in the open,” he said. South Korea claims that all infiltrators landed by boat from the North are reported at once by local villagers—often by children —and are captured. Late last month the South Koreans sank a boat from the North which, they said, was making for the coast and refused to stop when ordered to do so. “For the last 25 years we have had a state of no peace and no war,” said Dr Ha-woo Lee, foreign press affairs offi-

cer at the Ministiy of Culture and Information. “We have had to put security before material prosperity; we still spend 36 per cent of our Budget on defence,” he said. “We face strong criticism from other parts of the Free World because we have to balance the demands of national security against the fundamental rights of individuals, and sometimes those rights have to be curtailed.” South Koreans clearly do not want war. They have renounced the idea of attempting to reunify their country by force. In the South the rising standard of living and the general prosperity mean that the country has too much to lose to risk a war which might only be won at the price of national destruction. But reunification remains the overriding desire of everyone I talked to in South “We cannot meet relatives whom we have not seen for 30 years. Many people who fled south from the Communists cannot visit their ancestral graves.” These were two frequent complaints. The prospect of a peaceful solution to Korea’s division will be discussed in a further article.