Defence Minister visits potential Asian hotspot

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 15

Defence Minister visits potential Asian hotspot

NZPA staff correspondent

Hong Kong

The Minister of Defence, Mr Thomson, will begin a five-day visit to South Korea on Saturday. It is thought to be the first visit by a New Zealand Defence Minister to South Korea for several years.

The visit by Mr Thomson, who will retire from Parliament at the end of this year, comes after his March tour which took in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand — the Asian countries with which New Zealand has maintained increasingly close contacts in recent years. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have remained high since the bitterly fought three-year civil war between the North and the South ended in 1953. About 40,000 United States troops remain in South Korea, supplementing

an estimated 622,000 local soldiers and facing an estimated 784,500 northern troops. . New Zealand, as part of a United Nations force, supported the South in the war, and suffered casualties of 39 men dead and 81 wounded. Mr Thomson's visit is expected to include a thorough briefing on the security situation on the peninsula, where a demilitarised zone separates the two sides’ forces along the border at the 38th parallel, established in 1953.

Defence analysts have said that the guessing game played by United States and South Korean military intelligence experts regarding the military ambitions and capabilities of North Korea has taken on new significance in recent months as tension on the peninsula has increased. American military sources quoted in a recent report in a regional news magazine, conceded the difficulty in evaluating the intentions of North Korea, regarded as one of the most closed-off countries in the world.

Some indication of those intentions was received when last October a bomb, found by Burmese security forces to have been planted by North Korean commandos, killed 19 people included four South Korean Cabinet Ministers on an official visit to Rangoon.

President Chun Doo-

Hwan, on a tour which would have taken him to New Zealand, narrowly missed being killed by the bomb.

South Korean intelligence sources have cited other examples of what they term the North’s aggression, including a 1968 commando raid which got as far as the Presidential residence in Seoul and three attempted infiltrations into the South by the commandos last year.

During the 1970 s North Korea established perhaps the world’s largest commando force — 100,000 crack troops trained to move through Korea’s difficult terrain and inflict the greatest possible damage on the South through guerrilla tactics. North Korea steers a delicate political course, playing China off against the Soviet Union. Its leader, Kim II Sung, one of the longest reigning rulers of the twentieth century, was formerly a major in the Soviet Army in the mid--19408 when some 10,000 young Koreans went to Siberia for military and technical training. Kim II Sung, described in the steady outpouring of official propaganda as “the great leader” is now 71 and has been grooming his son, Kim Jon 11, aged 42, the “glorious party centre” whose goodness “radiates warmer than the sun,” to take over.

Peking at least appears to have tacitly accepted the unheard of, for a Communist country, succession of leadership from father to son. But analysts have suggested the succession of the younger Kim on the death of his father could trigger a crisis on the peninsula. North Korea, regarded by international economic experts as effectively in default on foreign debts, could be tempted under Kim II Sung to adopt a more aggressive attitude towards the South in a bid to distract attention from domestic weaknesses, they said.

A series of recent political manoeuvres, including an aborted proposal for a joint North-South Olympics team, have failed to find a way out of the stalemate on the peninsula.

Korea’s location, bordering China and the Soviet Union and 200 km from Japan, raises fears that the civil war which involved Western and Communist nations on opposing sides in the early 1950 s could be repeated.

In 1950, North Korea troops in a surprise attack captured Seoul, now the South’s economic as well as political capital, in just three days. With the capital just 25 miles from the demilitarised zone within three minutes striking time of the North’s air force, the South remains on the alert, said analysts.