War plans taken from Sth Korea
SOUTH KOREA: North Korean hackers stole a huge trove of classified United States and South Korean military documents last year, including a plan to ‘‘decapitate’’ the leadership in Pyongyang in the event of war, a lawmaker in Seoul said yesterday.
The purported revelations come at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea. President Donald Trump recently said that ‘‘only one thing will work’’ when it comes to Pyongyang, hinting that he thinks diplomatic efforts are proving futile and military action may be necessary.
The defence minister in Japan, a close military ally of the US, said yesterday that Trump might take such action against North Korea as soon as next month.
‘‘I think President Trump will judge in the middle of November how effective pressure and other efforts have been,’’ Itsunori Onodera told reporters in Tokyo. ‘‘If there have been no changes from North Korea, it’s possible that the US will take severe measures.’’
In Seoul, Rhee Cheol-hee, a lawmaker in the ruling Democratic Party and a member of the parliamentary national defence committee, said North Korean hackers broke into the Defence Integrated Data Centre in September last year to steal secret files, including American and South Korean ‘‘operational plans’’ for wartime action. The data centre is the main headquarters of South Korea’s defence network.
According to Rhee, the stolen documents included OPLAN 5015, a plan drafted two years ago for dealing with full-blown war with North Korea and said to include procedures to ‘‘decapitate’’ the North Korean leadership.
He said the cache also included OPLAN 3100, outlining the military response to infiltration by North Korean commandos or another local provocation, as well as a contingency plan in case of a sudden change in North Korea.
Pentagon spokesman Army Colonel Robert Manning said yesterday he was aware of media reports of the breach but would not say if sensitive operation documents were exposed. ’’We are confident in the security of our operations plans.’’
While the two Koreas have technically been on a war footing since the Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, anything that suggests the death or ouster of North Korea’s leader, or his assassination, is tantamount to heresy in the North, where the ruling Kims are treated like gods.
Responding to reports about the plans for decapitation strikes, the North’s Korean People’s Army said in March that it would ‘‘deal deadly blows without prior warning’’ to ‘‘the US and South Korean puppet forces’’.
Rhee made his claims about the alleged cyberattack to South Korean reporters, citing documents obtained from the Defence Ministry under a freedom of information request.
Rhee’s aides said yesterday that the lawmaker had collected information from several sources with knowledge of the cyberattacks, and they confirmed that local media had correctly reported Rhee’s remarks.
Yonhap News Agency, citing Rhee, reported that the hackers took 235 gigabytes of military documents and that almost 80 per cent of the stolen documents have not yet been identified.
The documents also included reports on key South Korean and US military personnel, the minutes of meetings about South Korean-US military drills, and data on military installations and power plants in South Korea, reported the South Korea’s largest newspaper.
South Korea’s Defence Ministry declined to confirm or comment on the reports of a cyberattack.
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