pyongyang hacks war plan by s. korea, U.s.

Stolen blueprint included plot to assassinate Kim

seoul — Hackers from North Korea are reported to have stolen a large cache of military documents from South Korea, including a plan to assassinate North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un and wartime operational plans involving its US ally.

Rhee Cheol-Hee, a lawmaker for the ruling Democratic party, said the hackers had broken into the South’s military network last September and gained access to 235 gigabytes of sensitive data, the Chosun Ilbo daily reported.

Among the leaked documents was Operational Plans 5015 for use in case of war with the North and including procedures for “decapitation” attacks on leader Kim Jong-un, the paper quoted Rhee as saying.

Rhee, a member of parliament’s defence committee, could not be reached for comment but his office said he had been quoted correctly.

The report comes amid heightened fears of conflict on the Korean peninsula, fuelled by US President Donald Trump’s continued threats of military action against Pyongyang.

In his latest tweet over the weekend, Trump reiterated that diplomatic efforts with North Korea have consistently failed, adding that “only one thing will work”.

Citing Seoul’s defence ministry, Rhee said that 80 per cent of the leaked documents had yet to be identified. But the contingency plan for the South’s special forces was stolen, he said, as well as details about annual joint military drills with the US and information on key military facilities and power plants. —

There’s no war, but a war-like situation prevails online between the United States and North Korea. It’s tense, yet harmless and makes for some nice entertainment over the weekend. The West often calls the communist country impoverished. A naive assessment if you consider Pyongyang’s proclivity for destruction, even if it’s of the virtual kind. The North may be poor, it may be a hermit kingdom, but it’s definitely not short of ideas that go a long way to punish its enemies and scuttle their plans even before a single bullet is fired. A cyber war is in full swing. Hackers from the North are busy — stealing, pilfering from the West and the South. Seoul must be worried about the latest the revelations of hacking. Well laid plans gone waste? We’re not sure yet, but South Korea is not doing itself any favours by remaining silent after the report emerged and went viral. It said war plans were stolen from the South’s defence ministry a year ago. Which means the Kim regime was aware of an assassination plot against the feared and dangerous leader for a while. One reason why the North’s foes have not been able to make much headway with the secretive regime because their plans were not and are not secret. They are putting it out there — online — and Kim Jong-un and his cohorts are having a field day. They must be laughing all the way to their villas, mansions or their nuclear bunkers. Who needs friends when you have foes like these who don’t know how to cover their tracks? Amateurish stuff.

It doesn’t help that US President Trump is creating a much needed cyber diversion for North Korea with his comments. So much has been said after he promised ‘fire and fury’ that he is now beginning to sound comical. ‘One thing will work’ with N. Korea, he said last week, but we are certain that he will not launch any strike on an opponent who loves to taunt knowing that he has nuclear leverage. These attacks from the North not only lay bare the West’s and South Korea’s vulnerabilities but also reveal its plots which kills the element of surprise.