N. Korean hackers stole joint war plans
‘Decapitation’ plan among documents, lawmaker says.
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — North Korean hackers stole a vast cache of data, including classified wartime contingency plans jointly drawn by Washington and Seoul, when they breached the computer network of the South Korean military last year, a South Korean lawmaker said Tuesday.
One of the contingency plans contained the South Korean military’s plan to remove the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, referred to as the “decapitation” plan, should war break out on the Korean Peninsula, the lawmaker, Rhee Cheol-hee, said.
Rhee, a member of the governing Democratic Party who serves on the defense committee of the National Assembly, said he only recently learned of the scale of the North Korean hacking attack, which was first discovered in September of last year.
It was not known whether any of the military’s top secrets were leaked, although Rhee said that nearly 300 lower-classification confidential documents were stolen. The military is still unable to catalog nearly 80 percent of the leaked data, he said.
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Moon Sang-gyun, refused to comment on Rhee’s disclosure.
When the hacking attack was found out last year, the ministry blamed North Korea. But it has acknowledged only that “some classified information” was stolen, saying that revealing more details would only benefit its enemies.
Some South Korean news media, citing anonymous sources, had earlier reported that the leaked data included wartime contingency plans. But Rhee is the first member of the parliamentary committee that oversees the military to disclose similar details.
It remained unclear how much the hacking has undermined the joint preparedness of the South Korean and U.S. militaries.
Under their mutual defense treaty, the United States takes operational control of South Korean troops in the event of war on the divided Korean Peninsula. The plan containing the so-called decapitation operation, Operations Plan 5015, had been updated in 2015 to reflect the growing nuclear and missile threat from North Korea. Its details remain classified.
As Kim, the North Korean leader, has accelerated his nuclear missile program in recent years, South Korean defense officials have publicly discussed pre-emptive strikes at critical missile and nuclear sites in North Korea and a decapitation operation.