Ex-general: N. Korea’s military is formidable
Troops will be motivated, South Korea officer says
LONDON – A distinguished retired South Korean general warned that a U.S. attack on North Korea would be met by well-armed soldiers fighting with religious fervor to defend their homeland.
“I try to explain to the Americans — if we have to go into North Korea, it is not going to be like going into Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s not going to be like toppling (ex-Iraqi president Saddam) Hussein. This would be more like trying to get rid of Allah,” said I.B. Chun, referring to the Arabic word for God.
Chun, speaking at a London think tank late Wednesday, said. “I said to my team: Can you imagine what that would look like? (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un and his family is a cult in North Korea.”
The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea since its founding in 1948. Its three leaders — first Kim Il Sung, then Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un — have inspired an intense, devotional following that has kept them in power.
In her book, North Korea: The Country We Love to Hate, political analyst Loretta Napoleoni described the isolated nation’s ruling “juche” philosophy that values self-reliance and extreme nationalism “as a modern religion, similar to Scientology, a non-transcendental doctrine with a twist of absurdity and plenty of dogmas.”
“I have had the opportunity to speak to North Korean soldiers who have defected to South Korea — and you cannot imagine how indoctrinated they are,” Chun said.
Chun, who retired 18 months ago after serving in South Korea’s military for almost 40 years, rose as high as deputy commander of the First South Korean Army, a position that also involved leading the country’s special forces.
According to Chun, who lives just 35 miles from the North’s border, here are some of the challenges that allied forces would face in the event of war:
The majority of the North’s military infrastructure is deep underground, a reaction to the bombing by U.S. forces during the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
Every North Korean, starting at age 14, gets 100 hours of training each year on how to shoot a weapon, fire a rocket-propelled grenade, throw a grenade, pitch a tent and other survival skills. “North Korea is militarized far beyond the (West’s) imagination,” Chun said.
Though the North Korean air force is outdated with about 1,000 old fighter jets, these planes would be used for kamikaze-style attacks instead of air combat. “They will load them with a lot of fuel, some bombs, and tell the pilot, ‘That is your target and you need to destroy it,’ ” he said.
The regime has chemical and biological weapons, which Chun estimates at between 2,500 and 5,000 tons.
In case of a foreign attack, North Koreans would stay loyal to Kim at first. “They have a system where five to 10 families are organized into a group, and if a single person from that group misbehaves, the entire five or 10 families go to the gulag or are executed. So everybody spies on everybody else. It is a great mechanism for keeping people under control,” he said.