			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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THREATS OF WAR IN KOREA
by
Eric Margolis  6 May 1997


WASHINGTON - `North Korea is capable of turning South Korea into
a sea of flames and can completely annihilate the South with
nuclear and chemical weapons and missiles.' 

If the US uses its bases in Japan to support a war on the
Korean Peninsula, North Korea will attack and destroy Japan
with nuclear and chemical weapons. 

So states North Korea's former ideology chief, Hwang Jang
Yop, who recently became the highest ranking defector ever
from the world's most isolated,  bizarre, and dangerous 
nation.  

As famine spreads among North Korea's 22 million people, 
risks of another  major conflict in Korea are higher today
than any time since May, 1994, when war nearly erupted over
the North's secret  nuclear program.. 

I was with the 1st Republic of Korea (ROK) Division up on
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas that
dangerous May in 1994 - and beneath the DMZ in deep tunnels
bored under ROK defenses by North Korean sappers.  The
tension was electric as 1.8 million heavily armed Korean
soldiers on both sides - and 37,000 Americans - went onto
maximum combat alert. 

North Korea's brinkmanship paid off. An outbluffed President
Clinton backed down, opting to bribe rather than confront
the North. The price: two nuclear reactors, food and oil,
all for free. The North's nuclear threat was to be simply
ignored.   . 

Three years later, North Korea is on the verge of collapse. 
US nighttime recon photos  show lights going out all over
North Korea as power supplies dwindle. .  

But the 1.1-million man armed forces, government officials
and communist party cadres are amply provisioned. Most
foreign food aid is diverted to military warehouses; the
armed forces have at least 90-supplies of oil and enough
spare parts to fight for six months. `Starving' North Korea
just refused rice from Vietnam. China supplies oil to North
Korea.. Pyongyang gleans hard currency by counterfeiting,
drug dealing, and from gambling parlors in Japan run by
ethnic Korean mobsters. 

But time seems to be running out for the North's Stalinists.
Defector Hwang Jang Yop and US military intelligence say
North Korea's regime, led by Kim Jong Il, may decide to make
the ultimate gamble by jumping ship from the sinking North
and invading South Korea.  North Korean generals believe
they can conquer South Korea in a high-intensity, 20-day
campaign.

Two hundred Scud-B and Frog missiles with chemical warheads
would blanket the 10 air bases used by the South Korean and
US air forces. North Korea's large but antiquated air force
would be thrown against these key targets in a suicide
mission. The North's 100,000-man commando force, the world's
largest, would attack air bases and command hubs from the
sea, and from low-flying AN-2 transports  invisible to
radar. .
   
Under firecover of 10,000 heavy guns and rocket batteries
along the DMZ, four North Korean mechanized and one armored
corps would attack south, possibly using nuclear weapons and
chemicals to breach South Korea's Maginot Line: three belts
of parallel fortifications, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, just
south of the DMZ. North Korean mobile forces would race down
the Munsan and Chowan Valleys, masking Seoul. By D+ 20,
North Korean forces would capture the key southern port of
Pusan, 240 miles south of their start line.

Reinforcing Korea with heavy mechanized and armor divisions
could take the US up to six months. The only units available
for immediate intervention are the lightly armed 82nd
Airborne Division at Ft.Bragg and the 9th Marine Brigade at
Okinawa. 
  
US bases in Japan and Okinawa would likely come under attack
by North Korean missiles and commando assaults. The North
has six operational Nodong-1 missiles.  These 1,000-km
ranged  missiles can hit much of Japan and Okinawa with
chemical or nuclear warheads.  US intelligence believes the
North has at least three operational nuclear plutonium
warheads.  A North Korean nuclear strike on Japan would 
neutralize US bases there that are vital to the defense of
Korea - and inflict millions of casualties on Japan. The
North may already have infiltrated a nuclear device into
Japan by submarine.

The Clinton Administration and Japan don't want to face
these mounting dangers. They keep pressing ahead with so-far
fruitless four-way talks with the two Koreas, and continue
efforts to bribe the North into good behavior.  

North Korea's has succeeded in its strategy of keeping 
itself in power by extorting aid from the US. Japan and
South Korea by threatening war, and in driving a diplomatic
wedge between the US and South Korea.   

Clinton is propping up North Korea's loathsome regime rather
than facing it down - a remarkable contrast to Washington's
demolition and ongoing punishment of Iraq. 
.. . 
Korea's dangers are hard to overestimate.  There is no
more frightening or more seemingly demented regime
in the world than the one in Pyongyang. The only regime of
equal hideousness this writer has ever seen was dictator
Enver Hoxah's hellish Stalinist Albania. Both tyrannies were
characterized by extreme paranoia, deep delusions, self-
isolation, and spasms of violence.  . .

Forty-five million South Koreans, 125 million Japanese, and
37,000 Americans live under daily threat of nuclear,
chemical or conventional attack by a regime run by
shadowy men who seem a cross between savage Mongols and
modern gangsters. 

copyright   eric margolis 1997

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		Eric Margolis
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