South Korea still fears attack after 30 years

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 16

South Korea still fears attack after 30 years

By

Patrick Minn

of AFP in Seoul, South Korea

It was 33 years ago, on June 25, 1950, that North Korean troops launched a surprise all-out attack across the 38th Parallel in a bid to take over South Korea and to unify the divided peninsula under communism. Today, the memory of the attack lurks in Seoul with fears that another war could erupt at any time. The 1950 invasion probably would have succeeded within two months had the United States and 15 other allied nations not intervened under the flag of the United Nations. The Korean war ended in an armistice three years later with more than two million dead. Neither the winners nor the losers were clearly defined, and the country was still divided. Although the shooting stopped 30 years ago with the armistice signed at Panmunjom, tensions persist along the 250-km long demilitarised zone which divides the Koreas. Mutual animosity appears as strong as when soldiers were killing each other in the battlefields. Sooth and North Koreajre not (speaking terms with eiS other,

though Seoul is trying to resume a dialogue. The top United States commander in South Korea, General Robert Sennewald, said recently that North Korea could easily launch a massive attack with little advance warning. However, South Korea is capable of coping with such an affront, unlike when the war broke out in 1950. The South Koreans then were illprepared, outnumbered and badly armed, without a single tank. American military advisers had argued that they were unsuitable for the rugged Korean terrain. The North Koreans invaded with some 200 Soviet-built tanks, easily routing the South Koreans, barely a year after United States occupation troops withdrew from Korea. Today, however, Washington regularly assures South Korea of its commitment to defend the country from any outside aggression. Although North Korea maintains an over-sized army of 750,000 men, specialists say there is a relative military balance. South Korea has a 650,000-man armed force J with 40,000 American troops jS the

country serving as a strong deterrent. Western analysts generally believe that North Korea will not start another war, particularly when its powerful allies, China (which also sent troops to aid North Korea) and the Soviet Union, want the status quo maintained on the peninsula. However, the South Korean leaders in Seoul — mostly a new generation which did not fight in the war — are convinced that the North Korean President, Kim IlSung, still cherishes a dream of bringing all of Korea under his control. He has been in power in Pyongyang since Moscow installed him there after World War Two. The South Korean Defence Minister, General Yoon Sung-Min, has predicted that North Korea will make trouble, not along the demilitarised zone this northern summer, but in the south with a largescale commando attack. He argues that through the attacks North Korea will try to divert its growing popular discontent over continuing economic difficulties, as well as over President Kim’s move to turn over power in North Korea to his 43-year-old son, ; Jong-H. .