- North Korea is continuing to build up its military forces
and has shown few signs of matching diplomatic and military overtures
offered by South Korea and the United States, according to U.S. military
and intelligence officials.
-
- The Pentagon has no plans to reduce the 37,000 troops
based in South Korea until it sees clear signs that the North Korean military
is reducing its hair-trigger force posture, said a senior military official.
-
- "I don't see reducing numbers until we get confidence-building
measures with the North Koreans," the official said in an interview
with The Washington Times. "Until we can get real verifiable confidence-building
measures which move them back off the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), and increase
warning time, I don't see changing it."
-
- The official spoke before the signing of a major agreement
Thursday between North and South Korea to build a rail line between Seoul
and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Still, the military official
noted, North Korea has refused to match most of the proposals and actions
of the South Koreans aimed at reducing tensions.
-
- "The South Koreans have completely cleared the
mines off their side [of the DMZ] and are ready to go, and the North Koreans
haven't done anything," the official said. "They just finished
a set of meetings last week to negotiate the conditions of this passage
through the DMZ, but we haven't seen real action there."
-
- North Korea also has rejected a series of steps aimed
at reducing tensions, such as communications lines between military command
headquarters, an exchange of observers and notification of military exercises.
-
- North Korea on Saturday notified South Korea that it
was postponing implementation of Thursday's agreement for "administrative
reasons," the Associated Press quoted an official at Seoul's Defense
Ministry as saying today.
-
- The railway agreement calls for setting up a limited
communications hot line between commanders overseeing construction of
a 250-yard-wide corridor through the DMZ where the rail line and four-lane
highway will pass.
-
- CIA Director George J. Tenet told a Senate hearing on
Wednesday that "the North Korean military appears for now to have
halted its near-decade-long slide in military capabilities" and is
expanding its short- and medium-range missile arsenal.
-
- Mr. Tenet also said there are few signs of real economic
reform.
-
- U.S. officials said projections for grain production
in North Korea this year show only one-third of the amount needed to adequately
feed the population.
-
- "Pyongyang's declared 'military first' policy requires
massive investment in the armed forces," Mr. Tenet said.
-
- Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, told the same Senate hearing that North Korea is unlikely to reduce
its threatening military position because the military is needed to keep
the regime in power.
-
- Pentagon officials said mercurial North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il is winning the support of his military leaders by using scarce
resources to buy new weapons and supplies.
-
- North Korean military leaders remain "deeply suspicious"
of any moves toward reconciliation with the South and economic reform,
a senior U.S. military official said.
-
- Mr. Kim's recent trip to China fueled speculation of
economic reform in North Korea. Mr. Kim plans to set up a special economic
zone in part of North Korea, as China did for its move away from communist
economics.
-
- However, the country remains unstable because of the
closed nature of the system, the senior official said.
-
- The North Korean leader has access to cable television
and the Internet, "but he's the only one," he said.
-
- "He personally has an idea about the West, and
yet when he turns to pass off ideas, policies to his next echelon, they
don't know beans about what's going on," the official said.
-
- "They don't watch the channels, they don't get
the papers, they don't get to travel. So you have in many ways an unstable
situation in which you have one guy making decisions and one frame of
reference, and then you have other people carrying them out with entirely
another frame of reference, mostly dominated by the propaganda picture
which North Korea has painted over the years."
-
- A Pentagon report made public in September said North
Korea's military buildup includes bolstering ground forces with large
numbers of artillery rockets and tubes that are deployed in bunkers.
-
- The buildup is focused mainly on bolstering ground forces.
-
- Large numbers of long-range 240 mm multiple-rocket-launcher
systems and 170 mm self-propelled guns were fielded recently in areas
hardened from attack near the DMZ, the report said.
-
- Officials said the North Koreans also have been building
new ballistic missile facilities, purchased some fighter aircraft and
deployed more anti-tank barriers and combat posts on military transit
routes.
-
- The North Korean military also is dispersing its forces
and using more camouflage.
-
- U.S. intelligence agencies also reported that the North
Koreans are trying to buy 3,000 advanced SA-18 anti-aircraft missiles
to beef up aircraft defenses.
-
- Recently, newer communications and more fuel have boosted
North Korean forces, the senior official said. Exercises during the winter
training cycle also are more active. Despite cold weather and temperatures
of minus-50, "they are out there exercising," the official said.
-
- The U.S. military in South Korea recently completed
a new Status of Forces Agreement comparable to arrangements for troops
in Japan and Germany.
-
- The military is consolidating the more than 90 military
camps and stations in South Korea into a more efficient structure.
-
- "Basically, we've shifted our approach in Korea,"
the official said. "Until fairly recently, it's been 'we have to
fight tonight,' and therefore military requirements are the most important
thing."
-
- The new U.S. military approach is that U.S. forces are
in South Korea "for the long haul" and thus the military is
doing more "smart good-neighbor things" to improve relations,
he said.
-
- Robert Manning, an Asian affairs specialist with the
Council on Foreign Relations, said North Korea could become the first
policy crisis for the Bush administration.
-
- "The problem is that diplomacy is way out front
of threat reduction," Mr. Manning said in an interview.
-
- "The threat hasn't lessened at all, and yet the
diplomacy and imagery is that this is somehow a new North Korea and [Kim
Jong-il] is a charming guy."
-
- The agreement that ended North Korea's nuclear weapons
program, the Agreed Framework, is so far behind schedule that Pyongyang
this spring could threaten to restart its nuclear arms program, Mr. Manning
said. "You could have a serious escalation of the threat," he
said.
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