North Korea Boosts Special Forces, Deploys New Battle Tanks, Yonhap Says
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Anger at North Korea’s killing of civilians in an artillery barrage last month has spurred applications to join South Korea’s Marine Corps. Almost 3,500 men are competing for 977 openings in the elite corps this month, a 37 percent increase on December last year, according to figures from the Military Manpower Administration. There were about 2,800 applicants for November’s monthly intake. Bloomberg's Mike Firn reports from Seoul. (Source: Bloomberg)
North Korea bolstered the size of its special forces, deployed new battle tanks and increased its focus on unconventional warfare, according to a white paper from the South Korean Defense Ministry.
The number of lightly equipped special forces, trained to quickly infiltrate South Korea, increased by 20,000 to 200,000 over the past two years, the biennial defense paper released in Seoul showed.
South Korea yesterday named the North Korean regime as its “enemy” and promised to combine a stronger military deterrent with a renewed push to prepare its neighbor’s 23 million people for reunification.
North Korea is increasingly focused on weapons such as improvised explosives and low-cost missiles and its conventional artillery and rockets remain capable of a massive surprise attack on Seoul, the paper said.
The Storm Tiger battle tank, believed to be based on the former Soviet Union’s T-72s, may be equipped with 125 millimeter or 115 millimeter main guns, the paper said, without revealing how many Storm Tigers were operational. The total number of North Korean tanks increased to 4,100 in November this year from 3,900 in 2008.
The number of soldiers in North Korea’s military was unchanged at about 1.19 million, the report said. That compares with about 650,000 active military personnel in South Korea and 28,500 service personnel stationed in the nation by the U.S.
South Korea’s President Lee Myung Bak has found revived public support for the tougher approach to Kim Jong Il’s regime in Pyongyang he promised to pursue when elected in 2008, after two attacks this year raised tension on the peninsula to its highest in decades. North Korea shelled a South Korean island last month, killing four people, and was blamed for sinking the Cheonan warship in March, in which 46 sailors died.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brett Miller in Seoul at Bmiller30.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brian Fowler Bfowler4@bloomberg.net
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