Tensions rise in Koreas with reports of ‘beheading mission’ training
ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Army armored vehicles take position during an annual exercise in Yeoncheon, near the border with North Korea.
TOKYO >> Massive joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are a spring ritual on the Korean Peninsula guaranteed to draw a lot of threat-laced venom from Pyongyang. This time, not only are the war games the biggest ever, but the troops now massed south of the Demilitarized Zone have reportedly incorporated a new hypothetical into their training: a “beheading mission” against Kim Jong Un himself.
It’s the kind of option military planners tend to consider but almost never use. Neither the U.S. military nor South Korea’s defense ministry has actually said it is part of the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle exercises that began this week and will go on for about two months.
But Pyongyang, already feeling the squeeze of new sanctions over its recent nuclear test and rocket launch, is taking a plethora of “beheading mission” reports from the South Korean media very seriously. That goes a long way toward explaining why its own rhetoric has ratcheted up a decibel — even by its own standards of bellicosity. It could also explain some subtle rejiggering afoot in the North’s military strategy.
Here’s a look at what’s going on, what the North and South have been saying about it, and why it matters:
FIRST, WHAT IS A BEHEADING OPERATION?
That’s what the North and South Korean media have been calling it. The military prefers to call them decapitation strikes. But, by whatever name, it’s hardly a new concept.
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They are targeted attacks to eliminate an adversary’s leader, or leaders, in an attempt to disrupt or destroy its command chain as soon as a crisis breaks out or appears imminent. They are seen as particularly effective against enemies with a highly centralized command focused on a small group, or one leader. With the leader out of the way, the thinking goes, it’s a lot easier to take the rest of the enemy’s forces down — or at least keep them from maintaining a coordinated and sustained offensive.
North Korea is a prime example of such an adversary.
The U.S. has used such strikes, often employing drones, to take out key figures in terrorist groups. Pyongyang tried one on South Korean President Park Chung-hee, current President Park Geun-hye’s father, at his residence in 1968. So it’s no surprise to anyone — especially Pyongyang — that Washington and Seoul would consider such an option if a war were to break out in Korea. That they wouldn’t publicly trumpet training for it is also par for the course. And, officially, they haven’t.
All we really know is Washington and Seoul agreed last summer on a new plan for how to train for and deal with a major North-South crisis. It’s called OPLAN 5015. The “O” stands for operation. Officials have not announced details of how the new OPLAN — which, like all OPLANs, is classified — differs from the previous one.
SO WHAT HAVE REPORTS BEEN SAYING?
Since about June, when the new plan was signed, South Korean media have been reporting the new operation plan includes pre-emptive and decapitation strikes. More has come out since the North’s nuclear test in January and rocket launch last month, as Seoul’s government has tried to underscore its tough stance vis-a-vis Pyongyang.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle exercises will include training and simulations of surgical, pre-emptive strikes on nuclear and missile sites, along with training for a “beheading operation” aimed at removing Kim Jong Un and toppling his government in the event of a war. It has also reported that another set of exercises, now being held by U.S. and South Korean marines, features training for amphibious landings on North Korean shores and, again, attacks on North Korea’s leadership.
The reports have generally been thinly sourced or anonymously reported. They have not given any details about how the troops would train for such attacks, though the presence of U.S. special operations units has been noted as ominous.
North Korea, meanwhile, has been almost theatrically apoplectic over the ink being spilt that its leader has a target on his back.
The Supreme Command of the Korean People’s Army issued a statement late last month calling a decapitation plan the “height of hostile acts.” Warning the doom of the U.S. has been sealed, it said the North’s weaponry is “ready to open fire.” The day the exercises began, the North’s Minju Joson daily said “a historical moment has just come” and its enemies “will sustain the bitterest defeat” from the North’s “ground, naval, underwater, air and cyber warfare means, including nuclear strike means.”
BUT WHAT’S BEHIND THE BLUSTER?
Potentially, quite a lot.
North Korea has increasingly shifted its military toward “asymmetrical” warfare tactics that involve surprise, stealth or other means to gain an outsized advantage against a bigger, better-equipped enemy. Its focus on cyber, special forces and nuclear weapons are classic examples.
A decapitation strike could potentially neutralize all of that. Somebody needs to call the shots.
Its long-held ace in the hole, the threat of a massive artillery attack that would devastate Seoul, has also lost some of its credibility. Some experts believe its weaponry has grown older and less reliable. Seoul, meanwhile, has been testing new missiles with precision-strike and bunker-buster capabilities — exactly the kind of weapons that could figure into a decapitation strike.
Never one to roll over under pressure, the North last week made quite of a show of its latest answer to that problem: a large-caliber, multiple-launch rocket system with a range some experts believe could allow it to be positioned out of reach of U.S. or South Korean counterattacks and fire projectiles hard to intercept with missile defense systems.
It is conceivable the North could design nuclear-armed shells for such a weapon.
Even before the current media barrages, experts have been seeing an “action-reaction” cycle fanned by the North’s fears of a decapitation strike and signs Seoul and Washington are at least considering the option, according to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in California.
“The appearance of a new long-range artillery system that is specifically linked to North Korean fears about decapitation strikes deserves our attention, even if the possibility of nuclear armament is only hinted at,” he wrote in a recent analysis for the influential 38 North website. “Far more attention needs to be paid to North Korea’s evolving nuclear doctrine, on the one hand, and South Korea’s development of conventional doctrines that involve pre-emption and decapitation on the other.”
Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
16 responses to “Tensions rise in Koreas with reports of ‘beheading mission’ training”
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Should not have advertised this, just do it!
The US probably already has the capabillity with satellite images, drones, cruise misslles amd bunker busters but the US cannot strike first, so the best thing right now is to try to scare N Korea. N Korea has killed A few S Koreans over the new years but not enough to declare a full US retaliatory strike. If N Korea would launch a small nuclear attack on S Korea or US base in Asia, then the US can justify to the world the justification of a retaliatory strike using neutron bombs and all N Korea leadership, military and nuclear facility targets and annihilate N Korea completely. Since neutron bombs kill all life but minimize residual nuclear fallout, South Korean can take over all territory and all remaining N Koreans who survive these blasts. Not a nice scenario so scaring Jong Ill with the ‘decapitation’ scenario really is the best option right now. Doubt Obama would ever approve such a nuclear response but it would be appropriate to use the most advanced US nuclear weapons and delivery capability should N Korea release just one nuclear weapon on S Korea or a US base within their reach.
Remember all the CIA plots to get rid of Castro? Exploding cigars and poisoned toothpaste? They were all very Three-Stooges operations and came to nothing. Probably the best way to wage war against the North is a war of information and truth. After all, how much can a populace take before they rise up and decapitate the snake?
I’m going to take a wild guess that well over hundreds of millions have been spent on a war of information and truth for well over 60 years and it has resulted in nothing. (Back in the day the information medium was dropping leaflets from the sky). Here’s an interesting approach – How about Obama flying over there to hang out with Un? I don’t think anyone has considered something as radical as that and a new approach may be what is needed.
Info and truth don’t get very far in a prison which is what NK amounts to.
Little bit before my time regarding any US assassination attempts on Castro with exploding cigars and poisoned toothpaste; had to look that up. But if true, I do know they FAILED. Is that why Russia is possibly behind the assassination of Kennedy through Oswald who traveled to Russia couple of times? I do know that Russia executed one of their former spies using radiation poisoning. Propaganda will NOT work as the N Korean population is too weak from starvation and gestapo like police. Only resolution with N Korea is for N Korea to actually strike and kill S Korean citizens in enough numbers that will justify the US to help S Korea launch a massive decapitation air strike. Collateral damage will be heavy. The S Korean forces can then invade N Korea and reunite North and South back into a single Korea. Other than S Korea owing the US for eternity, US needs to get something out helping N Korea other than another headache of China getting in another battle with US and S Korea at the China – former N Korean border area that would now be controlled by S Korea.
Correction: “….US needs to get something out helping SOUTH Korea other than another headache of China…”
Have no idea how far you can push Kim Jong Un before he will unleash his weaponry against the US or South Korea. Currently his generals are not interested in attacking unless ordered. As long as the North Korean population remain placid Kim Jong Un will let them do without a decent standard of living. Only when the masses indicate their disgust will Kim Jong Un attack. However that’s not to say Kim Jong Un has not reached his boiling point?
It would seem unrealistic that un would deliver a nuclear attack on S. Korea because residual radioactivity would drift into N. Korea. But then he has never had any particular interest in the people he has enslaved. Hopefully we will never find out.
But he has a particular interest in staying in power. First use of a nuke would end Chinese support and would bring a US-South Korean invasion that would end his regime. This is bombast talk. The fat man wants to stay alive and in power. Those nukes aren’t going anywhere.
Same thing could be said for Saddam Hussein after his defeat by the US in the first Iraq War. Like Saddam, Kim Jong Un is ONLY talk when it comes to launching a nuclear nuclear weapons or declaring war. The kid is also only a figure head, like the Iron man 3 movie and the “Mandarin” which was nothing more than the figurehead to the real enemy, which in N Korea is the old guard leaders behind the scenes who are pulling the strings. Jong Un is a known party animal and enjoys Western culture depravity and the last thing he wants is to be assassinated with a US cruise missile or bunker buster bomb.
Invite Kim and his ilk to an all expenses paid trip to Disneyland in China, or Hong Kong, or Japan, or Paris, or California or Florida (or even the Disney Cruise Ship), then while he is enjoying himself, take over his country?……just thinking out loud.
shhhhhh, don’t tell him about the second part, surprise him ya?
If Trump will Triumph….then Trump can pickup the tab? no out of pocket to the taxpayer?
Trump will then build a 10 ft wall between the two Koreas. Who will pay for it, the US of course.
I just wanted to comment that the new title for this story’s link is easier to read. Early this morning, the link’s title was “talk of beheading strike option fans koreas tension” — it took a while to make sense of that word salad.
Not so long ago North Korea expressed a desire to meet and talk with the U.S. The U.S. refused and said they want North Korea to quit its nuclear program before they meet. I suggest that the U.S. quit being so stubborn and try to establish some kind of dialogue with North Korea. After all, in all relationships, communications is the key to resolve problems.