Korea Times July 15, 2003
'US Mulling NK Regime Change'
With North Korea claiming to have reprocessed around 8,000 spent fuel rods, a hard-line United States media report says the Bush administration is mulling toppling the communist regime by force within a few months.
The magazine U.S. News and World Report recently reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the military to devise a new war plan for a possible attack ''within the next two months.
The draft, known as Operation Plan 5030, amounts to a strategy to topple Kims regime by destabilizing its military.
U.S. military website globalsecurity.org also recently started to count down for a war with North Korea, hinting that U.S. bombing will begin at the end of this year. The site said as of yesterday, only 170 days are left before war.
''North Korea might begin unloading fuel from the Yongbyon reactor by the end of the year, which might be the next overt 'redline threshold that could provoke U.S. military action. The U.S. reportedly plans to withdraw American troops from forward locations near the DMZ by the end of the year, making them less vulnerable to North Korean counter-attack, it said on its homepage.
However, domestic experts downplay the reports. ''Some U.S. media intentionally inflate the current tensions to grab readers attention.
In the case of the (globalsecurity.org) site, the scenario is not based on fact but rather on imagination, said Kim Chang-su, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis.
''As far as the general sentiment in Washington is concerned, they are putting emphasis on indirect forms of pressure on Pyongyang, dropping hints of direct military action, as they are facing criticism over their reckless involvement in Iraq, he added.
Copyright © 2003, Hankook Ilbo
