Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=07/24/03

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=KOREAN WAR: NOKOR PROVOCATIONS

NUMBER=5-54111

BYLINE=KURT ACHIN

DATELINE=HONG KONG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

///// LAST IN A SERIES MARKING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF FIGHTING IN KOREA ON JULY 27TH. /////

INTRO: The war between the Koreas never formally ended. It was just put on hold by an armistice. The United States and South Korea say a long series of provocative moves by Pyongyang during the past 50 years have increased the risk hostilities could re-ignite. Kurt Achin takes a historical perspective.

TEXT: On July 27th, 1953, an armistice ended hostilities in the Korean War, a three-year conflict that left more than one-million soldiers dead or missing and, according to some estimates, claimed the lives of as many as three-million civilians.

North Korea, which began the war with its June 1950 invasion of South Korea, drew back to its original side of the border on the Korean Peninsula. The warring parties set up a Demilitarized Zone, a no-man's land that still separates the two countries.

The war, however, technically is not over. And since 1953, North Korea has several times brought the peninsula back to the brink of hostilities.

For five decades, Pyongyang has tried to destabilize the South Korean government, made preparations to attack the South, and has tried to provoke Seoul's chief ally, the United States.

Twice, North Korea tried to kill former South Korean President Park Chung-hee, once in 1968, and again six-years later. Although Mr. Park escaped in both attacks, his wife was killed in the second.

In 1983, two North Korean military officers confessed to planting a bomb at a South Korean diplomatic event in Burma. Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, recalls it was an explosion, which killed 17 senior South Korean officials, including the foreign minister.

/// HATHAWAY ACT ///

. and which, except for the fact that the South Korean president was running late, would have probably killed the South Korean president, as well. That is perhaps the most egregious, but certainly not the only, incident of that sort.

/// END ACT ///

In 1987, a Korean Airlines Boeing 707 exploded in midair, killing all 95 passengers and 20 crew members. A captured North Korean agent confessed she and a colleague set the bomb to scare sports fans from attending the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

Pyongyang has resorted to kidnapping to serve its needs.

/// OPT /// In the most bizarre case, a South Korean actress and her film director husband were snatched in 1978. Before they escaped in 1986, they were forced by Kim Jong Il, the son of the late leader, Kim Il Sung, and now the head of the country, to produce movies. /// END OPT ///

In September 2002, Pyongyang stunned the world when it admitted to having kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970's and 1980's, to force them to train spies.

The North has tried several ways to boost its ability to fight South Korea and its ally, the United States.

South Korean authorities have discovered four tunnels leading from North Korea, big enough to allow hundreds of thousands of troops to cross into the South. More tunnels may exist.

And the North has fired a rocket over central Japan, alarming northeast Asian governments and the United States.

/// OPT /// The peninsula came close to war in 1976, when North Korean soldiers used axes and pikes to kill two U-S Army officers who were part of a team trimming a tree in the Demilitarized Zone. A few days later, the United States and South Korea sent in a heavily armed force, backed by helicopters and artillery, to chop down the tree. /// END OPT ///

South Korea also says the North has provoked a number of naval clashes in the South's waters. And Seoul has caught Pyongyang slipping spies across the border, sometimes using submarines.

In recent years, Pyongyang's activities have grown more threatening.

In the early 1990's, a crisis built as North Korea threatened to withdraw from the global nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and refused to allow international inspectors to ensure it was not producing nuclear bombs. By late 1993, there was talk of a U-S military strike to destroy Pyongyang's nuclear facilities.

It looked as if war was imminent. A visit by former U-S President Carter in mid-1994 helped end the deadlock. Eventually, North Korea promised to give up its nuclear program, in return for energy aid from the United States.

During the past several months, North Korea has abandoned its international pledges to stay nuclear free, and admits having a new program to build nuclear bombs.

The Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, Tami Overby, recalls a recent incident when North Korea's defense minister threatened to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire."

/// OVERBY ACT ///

That was probably the most tense in my 15 years here, where people actually were running out and buying ramen, which are the dried noodle soup mix, and bought water just as a precaution.

/// END ACT ///

North Korea is resisting pressure from the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China to give up the effort.

The weapons program raises the stakes, as the world worries that the sort of flashpoints seen during five decades could easily escalate into a war, possibly involving a nuclear exchange. (SIGNED)

NEB/HK/KA/KPD/TW/RAE