It started out as a routine
briefing at a conference in Florida on United
States special operations. One of the panelists,
Army Brigadier General Neil Tolley, was talking
about the importance of human intelligence in
North Korea. A reporter, David Axe, dutifully
wrote down Tolley’s comments and published his
article in late May in The Diplomat, a foreign
policy publication based in Tokyo. The article,
quoting Tolley, claimed that US Special Forces
were already gathering human intelligence in North
Korea.
"US Special Forces have been
parachuting into North Korea to spy on Pyongyang's
extensive network of underground military
facilities," wrote Axe. "That surprising
disclosure, by a top US commando officer, is a
reminder of America's continuing involvement in
the 'cold war' on the Korean Peninsula - and of
North Korea's extensive preparations for the
conflict to turn hot."
It was indeed a
surprising disclosure, since special forces
operations inside North
Korea would, after all, constitute an act of war.
Less surprising was the response from the army. It
immediately responded that it was doing no such
thing and that the general had been misquoted.
The reporter went back to his notes.
Tolley had given detailed descriptions of these
operations in North Korea. And he had spoken in
the present tense.
Then the general in
question weighed in and admitted that in fact he
had not been misquoted. He had been speaking in
the present tense, but his remarks had been
hypothetical. "In my attempt to explain where
technology could help us, I spoke in the present
tense," Tolley said. "I realize I wasn't clear in
how I presented my remarks, leaving the
opportunity for some in the audience to draw the
wrong conclusions. To be clear, at no time have we
sent special operations forces into North Korea."
The reporter was happy to be vindicated by
the general's disclosure. "I'm relieved to hear
the military say we're not sending troops into
North Korea," Axe wrote in an update on his blog.
"Some observers wonder how I could ever believe
that we had - after all, that would be an act of
war. Yes, but we routinely strike military and
terror targets in foreign countries in ways that
could be construed as acts of war."
Although Tolley was speaking
hypothetically, the United States has indeed
broken laws and crossed boundaries in its military
missions around the world. Not only has the US
crossed the line in many countries with its drone
strikes and special forces incursions, it has
pushed the envelope with North Korea as well in
its attempts to acquire intelligence about the
secretive country
United States
intelligence-gathering efforts to pierce the
secrecy of North Korea have certain limits.
Satellites provide detailed surveillance of what's
happening at missile test sites, but there are
problems with resolution, weather conditions and
scope (for instance, an inability to see
underground).
Defectors provide
information, but the time lag is significant.
North Korea complains routinely about US
reconnaissance flights that violate its air space.
It shot down an EC-121 in 1969, at which time the
US government admitted that it had already
conducted a couple of hundred missions along North
Korea's east coast that year. In 2003, another
reconnaissance plane crashed in South Korea. It's
likely that such reconnaissance is routine. But
direct overflight of North Korea is risky.
A former US government official once told
me off the record that Washington indeed had human
intelligence inside North Korea in the early
1990s. He didn't provide details. In 2004,
according to USA Today, then-Central Intelligence
Agency director Porter Goss instructed his chief
of spy missions to pursue more aggressive
insertions of spies into hostile governments such
as Iran and North Korea. Since this information is
classified, we may not know for a long time about
such operations.
The United States has
also relied on the information gathered by its
ally, South Korea, from the network of spies that
it ran in North Korea.
These
bukpagongjakwon formed an elite army
intelligence unit tasked with
intelligence-gathering, infiltration and even
assassination. North Korea's incursions in South
Korea are well-known: the attack on the Blue House
in 1968, the submarine that ran aground in 1996,
the numerous spies that have infiltrated South
Korean society.
But South Korea's missions
have been no less extensive and audacious. One
infamous group of ex-cons, trained on Shilmido to
assassinate Kim Il-sung in the wake of the 1968
Blue House incursion, revolted against their
guard-trainers and made their way to Seoul to
petition the president. None survived, and the
incident was suppressed. Only part of this story
was told in the 2003 film Shilmido.
If the South Korean government took care
of these agents, their existence might remain
largely unknown. But angry at being ignored and
mistreated by their own government, the former
spies demanded compensation for their efforts.
Information gradually leaked out. According to a
National Assembly report, more than 13,000 agents
worked on intelligence-gathering in the North. By
1972, more than 7,000 were casualties of the
program: 300 confirmed dead, 4,849 missing in
action, 203 injured, 130 captured, and more than
2,000 agents assigned to a mysterious "etc"
category.
The infiltration program
reportedly ended in the 1980s though training
continued until the 1990s.
So, yes, the
notion of going to extreme lengths to collect
human intelligence and conduct operations in North
Korea itself is not so far-fetched. According to
the Pentagon's Operational Plan 5020, made public
in 2003, US commanders were to prepare for
conflict with the North by conducting maneuvers
around the country's borders and "sow confusion"
within the North Korean military. From the
Pentagon's perspective, it is not only useful to
try to insert spies into North Korea but to have
North Korea believe that spies are constantly in
its midst.
US actions in Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia, as David Axe argued, have already
established a contemporary US pattern of violating
borders, inserting special operations forces, and
assassinating individuals in conflicts that do not
formally involve the United States in a declared
war. North Korea's nuclear weapons and still
formidable artillery positions have generally
prevented the United States from applying this
model north of the demilitarized zone.
Nevertheless, the US government is very
concerned about North Korea today. The country
possesses an unknown amount of nuclear material.
It is ruled by a young and comparatively
inexperienced leader, Kim Jong-eun. It is
economically fragile. The line between monitoring
a country's potential disintegration and
facilitating regime collapse can be a very thin
one.
We remain in the dark about so many
things pertaining to North Korea. But we would be
wise to err on the side of caution in trying to
illuminate that darkness.
(Update: The Pentagon recently
announced that it will be replacing Army Brigadier
General Neil Tolley as the commanding general of
the Special Operations Command Korea.)
John Feffer is co-director of
Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for
Policy Studies.
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