By Andrew Salmon
So, South Korea is reportedly activating a special forces unit tasked with "decapitating" the North Korean leader. Well, we have seen this before on the peninsula. Things did not end well.
In January 1968, 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated across the DMZ and penetrated Seoul. Their objective: Assassinate President Park Chung-hee. They got to within 100 meters of the Blue House ― where South Korean forces sprang a massive ambush.
One commando managed ― in an epic feat ― to extract from the hellacious firefight and escape and evade back to the North (where he was subsequently promoted, decorated and even stood beside Kim Il-sung during the dictator's public appearances). One surrendered and was turned (he is now a Christian pastor outside Seoul).
The rest were gunned down at the gates of the presidential mansion, or hunted down in subsequent days.
Unbeknownst to them, their daredevil assault had been in vain. The commandos had been compromised by loggers early in their mission, so Park was not even in the Blue House during the attack: He had been spirited away by bodyguards, and huge concentrations of troops had deployed at the Blue House. Pyongyang's killer elite stood no chance.
In response, Seoul raised a unit of its own with a mirror mission: Kill Kim! Although South Korea deployed a plethora of black ops units at the time, a new command was raised from scratch for this perilous mission. Perhaps inspired by the 1967 film "The Dirty Dozen," Seoul's 31 cutthroats were recruited in prisons.
Their fate was even more ignominious than that of the doomed Northern commandos. After being trained to a peak of deadly efficiency, détente set in between the Koreas. With their mission aborted, they were killed off one by one in "training accidents." The remainder, sensing their day would never come, broke out of their base and hijacked a bus ― only to be gunned down at a roadblock by domestic security forces. Survivors were secretly executed.
Despite these un-propitious precedents, the ROK Special Warfare Command has resurrected the "decapitation unit" concept. This looks like a dire idea for multiple reasons.
Firstly, special forces are exhaustively selected and expensively trained. Highly versatile, their skills include close protection, liaising with friendly forces, reconnaissance, target indication, raids and counter-terrorism. To task them with a single mission, assassination, will erode their capabilities.
Secondly, the unit will reportedly be brigade-sized: 1,500-3,000 men. Most tier-one special forces, such as the US Navy's SEAL Team 6 and the British Army's 22 SAS Regiment, number barely a few hundred men. So, Seoul is making a big investment with scarce, precious resources.
Thirdly, if you aim to assassinate someone, it is hardly prudent to warn them in advance.
Fourthly and most importantly, the chances of this unit carrying out and succeeding in its mission look, respectively, slim to none. Why so?
North Korea is the most heavily fortified and paranoid state on Earth, making it extraordinarily difficult to penetrate. Its regime is hugely opaque; the whereabouts of its leader are not public knowledge. Absent inside-the-palace human intelligence, Kim Jong-un will be difficult (or impossible) to pinpoint at any given time. And he is heavily protected. Kim has a dedicated bodyguard regiment and is, according to defectors, guarded by a triple security cordon at all times.
All this makes pinpointing Kim unlikely, and killing him unlikelier. The obvious benchmark operation ― the SEAL assassination of Osama Bin Laden ― was child's play by comparison. At the time of his death, the terrorist maestro was a hunted man, living as a virtual outlaw in a third country with his family. He had no air defense, no fortifications ― not even a dedicated bodyguard unit.
Seoul's activation of an elite brigade of assassins may inspire conservative hawks, but examined tactically, the idea looks unsound, if not ridiculous. There are sound measures to take against North Korea ― from information warfare to the weaponization of the capitalism now rampant across the Kimdom – but this is not one of them.
Tasking special forces to kill Kim has more in keeping with computer gaming and Hallyuwood fantasies than practical realities. Pyongyang's dictator is likelier to perish from an overdose of emmental cheese than from a commando's bullet.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.
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In January 1968, 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated across the DMZ and penetrated Seoul. Their objective: Assassinate President Park Chung-hee. They got to within 100 meters of the Blue House ― where South Korean forces sprang a massive ambush.
One commando managed ― in an epic feat ― to extract from the hellacious firefight and escape and evade back to the North (where he was subsequently promoted, decorated and even stood beside Kim Il-sung during the dictator's public appearances). One surrendered and was turned (he is now a Christian pastor outside Seoul).
The rest were gunned down at the gates of the presidential mansion, or hunted down in subsequent days.
Unbeknownst to them, their daredevil assault had been in vain. The commandos had been compromised by loggers early in their mission, so Park was not even in the Blue House during the attack: He had been spirited away by bodyguards, and huge concentrations of troops had deployed at the Blue House. Pyongyang's killer elite stood no chance.
In response, Seoul raised a unit of its own with a mirror mission: Kill Kim! Although South Korea deployed a plethora of black ops units at the time, a new command was raised from scratch for this perilous mission. Perhaps inspired by the 1967 film "The Dirty Dozen," Seoul's 31 cutthroats were recruited in prisons.
Their fate was even more ignominious than that of the doomed Northern commandos. After being trained to a peak of deadly efficiency, détente set in between the Koreas. With their mission aborted, they were killed off one by one in "training accidents." The remainder, sensing their day would never come, broke out of their base and hijacked a bus ― only to be gunned down at a roadblock by domestic security forces. Survivors were secretly executed.
Despite these un-propitious precedents, the ROK Special Warfare Command has resurrected the "decapitation unit" concept. This looks like a dire idea for multiple reasons.
Firstly, special forces are exhaustively selected and expensively trained. Highly versatile, their skills include close protection, liaising with friendly forces, reconnaissance, target indication, raids and counter-terrorism. To task them with a single mission, assassination, will erode their capabilities.
Secondly, the unit will reportedly be brigade-sized: 1,500-3,000 men. Most tier-one special forces, such as the US Navy's SEAL Team 6 and the British Army's 22 SAS Regiment, number barely a few hundred men. So, Seoul is making a big investment with scarce, precious resources.
Thirdly, if you aim to assassinate someone, it is hardly prudent to warn them in advance.
Fourthly and most importantly, the chances of this unit carrying out and succeeding in its mission look, respectively, slim to none. Why so?
North Korea is the most heavily fortified and paranoid state on Earth, making it extraordinarily difficult to penetrate. Its regime is hugely opaque; the whereabouts of its leader are not public knowledge. Absent inside-the-palace human intelligence, Kim Jong-un will be difficult (or impossible) to pinpoint at any given time. And he is heavily protected. Kim has a dedicated bodyguard regiment and is, according to defectors, guarded by a triple security cordon at all times.
All this makes pinpointing Kim unlikely, and killing him unlikelier. The obvious benchmark operation ― the SEAL assassination of Osama Bin Laden ― was child's play by comparison. At the time of his death, the terrorist maestro was a hunted man, living as a virtual outlaw in a third country with his family. He had no air defense, no fortifications ― not even a dedicated bodyguard unit.
Seoul's activation of an elite brigade of assassins may inspire conservative hawks, but examined tactically, the idea looks unsound, if not ridiculous. There are sound measures to take against North Korea ― from information warfare to the weaponization of the capitalism now rampant across the Kimdom – but this is not one of them.
Tasking special forces to kill Kim has more in keeping with computer gaming and Hallyuwood fantasies than practical realities. Pyongyang's dictator is likelier to perish from an overdose of emmental cheese than from a commando's bullet.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.
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