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Doomsday Monocle for the year 2005

Thursday, January 06, 2005

‘North Korea plans total mobilisation within 24 hours’

* Report says the plan named US as likely aggressor, accusing it of planning a military attack

SEOUL: North Korea has issued plans for mobilisation of the entire country within 24 hours in the event of war and for protection of the communist state’s leaders in underground bunkers, a South Korean newspaper said on Wednesday.

The Kyunghyang Shinmun daily quoted what it said was leader Kim Jong-il’s secret operations plan revised last April and addressed to key officials throughout the country.

“All sectors and units will execute the detailed war-time operations plan when a war is declared,” a two-page directive included in the plan quoted Kim as saying.

North Korea is the world’s most militarised country relative to population, with close to 1.2 million troops on active service.

“Issuing a detailed wartime operations plan to counter modern warfare conducted on land, air and sea carries the significance of putting all the party, the military and the public under one uniform command in preparation of contingency and to fully mobilise human and material resources of the country,” Kim said.

The paper said the plan sought mobilisation of the North’s more than seven million reservists and party officials within 24 hours of an outbreak of war.

A South Korean intelligence official said the plan as quoted by the paper was genuine but declined further comment.

The plan named the United States as a likely aggressor, accusing it of trying to stifle the North with a “fabricated nuclear problem” and of planning a military attack, the paper said.

The North is involved in a stand-off with its neighbours and the United States over its nuclear weapons programmemes. It has refused to return to six-country talks on dismantling those programmemes unless Washington drops what the North says is its “hostile policy”.

North and South Korea remain technically at war five decades after a truce suspended the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Koreans sympathetic to the North would be recruited once the South was “liberated”, the plan was quoted as saying.

The daily, which said its copy of the 365-point plan was incomplete with 15 of the points missing, declined to make available a copy or comment on the source.

The plan also ordered that portraits, statues and other “revolutionary artifacts” of Kim, his late father and state founder Kim Il-sung and his mother Kim Jong-suk be taken to a safe location such as an underground bunker in the event of war. reuter

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_6-1-2005_pg4_2