Hat Tip: Terry
December 23, 2010, 5:02 PM KST
More on Yeonpyeong: How NK Did It
By Evan Ramstad
KPA Journal December issueFor the past year, Joe Bermudez Jr., an American defense analyst and author, has been publishing a monthly online magazine about North Korea’s military, which he has studied since the early 1980s. The magazine, called KPA Journal using the acronym for the Korea People’s Army, has mainly contained articles about weapons and military history.
But earlier this week, Mr. Bermudez published his November and December issues simultaneously – a two-part examination of North Korea’s attack on Yeonpyeong Island Nov. 23 that killed four South Koreans.
In scrupulous and thoroughly-footnoted detail, Mr. Bermudez describes the history of the conflict in the Yellow Sea maritime area of the two Koreas, as well as North Korea’s preparations for the attack, how it was carried out and how South Korea reacted.
Though much of the information has been published in newspapers and other public sources, Mr. Bermudez pieced together these reports to draw several new connections. He explains, for instance, how North Korea earlier this year twice tested an attack technique of precisely timing the launch of different types of weapons from different locations so the shells arrive all at once.
Among other details, Mr. Bermudez reported how an elite group of North Korean fighter planes were in the air nearby during the attack in case South Korea launched an air strike. Those planes didn’t initially return to their base near Pyongyang but landed instead at an airfield near the maritime border area. He also wrote about, and illustrated with satellite photos from Digital Globe, a communications trench that was dug for wires so that gunners could talk to each other without using radios that the South could monitor.
We asked Mr. Bermudez some questions about his work and findings:
WSJ: How did you get interested in North Korea and why did you start publishing KPA Journal?
Mr. Bermudez: I started out as a specialist on the Middle East but I had a modest interest in the North Korea military as it was in 1982 or 1983. Friends at the time encouraged me to write a book about North Korean special forces. I resisted and resisted. Finally, I sent the publisher I was writing for back then, Janes, a proposal and they accepted it. From that point on, I’ve concentrated on ballistic missile development in the third world and North Korean defense and intelligence affairs.
I decided last year that this year, I was going to start sharing some of the information I had freely and openly because there’s a tremendous thirst for it. A lot of things written about North Korea are poorly-done and are written by people who haven’t had the opportunities I’ve had to study it and visit there.
WSJ: One of the interesting takeaways from your reporting is that North Korea practiced a sophisticated attack technique called time-on-target right in the area of Yeonpyeong Island. What is that and why is it important?
Mr. Bermudez: Time-on targeting means that artillery rocket rounds are fired in a certain sequence so that they all reach the target exactly or as close as possible to the same time. The idea is that one moment it’s a quiet, sunny day and the next all hell is happening. This requires some considerable skill and planning.
An artillery round, if it’s a 76 millimeter, travels relatively fast. A rocket travels relatively slowly. With time-on-target planning, what you do is fire the rocket first, then a split second later the artillery round so they would impact at the same time.
This is very simple, what I’ve just described. However, if you have artillery rounds and rockets in different locations, it becomes much more complicated. It’s not a new capability at all. Since modern artillery, the concept of time-on-target was known and understood.
The real gist and importance of this is that it’s a skill that needs to be practiced frequently. It’s not something you can look up in a book and you can do. And the fact they had the practiced it and have been practicing it along the Northern Limit Line and had practiced it right north of Yeonpyeong is strongly suggestive that someone in the command structure had been planning this attack.
WSJ: Your reports also have satellite images taken of the places where North Korea fired from and you spotted this new-dug trench for communications line. What can be learned from that?
Mr. Bermudez: If you look at the way the trench was actually dug, you can trace it from the Kaemori underground facility (headquarters for the operation) all the way to the south. If you trace it north, you’ll notice it went right through villages and it wasn’t done the way you’d normally do it.
Normally, if you were going to put in a trench, you would put it along the roads. You’d weave it back and forth to cause minimal disruption of life. This was pretty straight. Except for a few cases, they didn’t really care where they dug this.
If you log on to Google Earth and follow it, you see one or two places where they went up and down a hill when it would have been easier to go around. It gives you the impression it was done hastily or that they were on a tight deadline.
WSJ: What can South Korea learn about the North Korean military from studying the details of the Nov. 23 attack?
Mr. Bermudez: Any time an opponent or an adversary conducts combat operations against you, you can learn a tremendous amount of small things. Sometimes you can learn some big things. You learn command and control structures. You learn about tactics. This is all important information. You can be learning something new or confirming something you already knew. That is valuable. But if you take it up several notches, you might be able to determine some things of their ability to conduct joint operations, in other words, operations combining air force and ground forces.
WSJ: What is North Korea learning about South Korea’s military?
Mr. Bermudez: The North Koreans, like many military academies around the world, study the teachings of Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist. The North Koreans truly embrace his writings. One of the lessons is basically to provoke your enemy and ascertain the way he moves. The North Koreans have done this repeatedly.
What happens, and it happens in all militaries, is that South Korea’s military had became too predictable. That’s hard to prevent. It’s hard to fight predictability and routine. Hopefully, this will be a wakeup call to the South Korea military that something different needs to be done.
WSJ: Do you think South Korea should have carried out the military drill on Yeonpyeong earlier this week?
Mr. Bermudez: I agree that they needed to do it. However, while I haven’t heard all the statements issued by the [South Korea] Ministry of National Defense, what they should have done is also issued a statement that said they will choose the time and place of their response. Something like, “Going forward, we will choose the time and place of any response to any further North Korean provocation.”
Normally in combat operations, there is a cause and effect. Something happens and somebody responds, and they are closely linked in time.
It appears the North Koreans have an understanding to disconnect the timing. You might do something today and you would expect they will respond tomorrow or next week. In their mind, they can respond three months later and to them that is the appropriate response. They disconnect the timing.
http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2010/12/23/more-on-yeonpyeong-how-nk-did-it/
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