North Korea Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

FORBIN said:

Not all only 90 %

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Seoul, South Korea (CNN)A North Korean soldier was shot by his former comrades while defecting to South Korea across the demilitarized zone, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement Monday.

The wounded soldier was evacuated from the site for emergency medical attention, the statement said, after defecting from a North Korean guard post at the Joint Security Area (JSA) on the heavily-guarded border between the two countries.
The soldier is reported to have left the North Korean guard post in front of Panmungak, on the border inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ), and proceeded to move towards Freedom House on the South Korean side.
It's the same border area that was visited by US Secretary of Defense James Mattis less than a month ago.

DMZ defections
privacy policy.
Monday's defection is the third by a member of the North Korean military this year, following two soldiers who fled to South Korea separately in June.
Prior to 2017, there had only been four military defectors from North Korea over the past five years: one in 2016, one in 2015 and two in 2012.
Robert Kelly, associate professor at the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University, said the prominent defection and the shooting was "genuinely surprising."
"It's fairly unusual, I can't think of the last time (a defector was shot at) ... it certainly adds to the tensions," he said.
The defector is currently in South Korean military custody, according to the statement.
"Our military has raised the alert level in anticipation of North Korean provocation. The military is maintaining a full readiness," the Joint Chiefs of Staff statement said.
The North Korean military has more than 1.2 million active soldiers and a further 7.7 million in reserves. It is one of the largest ground forces in the world.
US man arrested
In a bizarre twist, Monday's successful defection from North Korea came as an American man was arrested in South Korea apparently attempting to go in the other direction.
According to South Korea's Ministry of Defense, a 58-year-old man from Louisiana entered a controlled area in Yeoncheon County, on the border with North Korea, early Monday morning.
The man was reported to police by local residents and arrested. Officials said the country's intelligence services, police and military were investigating the case.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed a US citizen had attempted to enter North Korea via the DMZ, but would not give any further information.
CNN's Jake Kwon and James Griffiths contributed reporting.

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Defector’s Condition Indicates Serious Health Issues in North Korea
November 19, 2017 3:21 AM

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South Korean surgeon Lee Cook-Jong, who operated on North Korean soldier and his gunshot wounds, speaks about the condition of the soldier at Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, south of Seoul, Nov. 15, 2017.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA —
Parasitic worms found in a North Korean soldier, critically injured during a desperate defection, highlight nutrition and hygiene problems that experts say have plagued the isolated country for decades.

At a briefing Wednesday, lead surgeon Lee Cook-jong displayed photos showing dozens of flesh-colored parasites, including one 27 cm (10.6 in) long, removed from the wounded soldier’s digestive tract during a series of surgeries to save his life.

“In my over 20 year-long career as a surgeon, I have only seen something like this in a textbook,” Lee said.

The parasites, along with kernels of corn in his stomach, may confirm what many experts and previous defectors have described about the food and hygiene situation for many North Koreans.

“Although we do not have solid figures showing health conditions of North Korea, medical experts assume that parasite infection problems and serious health issues have been prevalent in the country,” said Choi Min-Ho, a professor at Seoul National University College of Medicine who specializes in parasites.

The soldier’s condition was “not surprising at all considering the North’s hygiene and parasite problems,” he said.

A South Korean soldier runs along a military fence on the road leading to the truce village of Panmunjom at a South Korean military checkpoint in the border city of Paju near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Nov. 14, 2017.
Hail of bullets

The soldier was flown by helicopter to hospital Monday after his dramatic escape to South Korea in a hail of bullets fired by North Korean soldiers.

He is believed to be an army staff sergeant in his mid-20s who was stationed in the Joint Security Area in the United Nations truce village of Panmunjom, according to Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker of South Korea’s ruling party, briefed by the National Intelligence Service.

North Korea has not commented on the defection.

While the contents of the soldier’s stomach don’t necessarily reflect the population as a whole, his status as a soldier with an elite assignment would indicate he would at least be as well nourished as an average North Korean.

He was shot in his buttocks, armpit, back shoulder and knee among other wounds, according to the hospital where the soldier is being treated.

‘The best fertilizer’

Parasitic worms were also once common in South Korea 40 to 50 years ago, Lee noted during his briefing, but have all but disappeared as economic conditions greatly improved.

Other doctors have also described removing various types of worms and parasites from North Korean defectors.

Their continued prevalence north of the heavily fortified border that divides the two Koreas could be in part tied to the use of human excrement, often called “night soil.”

“Chemical fertilizer was supplied by the state until the 1970s, but from the early 1980s, production started to decrease,” said Lee Min-bok, a North Korean agriculture expert who defected to South Korea in 1995. “By the 1990s, the state could not supply it anymore, so farmers started to use a lot of night soil instead.”

In 2014, supreme leader Kim Jong Un personally urged farmers to use human waste, along with animal waste and organic compost, to fertilize their fields. A lack of livestock, however, made it difficult to find animal waste, said Lee, the agriculture expert.

Even harder to overcome, he said, is the view of night soil as the “best fertilizer in North Korea,” despite the risk of worms and parasites.

“Vegetables grown in it are considered more delicious than others,” Lee said.

FILE - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un smiles as children eat during his visit to the Pyongyang Orphanage on International Children's Day in this undated photo.
Limited diets

The medical briefing described the wounded soldier as being 170 cm (5 feet 5 inches) and 60 kg (132 pounds) with his stomach containing corn. It’s a staple grain that more North Koreans may be relying on in the wake of what the United Nations has called the worst drought since 2001.

Imported corn, which is less preferred but cheaper to obtain than rice, has tended to increase in years when North Koreans are more worried about their seasonal harvests.

Between January and September this year, China exported nearly 49,000 tons of corn to North Korea, compared with 3,125 tons in all of 2016, according to data released by Beijing.

Despite the drought and international sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program, the cost of corn and rice has remained relatively stable, according to a Reuters analysis of market data collected by the defector-run Daily NK website.

Since the 1990s, when government rations failed to prevent a famine, North Koreans have gradually turned to markets and other private means to feed themselves.

The World Food Program says a quarter of North Korean children 6-59 months old, who attend nurseries that the organization assists, suffer from chronic malnutrition.

On average North Koreans are less nourished than their southern neighbors. The WFP says around 1 in 4 children have grown less tall than their South Korean counterparts. A study from 2009 said pre-school children in the North were up to 13 cm (5 inches) shorter and up to 7 kg (15 pounds) lighter than those brought up in the South.

“The main issue in DPRK is a monotonous diet — mainly rice/maize, kimchi and bean paste — lacking in essential fats and protein,” the WFP told Reuters in a statement last month.

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North Korea Has 200,000 Soldiers in Its Special Forces (And They Have One Goal)

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Win a war...at all costs.
North Korea Has 200,000 Soldiers in Its Special Forces (And They Have One Goal)

One of the most vital parts of North Korea’s war machine is one that relies the most on so-called “soldier power” skills. North Korea has likely the largest special-forces organization in the world, numbering two hundred thousand men—and women—trained in unconventional warfare. Pyongyang’s commandos are trained to operate throughout the Korean Peninsula, and possibly beyond, to present an asymmetric threat to its enemies.

For decades North Korea maintained an impressive all-arms force of everything from tanks to mechanized infantry, artillery, airborne forces and special forces. The country’s conventional forces, facing a long slide after the end of the Cold War, have faced equipment obsolescence and supply shortages—for example, North Korea has very few tanks based on the 1970s Soviet T-72, and most are still derivatives of the 1960s-era T-62. The rest of Pyongyang’s armored corps are in a similar predicament, making them decidedly inferior to U.S. and South Korean forces.
In response, North Korea has upped the importance of its special forces. The country maintains twenty-five special-forces and special-purpose brigades, and five special-forces battalions, designed to undertake missions from frontline DMZ assault to parachute and assassination missions. The Light Infantry Training Guidance Bureau, part of the Korean People’s Army, functions as a kind of analog to U.S. Special Operations Command, coordinating the special forces of the Army, Army Air Force and Korean People’s Navy.

Of North Korea’s two hundred thousand “commandos,” approximately 150,000 belong to light infantry units. Foot mobile, their frontline mission is to infiltrate or flank enemy lines to envelop or mount rear attacks on enemy forces. North Korea’s hilly terrain lends itself to such tactics, as does the network of tunnels that the country has dug that cross the DMZ in a number of places. Eleven of North Korea’s special forces brigades are light-infantry brigades, and there are smaller light-infantry units embedded within individual NK combat divisions.

A further three brigades are special purpose airborne infantry. The Thirty-Eighth, Forty-Eighth and Fifty-Eighth Airborne Brigades operate much like the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, conducting strategic operations including airborne drops to seize critical terrain and infrastructure. NKPA airborne forces would likely target enemy airfields, South Korean government buildings, and key roads and highways to prevent their sabotage. Each brigade is organized into six airborne infantry battalions with a total strength of 3,500. Unlike the Eighty-Second, however, NKPA airborne brigades are unlikely to operate at the battalion level or higher, and due to a lack of long-range transport cannot operate beyond the Korean Peninsula.


In addition, North Korea has an estimated eight “sniper brigades,” three for the People’s Army (Seventeenth, Sixtieth and Sixty-First Brigades), three for the Army Air Force (Eleventh, Sixteenth and Twenty-First Brigades), and two for the People’s Navy (Twenty-Ninth, 291st). Each consists of approximately 3,500 men, organized into seven to ten sniper “battalions.” These units fulfill a broad variety of roles and are roughly analogous to U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Special Forces and Navy SEALs. Unlike their American counterparts, it appears some these units are capable of fighting as conventional airborne, air assault, or naval infantry.

Sniper brigades are trained in strategic reconnaissance and so-called “direct action” missions including assassination missions, raids against high-level targets military and economic targets, sabotage, disruption of South Korea’s reserve system, covert delivery of weapons of mass disruption (including possibly radiological weapons), and organizing antigovernment guerrilla campaigns in South Korea. They will frequently be dressed in civilian, South Korean military, or U.S. military uniforms. One platoon of thirty to forty troops per Army sniper brigade consists solely of women, trained to conduct combat operations dressed as civilians.

Finally, the Reconnaissance Bureau maintains four separate reconnaissance battalions. Highly trained and organized, these five-hundred-man battalions are trained to lead an an army corps through the hazardous DMZ. They likely have intimate—and highly classified—knowledge of both friendly and enemy defenses in the demilitarized zone. A fifth battalion is reportedly organized for out-of-country operations.

Special forces are generally meant to operate behind enemy lines, and North Korea employs considerable, though often obsolete, means of getting them there. For ground forces, one obvious means of infiltrating South Korea is through the 160-mile-long and 2.5-mile-wide DMZ. Undiscovered cross-border tunnels are another means. By sea, Pyongyang has the ability to deliver an estimated five thousand troops in a single lift, using everything from commercial vessels to Nampo-class landing craft, its fleet of 130 Kongbang-class hovercraft and Sang-O coastal submarines and Yeono midget submarines.

By air, North Korea has a notional fleet of two hundred elderly An-2 Colt short-takeoff and -landing transports. Capable of flying low and slow to avoid radar, each An-2 can carry up to twelve commandos, landing on unimproved surfaces or parachuting them on their targets. The regime also has a fleet of about 250 transport helicopters, mostly Soviet-bloc in origin (and age) but also including illicitly acquired

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similar to those flown by the Republic of Korea. Pyongyang also appears bent to acquire modern, long-distance transports

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, manufactured in New Zealand. Aircraft such as the P-750 XSTOL would allow North Korean special forces to reach as far as Japan and Okinawa, both of which would serve as forward bases for U.S. forces in wartime.

In the event of war, North Korea would likely launch dozens of separate attacks throughout South Korea, from the DMZ to the southern port of Busan. Whether or not these forces can make their way through Seoul’s considerable air and sea defenses is another question. Valleys, passes and waterways that could be used by low-flying aircraft and watercraft are already covered with everything from air-defense guns to antitank guided missiles. Given proper warning, South Korean defenders would inflict heavy losses on North Korean commandos on the way to their objectives.

North Korean special forces have evolved from a nuisance force designed to stage attacks in the enemy’s rear into something far more dangerous. Their ability to distribute nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons could, if successful, kill thousands of civilians. They have even

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, the official resident of the South Korean president. Although many would undoubtedly die en route to their destination, once on the ground their training, toughness and political indoctrination make them formidable adversaries.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

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Incredible footage of the North Korean soldier making his escape through the DMZ, first in a jeep and then on foot. Can clearly see North Koreans running to shoot their "comrade

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sahureka said:

from the original high quality photo I extracted the picture of the North Korean pitcher x6 MANPADS , at the moment I think it is the best image that highlights part of the carriagecarriage

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FORBIN said:

View attachment 43031

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