North Korea Massively Increases Its Special Forces

The navy has been ordered to change its focus from patrolling the sea to defending the shoreline from commando attacks, according to Kim Jong-dae, who edits a military magazine in Seoul and who until 2007 was a policy adviser to the defense minister. The South Korean government declined to comment on the navy's orders.

'Profoundly Loyal'

South Korea and the United States agree that the number of North Korean special forces is rising, but they disagree on how much.

The number is now 180,000, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry. That's a 50 percent increase since the South's last official count three years ago. But Sharp, the U.S. commander here, puts the number at 80,000 (although that still dwarfs the special forces of any country, including the United States, which has about 51,000.)

Much of the difference appears to be a dispute over the definition of special forces. North Korea has retrained and reconfigured about 60,000 infantry troops as special forces in the past three years, South Korea says. The United States agrees that this reconfiguring has occurred, but it "does not count [retrained infantry] as special forces," according to Maj. Todd Fleming, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Korea.

Whatever the number, there is widespread agreement that the North's special forces are increasingly formidable. Sharp describes them as "tough, well-trained and profoundly loyal," while being capable of illicit activities, strategic reconnaissance and attacks against civilian infrastructure and military targets across Northeast Asia.

Their low-tech, low-cost training includes throwing knives, firing poisonous darts and running up steep hills wearing backpacks filled with 60 pounds of rocks and sand, said Ha Tae-jun, a former South Korean commando who has debriefed captured members of the North's special forces. They are also drilled in street warfare, chemical attacks, night fighting, martial arts, car theft and using spoons and forks as weapons, say South Korean government reports and military experts.

South Korean and U.S. forces in Korea have begun counterinsurgency training in the past year to respond to what are thought to be new tactics -- including the use of improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs -- that North Korean special forces have adopted from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Staff officers from the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., have come to Korea to help prepare soldiers for the new threat.

In decades past, North Korean special forces have demonstrated remarkable fighting ability and grit when cornered inside South Korea. In 1968, a 31-member team attacked Blue House, the presidential residence in Seoul. Although they failed to assassinate President Park Chung-hee, they killed 68 South Koreans over the nine days it took to track them down. Several commandos committed suicide to avoid capture, one was unaccounted for and one was taken alive.

Boots on the Ground

North Korea has repeatedly threatened to turn Seoul (located just 35 miles from the border) into "a sea of fire." To make that possible, it has moved about 70 percent of its military units and up to 80 percent of its total firepower to within 60 miles of the DMZ, according to the Strategic Studies Institute, a research arm of the U.S. Army War College.

But the capacity of North Korea to protect and maintain that frontline armor has declined since the 1990s. Flight hours for the North's military aircraft have plummeted for lack of fuel, as has training of mechanized ground forces.

North Korea has also begun to question the utility of the tanks and armor it can afford at the front, after seeing the ease with which U.S. precision weapons shredded Saddam Hussein's armored forces in Iraq, according to a South Korean Defense Ministry report.

"They were really shocked watching how the Americans destroyed Iraq's tanks," said Kim, the military affairs editor.

What North Korea still has in extraordinary abundance are boots on the ground, thanks to universal conscription and a mandatory 10 years of military service for men, seven years for women.

"The North Koreans made a decision based on the resources they have," said Kwon Young-hae, a former director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service. "The best way for them to counterbalance the South's technological advantage is with special forces. When Kim Jong Il gives pep talks to these troops, he says, 'You are individually, one by one, like nuclear weapons.' "

Special correspondent June Lee contributed to this report.