U.S. Focuses on N. Korea's Hidden Arms

June 23, 2003

OBSERVATION POST OUELLETTE, South Korea -- The steep hills a few miles off look barren and lifeless as U.S. soldiers peer into North Korea from this forward post on the Korean Demilitarized Zone. But if war ever broke out, hundreds of enemy artillery guns would likely roll out from deep tunnels dug into those hills and fire a hellish fusillade at the South Korean capital, Seoul, a metropolis just 35 miles away.

For five decades, the threat of that barrage -- which North Korea once warned would turn Seoul into a "sea of fire" -- has helped keep a rough peace. Military strategists concluded that armed conflict was unthinkable because both sides would suffer huge devastation.

But some politicians and analysts in South Korea and the United States say that a new nuclear weapon that the Bush administration is taking steps toward developing could upset that equilibrium. The administration persuaded Congress last month to lift a 10-year-old research ban on nuclear "bunker busters" that could knock out the buried North Korean armaments.

"The U.S. has been considering the possibility of a preemptive attack against North Korea" to destroy the communist state's nuclear program, said a joint statement of 18 South Korean lawmakers last month. Steps to study nuclear bunker bombs will "further arouse the hawks of North Korea" and aggravate a dangerous crisis, they said.

"Many people in South Korea are concerned, rightly or wrongly, about a U.S. military strike against North Korea," said Paik Jin Hyun, a professor of international studies at Seoul National University. "They see this decision of Congress as the first step."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has declared that he has "no plans" to make the nuclear bombs, and the congressional approval simply "will enable us to study it." If a decision to produce the bombs were made, about four years would pass before they would become operational.

Proponents of nuclear bunker-busters say the United States needs weapons far more effective than conventional bunker bombs such as the 2,000-pounders used on April 7 in Iraq in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein. The military also has a broad program to create conventional bombs that are better at this task.

As development of "smart" bombs makes targets on the surface increasingly vulnerable, armies worldwide are hiding more of their weaponry and command centers underground. The Pentagon estimates that more than 70 countries -- including the United States -- bury military facilities, and says at least 1,400 sites are critically sensitive, containing weapons of mass destruction or control centers.

"It's a serious matter that we do not have in the inventory the ability to deal with an underground, deeply buried target," Rumsfeld argued at a Senate appropriations hearing May 14.

North Korea is a prime exhibit, and was named as a potential target for nuclear bunker-busters in the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review given to Congress in December 2001.

Ever since the North's capital, Pyongyang, was devastated by U.S. bombardment in the 1950-53 Korean War, the North Koreans have been digging with diligence. Some tunnels would channel invasion troops, military analysts say. The South Koreans have discovered four tunnels under the DMZ and suspect they will discover others -- concrete-reinforced and capable of transporting thousands of troops quickly into the South.

The Pentagon's public war plan for Korea estimates that North Korea has 12,000 artillery pieces, including 500 long-range weapons, many near the DMZ hidden deep in mountain tunnels. They could roll out on rails and fire "several thousand" shells per hour toward Seoul, top Pentagon officers have told Congress.

Unless those guns could be hit while still underground or sealed in their hiding places -- a task beyond the reach of a conventional attack -- the death toll in Seoul could quickly reach 40,000, according to a 1994 Pentagon estimate; other estimates put the likely death toll at 1 million.

"If we can develop a weapon that can tunnel into the ground and destroy the target and release very little radiation, we should not take it off the table just because nuclear has a bad reputation," argues Jack Spencer, a senior defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

No one is sure that is possible. Advocates say that military labs could develop a tactical nuclear weapon that would burrow deep before exploding, minimizing above-ground effects. Opponents doubt that and say that any blast would throw into the air tons of radioactive debris that would be harmful to life for years.

"No one should assume these are just nice little weapons that have been tamed," Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said in Washington last month. "These are atomic weapons. We've spent 50 years -- wakeless, sleepless years -- trying to find ways to avoid their use." To develop new ones now, he said, is "a tremendous reversal in our strategic policy."

Opponents also doubt Rumsfeld's claims to have no plans to make such weapons. They point to a variety of Pentagon statements and planning meetings on the need for the bomb.

"Just a study? Baloney," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said when the provision reached the Senate floor. "Does anyone really believe that? This opens the door for America to begin to develop nuclear weapons again, and I for one do not believe we should sit by and see that happen."

Rumsfeld also requested -- and received -- approval to shorten the time to prepare to test a nuclear device from three years to 18 months. The United States has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992, and critics say a resumption of testing would provoke others to do the same.

"It would be likely that Russia and China would seriously consider resuming testing" if the United States tested a nuclear bomb, Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said in a recent telephone interview from Washington. "And that might have the effect of opening the doors to additional testing by India and Pakistan. The U.S. plan for new types of nuclear weapons is putting us on a slippery slope to a renewal of the arms race."

Rumsfeld dismisses the argument. "The idea that our studying a nuclear deep-earth penetrator is going to contribute to proliferation, I think, ignores the fact that the world is proliferating. It is happening without any studies by us," he said at the May 14 hearing.

Advocates also note that the United States already has deployed battlefield nuclear weapons. Among them is a 1,200-pound bomb called a B61-11, also designed as a bunker-buster. But many experts say it produces too big an explosion to be used effectively against bunkers, and a 1998 test of the device -- unarmed -- in Alaska showed that it did not burrow very far underground.

In Seoul, many fear that any U.S. talk of developing a new, more usable, nuclear weapon will only accelerate North Korea's drive toward building its own nuclear armaments. The government in Pyongyang fears attack by the United States, and has said it must develop such weapons for its defense.

"If I am North Korea, and the other side has said they want to destroy my system and kill me, I have no choice but to arm," said Assemblyman Song Young Gil, a member of South Korea's ruling Millennium Democratic Party.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21214-2003Jun22?language=printer