North Korea Forward Deploys Military Forces as High Level Talks Continue
I don’t see anything surprising about North Korea pushing out its forces. The Kim regime needs its population to feel that it is in a constant state of near war with the US and only the military genius of the Kim regime is keeping the “Imperialist Yankees” at bay. Plus it is just a good training exercise to keep his military busy:
More than 50 North Korean submarines are apparently away from their bases for operations, a sign that the North is gearing up for combat while participating in high-level talks aimed at easing tension, an official here said Sunday.
“Seventy percent of North Korea’s submarines left their bases, and their locations are not confirmed,” the South Korean military official told reporters.
The North is known to have around 70 submarines.
The unpredictable communist nation has also doubled the number of its artillery troops on the border, with the command to be combat ready, according to the official.
Top government officials from the two Koreas were supposed to resume their talks at the truce village of Panmunjom at 3 p.m. Sunday. It has not been confirmed yet whether they began the meeting as scheduled. [Yonhap]
Okay, before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, the North only has 15 full size submarines which are of 50’s-60’s vintage, a number of medium-sized subs built in the 80’s and 90’s and a butt-ton of midgets which are VERY easy to hide in the tunnels the North has at several of it’s port facilities. I don’t have access to current imagery but I would bet the farm that not all of these 50 submarines are underway or at sea.
Plus there is the fact that the South is on high alert due to all this mess which means they are doing surface and sub-surface searches while on patrol. The only real danger in all of this is the unlucky American sub commander who gets caught in a South Korean subsurface search by mistake and the trigger-happy South Koreans depth charge it or ASW rocket attack it.