The United States military has denied reports attributed to the head of its special forces in South Korea that his men have been parachuted into North Korea to gather intelligence on the regime's network of underground military facilities.
The United States military has denied reports attributed to the head of its special forces in South Korea that his men have been parachuted into North Korea to gather intelligence
Brigadier General Neil Tolley was quoted in a Japan-based foreign affairs magazine as telling a conference in Tampa, Miami, last week that elite US troops are conducting "special reconnaissance" missions in the North.
The Diplomat magazine reported that the troops have been dropped behind North Korean lines to identify and map the locations of Pyongyang's extensive network of underground bases.
The network includes munitions factories and underground artillery positions, all of which are linked by hundreds of miles of tunnels that have been excavated all the way up to the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone that separates the two Koreas.
"The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our satellites," Tolley was quoted as saying. "So we send (South Korean) soldiers and US soldiers to the North to do special reconnaissance.
"After 50 years, we still don't know much about the capability and full extent" of the underground facilities, Tolley was reported as saying on the website of the magazine of the National Defense Industrial Association.
The sites reportedly include 20 airfields that are partly underground and thousands of artillery emplacements.
He added that the special forces troops were dispatched with minimal equipment in order for them to be able travel quickly and keep the risk of detection by North Korean troops to a minimum.
The US and South Korea are aware of four invasion tunnels that were excavated beneath the DMZ and were apparently intended to allow the North to avoid the static defences and to have thousands of troops emerge without warning and within striking range of Seoul.
Some of the tunnels have since been turned into tourist attractions and visitors can descend a steep intersecting tunnel from the South Korean side and explore the invasion route.
One end terminates in a rock face where small holes had been drilled for the next round of demolition charges for the tunnel. The other is plugged with a concrete block with a small aperture that looks towards the exit in North Korea.
Tolley suggested that there may be more such infiltration routes beneath the border.
"We don't know how many we don't know about," he was quoted as saying.
A spokesman for US forces in South Korea has dismissed the media report.
"Some reporting has taken great liberal licence with his comments and taken him completely out of context," Colonel Jonathan Withington, of the public affairs office of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.
"No US or ROK (Republic of Korea) forces have parachuted into North Korea," he said. "Though special reconnaissance is a core special operations force mission, at no time have SOF forces been sent to the north to conduct special reconnaissance.
"The use of tunnels in North Korea is well documented," he added. "Several of the known tunnels along the DMZ are visited by tourists every day."
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