Rantberg: "N. Korea 'Runs Naval Suicide Squads'"

Rantberg is an excellent source of information on both the War on Terror, and on the Korean Peninsula.

N. Korea 'Runs Naval Suicide Squads': "Former North Korean soldiers who defected to South Korea on Monday claimed "underwater suicide squads" may have been responsible for the mysterious sinking of a South Korean naval vessel on Friday.

Why aren't I surprised?  Oh, yeah, I spent two thirds of my so-called adult life dedicated to ensuring that the Two Kims' minions would have the maximum opportunity to prove that their dedication was, in fact, "to the death..."

According to one high-ranking North Korean defector, the North formed suicide attack squads in each branch of the military after the country's leader Kim Jong-il said during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that no military in the world can defeat an army that can carry out suicide bombings.

Which only proves that he forgot that his own invasion of South Korea in 1950 only really picked up steam after the ROKs ran out of troops ran out of guys with the guts (or whatever) to attempt to take out T34 tanks with bundles of dynamite.  (Our fault.  US Army doctrine said Korea was not "tank country", so we gave the ROKs a few AT mines, but no AT weapons...)

The suicide attack squads are known as the "invincibles" in the Air Force, "bombs" in the Army and "human torpedoes" in the Navy. North Korea is said to place special emphasis on the naval squads. It operates a brigade of suicide attack squads in its East Sea and West Sea fleets and they are considered key to overcoming North Korea's inferior conventional military power.

I guess when you're going up against F22 Raptors in MiG17s, you need all the encouragement you can get.  Oh, yes, in your entire career as a north Korean fighter pilot you don't log as many flight hours as a US Fighter pilot logs in a month...

Overall, phrases like "human bombs" and "Human torpedoes" are commonplace in Korean commie ideology.  Frankly, unless one or more of these defectors was a high-level ossifer--unstated--I have to wonder how much truth there is to these claims.

Anyway, onward.

One defector who served in North Korea's intelligence service, said, "Following the first naval battle in 1999, North Korea realized that it cannot defeat the South Korean Navy by conventional means and began studying unconventional methods."

At the time of that little scuffle--over crab fisheries in the Yellow Sea, AKA The West Sea*--I was in the tail end of my Army career, and flying (well, crewing) Electronic Warfare helicopters; we were alerted to fly support for the ROKs  in this action.  Cool!

Ooops, none of us were certified to fly "over water", which I argued, unsuccessfully, was not strictly necessary.  By the time we had the training and certification set up--not usually necessary for Army helicopter crews--the shootin' was over.

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*West Sea=Yellow Sea.  Do NOT ever refer to the "Sea of Japan" when speaking to a Korean.  While historically, the name "Korean Sea" was used first, most Koreans today prefer "East Sea."