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South Korea The Threat from the North
After the division of the peninsula, North Korea used
subversion and sabotage against South Korea as part of its effort
to achieve reunification. North Korea was unsuccessful at
developing a covert political infrastructure in South Korea or
forging links with dissidents resident in South Korea, and after
the early 1960s P'yongyang's efforts were unproductive. Based on
available evidence, in 1990 it appeared that P'yongyang placed or
recruited only a limited number of political agents and
sympathizers in the southern part of the peninsula. P'yongyang's
agents acted individually for the most part, did not maintain
regular contact with one another, and received only intermittent
support and guidance.
Peacetime infiltration by North Korean agents was a fact of
life in South Korea after the armistice in 1953. There were,
however, clear shifts both in the number and method of
infiltrations over the years and in their goals. Through the mid1960s , P'yongyang sent agents primarily to gather intelligence
and to try to build a covert political apparatus. This tactic was
followed by a dramatic shift to violent attempts to destabilize
South Korea, including commando raids along the DMZ that
occasionally escalated into firefights involving artillery. These
raids peaked in 1968, when more than 600 infiltrations were
reported, including an unsuccessful attempt at a commando attack
on the Blue House in Seoul and the infiltration of over 120
commandos on the east coast. In 1969 more than 150 infiltrations
were attempted, involving almost 400 agents. In 1970 and 1974,
agents attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate President Park. In
the 1974 attempt, during an August 15 ceremony marking National
Liberation Day at the National Theater in Seoul, the assassin's
shots missed President Park but killed Mrs. Park. Subsequently,
P'yongyang's infiltration efforts abated somewhat, and the
emphasis shifted back to intelligence gathering and covert
networks.
From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, most North Korean
infiltration was done by heavily armed reconnaissance teams,
which increasingly were intercepted and neutralized by South
Korean security forces. After shifting to infiltration by sea for
a brief period in the 1980s, P'yongyang apparently discarded
military reconnaissance in favor of inserting agents from third
countries. North Korea did not abandon violence, however, as was
shown by the abortive 1982 attempt to recruit Canadian criminals
to assassinate President Chun Doo Hwan, the 1983 Rangoon
assassination attempt that killed seventeen South Korean
government officials and four Burmese dignitaries, and the 1987
destruction of a Korean Air airliner with 115 people on board. In
the airliner bombing, North Korea broke from its pattern of
targeting South Korean government officials, in particular the
president, and targeted ordinary citizens.
North Korean propaganda concentrated on weakening the social
fabric and sowing discord between the South Korean government and
the population. Indirectly, North Korea sought to turn dissident
elements within South Korean society into propagandists and
agitators who would undermine the government. P'yongyang achieved
some limited indirect success in this effort, as indicated by the
repetition of some of its themes by student dissidents. North
Korean coverage of dissident activity in the south was on
occasion so timely and accurate as to lead some members of the
South Korean government to believe that dissent in the south was
directed from the north. However, despite similarities between
North Korean propaganda and dissident statements, South Korean
security agencies never convincingly established a direct
connection between the dissidents and the north, although in the
late 1980s some elements among dissident groups increasingly used
Marxist-Leninist language and North Korean political themes
(see Political Extremism and Political Violence
, ch. 4).
Data as of June 1990
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