North Korean guns, clear and present danger to South

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

SEOUL, June 27 (Reuters) If the world is alarmed about a North Korean long-range missile, for most South Koreans it is just one more addition to their neighbour's arsenal which could already devastate around half the population in a few hours.

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have all warned Pyongyang not to test-fire a long-range missile, which has apparently been prepared for launch, saying it would imperil regional security and bring a harsh response.

The first time North Korea tried out a long-range missile -- in 1998, firing it over Japan -- it sent panicked regional financial markets into a tailspin.

But for South Korea, a more immediate danger may be North Korea's artillery.

The capital Seoul, only 60 km south of the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has long been within range of one of the world's most powerful artillery batteries.

South Korea's Defence Ministry said the North had amassed more than 13,000 pieces of artillery and multiple rocket launchers, much of it aimed at Seoul.

Jane's International Defence Review estimates that if North Korea launched an all-out barrage, it could achieve an initial fire rate of 300,000 to 500,000 shells per hour into the Seoul area -- home to about half the country's 48.5 million people.

The biggest are 170-mm self-propelled artillery guns and 240-mm multiple rocket launchers. It also has hundreds of Scud missiles that could hit any part of South Korea.

North Korea is also thought to have been working to attach chemical and biological weapons to its long-range artillery.

''The threat from the North's artillery is the indiscriminate firing against our capital region and urban centres with its multiple rocket launchers and field artillery,'' a South Korean defence officer said.

Military experts note that South Korean and US forces have worked for decades to perfect a counter strike. They also say that impoverished North Korea probably has not kept all of its guns in working order and may be short of shells.

But as a relatively basic weapons system, a rain of artillery would be the North's most effective and reliable way to hit the South fast and hard, they add.

Ordinary South Koreans appear to have become largely used to the threat, paying decreasing attention over the years to regular civil defence drills that were once mandatory.

The two Koreas are technically still at war because the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in a truce and not a peace treaty.

Though the North keeps most of its 1.2-million-man army near the border, the two Koreas have reached agreements in recent years aimed at reducing military tensions.

Japan, South Korea and the United States, along with China and Russia, have been locked in three years of now-stalled negotiations talks to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme.

Officials and military analysts say Pyongyang wants to develop a long-range missile to be able to carry a nuclear warhead.

But according to a recent survey by a state-funded research group, South Koreans view China -- and not North Korea -- as the biggest threat to their security 10 years from now.

Reuters SHB BD151000

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