S. Korean military to set up special unit to strike at N. Korean wartime leadership

S. Korean military to set up special unit to strike at N. Korean wartime leadership. January. 05, 2017 07:13. by Sang-Ho Yun ysh1005@donga.com.

South Korea plans to launch this year a special unit tasked with incapacitating North Korea's wartime leadership including the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who can order the use of nuclear weapons.

A South Korean military official said Wednesday that the special unit is part of the Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation (KMPR) plan, which was announced after the North’s fifth nuclear test in September last year. The KMPR plan calls for pre-emptively striking the key North Korean military command by using precision guided weapons or a special military unit to be operated in the event of North Korea’s full-fledged invasion or signs of a nuclear attack on the South.

The South Korean military reportedly plans to reorganize its special units, including the Navy’s underwater demolition unit and the SEALs (sea, air and land teams), the Air Force’s Combat Control Team, into a special brigade two years ahead of schedule due to the North’s rapidly advancing nuclear and missile threats.

The special brigade will likely infiltrate key North Korean areas including Pyongyang on submarines or stealth vessels simultaneously to carry out operations to remove the North Korean leadership and destroy war command facilities. A military official said the unit will directly strike the North Korean command post or find out the movements and location of the leadership to guide precision bombing.

In a related move, the South Korean deployed a special infiltration aircraft based on the C-130H transport aircraft to active duty last year. The aircraft is equipped with state-of-the-art navigators, infrared evasion devices and satellite communication and thus capable of perform low-altitude infiltration into enemy areas at night times or under bad weather conditions.

The South Korean military also plans to launch a project to turn the CH-47 transport helicopters into infiltration equipment and obscure machine guns for special operations and high-tech small-sized satellite communication devices at an early date.