NK has 30,000 electronic warfare specialists: Fox News

North Korea has as many as 30,000 electronic warfare specialists as part of the elite core of the North`s military, Fox News said Tuesday.

Quoting U.S. and South Korean intelligence, the U.S. network said Washington and Seoul believe that the U.S. CIA can match Pyongyang`s capability in cyber warfare.

Fox quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as telling his military several years ago, “Modern war is electronic warfare. Victory or defeat in a modern war depends on how to carry out electronic warfare.” He has since made cyber warfare a top albeit secret priority of his paranoid regime, it added.

Among the most frequent visitors to U.S. military websites are computers traced to North Korea, according to the U.S. Defense Department. Much like the clandestine nuclear program run by the rogue state, its cyber warfare capability is shrouded in secrecy.

The news channel quoted South Korean intelligence as saying, “Over the past year, North Korea has been suspected of involvement in ever-larger cyber attacks against South Korea, as many as 15,000 a day,” adding, “At first the cyber attacks, such as the massive July 4 attack in 1999 against government sites in the U.S. and South Korea, were basic -- even primitive -- `denial of service` assaults.”

“In fact, South Korea’s intelligence agencies now believe that North Korea has the capability to paralyze the U.S. Pacific Command and cause extensive damage to defense networks inside the United States.”

The report added, “Defectors say that the regime now culls the brightest students from the nation’s universities and funnels them into special `secret` schools that concentrate on hacking and developing cyber warfare program.”

“At one secret school, security is so tight that only one outsider -- dictator Kim Jong Il -- is allowed to drive onto the campus.”

Fox quoted Jang Se-yeol, a North Korean defector who attended one of the schools and was an officer in the North`s electronic warfare command, as saying the heart of the effort is centered at Automation University, where 100 to 110 hackers a year are trained in advanced electronic espionage every year.